Adorno and the Question of Theology

Why does Adorno, a leading theorist of the Frankfurt School whose thought draws deeply on Marx and Freud, repeatedly turn to theological language?This question has long divided his readers. Adorno and the Question of Theology: Religion and Reason Beyond Foundations argues that his theological language is neither rhetoric nor a covert theological program but the place where his method becomes most visible. Working from within one of European modernity's defining oppositions—reason and theology—Adorno brings the two into constellation, a mode of thought in which neither side grounds itself or the other. Each exposes the other's limits, creating possibilities beyond the given. Through close readings of Dialectic of Enlightenment, Negative Dialectics, and Aesthetic Theory, Rachel R. Rosner traces this constellational relation across Adorno's critique of enlightenment, his theory of the concept, his aesthetics, and even the literary form of his prose. In doing so, the book intervenes in contemporary debates on postsecular theory, critical reason, and political theology by rethinking how normativity and critique operate without foundations on either side of the religious–secular divide. Accessible to newcomers and illuminating for specialists, this book serves as both an introduction to Adorno's philosophy and an alternative to the long-standing split between secularist and theological readings of his work.