Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life

Separating intellect from feeling only leads to a person becoming split into mere “functions” (197). Hegel’s concept of the “stupidity of understanding” (198) refers to how reason alone leads to thinking that inhibits itself and depends on cold facts and thoughts made in isolation.

People who remain ignorant do so because they restrict their thinking, especially at the point when they have to start thinking about their own material interests. Adorno sees this as something encouraged by society’s rulers, who do not want individuals “perceiving the absurdity” of the modern world (198). The solution to this is for people to think upon “the element of wish” (199) that is a vital part of thinking.

A favorite song of Adorno’s when he was a child was the composer Johannes Brahms’s Cradle Song. As a child, he thought the song referred not to flowers, but to the pins that kept the curtain over his bed in place. Adorno compares the way the curtain blocked out the light to how the “unconscious dark” is the only thing that can cancel out “undiminished brightness” (199).

Adorno also cites a lullaby about a dog that drives off a beggar. He remarks that this lullaby invokes the bourgeois fear of intruders.