Antropologia: osservazioni sull’estetico tra Adorno e Gehlen

Abstract

In this article I start from the well-known antagonism between critical theory of society and philosophical anthropology. Then I show that, notwithstanding the critical theorists’ aversion to any form of positive or “affirmative”, unhistorical and undialectical anthropology based on “invariants”, their philosophies are also characterized by some anthropological elements and by an inexhaustible inclination to the outlining of a negative-dialectical anthropology. On this basis, and focusing in particular on Adorno and Gehlen (and especially on their respective masterworks Ästhetische Theorie and Zeit-Bilder, as well as on the available information and testimony about their philosophical and human relationship and their still unpublished correspondence), I investigate some aesthetic implications and consequences of such a problematic, but at the same time very interesting and fruitful, relation between critical theory and philosophical anthropology.