Adorno and Religion

Abstract

This chapter explores the complex but meaningful role of religious ideas and theological arguments in Adorno’s thought. It examines how, alongside his critical analyses of the manifestations of religious consciousness in modern life, Adorno continuously employs religious concepts and theological sources in his writings. Reviewing the socio-political dimensions of the uses and abuses of religion Adorno diagnoses in political and cultural life, mass media, and entertainment, the chapter explicates how, according to Adorno, religious content is often reduced to superstition, occultism, and xenophobic ideology. The chapter then turns to the more constructive, socially redemptive elements of Adorno’s perspective on religion: the resemblance of his metaphysical arguments to negative theology and his unique concept of inverse theology. Finally, the chapter illuminates the significance of religion in Adorno’s aesthetics. It is in his theory of art, the author argues, that Adorno’s thought seems most theological, yet even here it remains, after all, primarily historical and materialistic.