Adorno on Education外文翻译.pdfVIP

Historical Materialism 17 (2009) 74–97 brill.nl/hima Adorno on Education or, Can Critical Self-Refl ection Prevent the Next Auschwitz? K. Daniel Cho Otterbein College dcho@ Abstract h is article presents h eodor W. Adorno’s concept of education, the basis of which is critical self-refl ection. It argues that a close reading of Adorno’s various writings on education yields a theory of critical self-refl ection that is not simply introspection but an analysis of the social totality. Beginning with Adorno’s assessment of education within capitalism – which is always a critique of capitalism itself – the article moves through his concept of critical self-refl ection, and concludes by reassessing his claim that an education for critical self-refl ection off ers the strongest barrier to the recurrence of Auschwitz. Keywords h eodor W. Adorno, education, critical self-refl ection, Holocaust, philosophical refl ection, the Frankfurt school h eodor W. Adorno, in his important essay ‘Education After Auschwitz’, writes: ‘h e premier demand upon all education is that Auschwitz not happen again’.1 By raising the prevention of another Auschwitz to the level of an ideal, Adorno projects a radically new aim for education that intervenes in the increasingly conservative cultural milieu of postwar Germany. Indeed, as Russell Berman claims, Adorno’s discussions of education reveal a ‘radical Adorno’ who deftly demonstrates that ‘even within the context of the “administered society” a certain amount of public cultural engagement appeared possible’.2 And, in the words of Henry Pickford, the E