Today, Harvard Professor Peter E. Gordon will present “The Disenchantment of the Concept: From Heine to Adorno” on February 23 at 5:00 pm in the Class of ’47 Room at the Babbidge Library for the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life’s Konover Special Lecture Series. The event is co-sponsored by UConn’s German Studies program.
Professor Gordon is a renowned expert in the field of German history and philosophy as well as German-Jewish thought. Professor Gordon’s lecture will embark on a conceptual adventure through multiple disciplines and themes, between Jewish thought and German literature, between sociology and philosophy, between secularization and religion.
Fifty years ago the social theorist and philosopher Theodor W. Adorno published his late masterpiece of critical philosophy, Negative Dialectics, a work in which he called for a “disenchantment of the concept.” A deeper understanding of the significance of that task might be found if brought into a comparative light in contrast to Max Weber’s celebrated call for a “disenchantment of the world.” But the deeper, historical resonance of Adorno’s phrase is best understood if the much-neglected contributions of the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine are recalled. Heinrich’s early literary efforts helped to form the matrix for left-Hegelian thinking that would inspire the Frankfurt School in the later twentieth century.
http://judaicstudies.uconn.edu/2016/12/20/harvard-professor-peter-e-gordon-to-present-the-disenchantment-of-the-concept-from-heine-to-adorno/
For more information, contact: UConn Center For Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at 860-486-2271