A Precarious Happiness

Peter E. Gordon

A Precarious Happiness
Format
Hardback
Publisher
The University of Chicago Press
Country
United States
Published
1 April 2024
Pages
320
ISBN
9780226828572

A Precarious Happiness

Peter E. Gordon

A strikingly original account of Theodor Adorno's work as a critique animated by happiness.

Theodor Adorno is often portrayed as a totalizing negativist, a scowling contrarian who looked upon modern society with despair. Peter E. Gordon thinks we have this wrong: if Adorno is uncompromising in his critique, it is because he sees in modernity an unfulfilled possibility of human flourishing. In a damaged world, Gordon argues, all happiness is likewise damaged, but not wholly absent. Through a comprehensive rereading of Adorno's work, A Precarious Happiness recovers Adorno's commitment to traces of happiness-fragments of the good amid the bad. Ultimately, Gordon argues that social criticism, while exposing falsehoods, must also cast a vision for an unrealized better world.

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