cinaedussinister's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 Stars
Good at identifying flaws, and very insightful, but not very constructive in its criticism. Also on a side note, the writing style was extremely and almost unbearably dry. 1 out of 5 for accessibility, which is ironic given the subject matter.
Good at identifying flaws, and very insightful, but not very constructive in its criticism. Also on a side note, the writing style was extremely and almost unbearably dry. 1 out of 5 for accessibility, which is ironic given the subject matter.
krj's review against another edition
3.0
I can't finish Minima Moralia. I've been working on it since—February? March? something like that—only some seventy pages left now. It's odd—there will be a streak of aphorisms that I love, that are brilliant—but then I'll slog through half a dozen misreadings of Freud or rants about how pretty women are vain and stupid. I feel like I like Adorno (even in spite of his misogyny)—I feel like I would enjoy his company, and we could talk about Proust and our contempt for popular culture and the bourgeoisie. But even when I feel like Adorno is onto something brilliant, when one of the aphorisms in this book really hits me close to home, I feel like I've already read it before, and read it said better: really, Minima Moralia's best aphorisms are the ones in which Adorno just regurgitates, almost verbatim, Marx. I don't feel like there's anything new that I'm getting from Adorno—and while I sympathize frequently with his cultural malaise, I just can't bring myself to read those last seventy pages: time is limited, a precious commodity in our world of late capitalism, and I'd rather spend mine reading Marx. At least Marx offers a way out of capitalism, of the dictatorship of the bourgeois. I suppose that is Adorno's "new" contribution: he is Marx, resigned. The world is fucked, people: that's all Adorno has to offer.