Watch the seminar on Adorno and Hegel with Prof. Martin Saar here:

Watch the epilogue to the seminar with Bernard E. Harcourt here:

Martin Saar on Adorno and Hegel, with Billie Alexopoulos, Lea Gekle, and Bernard E. Harcourt

March 24, 2026

EHESS, Campus Condorcet

What are the political implications of Theodor W. Adorno’s inversions of Hegel in Negative Dialectics? Few people ask this question because we tend to treat the text at such a deeply philosophical level—metaphysical, ontological, and epistemological. We tend to read Negative Dialectics for its engagements with Kant and Hegel, with Marx, and, as Martin Saar suggested, with Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, and Benjamin. In this segment, though, we address the question. We explore the lasting shadow of Hegel on Theodor Adorno and the implications for politics.

Reader on Adorno for Hegel 13/13

Core Readings

For the readings for the seminar, please read the Reader on Adorno prepared by Billie Alexopoulos.

For additional materials, please consult:

Theodor W. Adorno, “Meditations on Metaphysics,” in Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1973)

Theodor Adorno, Hegel: Three Studies, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993)

Adorno. Dialectique et négativité, eds. Isabelle Aubert and Katia Genel (Paris: Vrin, 2023)