Essay: Adorno on the Form of Philosophical Writing

摘要

Adorno inherits Lukacs and Benjamin's thoughts on philosophical writing form and believes that essay is a new form of philosophical writing and a linguistic medium of art and philosophy. Adorno criticizes traditional writing form of philosophy on the basis of criticizing the philosophical identity. Therefore, he criticizes several problems of the traditional writing style, such as the presupposing theme, the ossification, the systematization, for criticizing the philosophy and language of identification. He suggests that we must firstly reform it in terms of language and writing form if we want to reform the philosophy of identification. Adorno believes that the form of essay without presupposition and non-systematism can avoid the problem of identification. Therefore, he regards essay as the combination of art and philosophy, and art criticism as the way to present the truth content.