Philosophy Response Paper

Write a brief response paper (at least three full pages typed and doubles-spaced) responding to ONE of the questions below. The claims made in your paper should be supported with careful engagement with the text. Citations can use the format of your choice (MLA, Chicago Style, etc.) but should be clear and consistent. 

1. In the introduction to Negative Dialectics, Adorno attempts to define dialectics in response to a failure. Adorno writes that Philosophy can neither circumvent such negation nor submit to it. It must strive, by way of the concept, to transcend the concept. What would it mean to circumvent or submit to the negative structure of human thinking? What is the structure of the challenge that Adorno is posing to the critical thinker in demanding that one work through the concept in order to transcend the concept? In other words, what are the demands that he is placing upon thinking as well as upon the development of a praxis in line with human freedom? (Read Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics “Preface” and “Introduction” (pp. 3 -57))

2. In the first chapter of the Eclipse of Reason, Horkheimer provides a warning of the way in which reason is being reduced to what he refers to at different points in the text as subjective, or formalized, or instrumental reason, at the expense of what he terms objective or substantial reason. In your paper, detail the specifics of this critique and show what Horkheimer understands to be the consequences of this occurrence for freedom and democratic social orders. (Read Max Horkheimer’s text, Eclipse of Reason. Please read Chapter One “Means and Ends” )