Critique of Forms of Life and Critique of Modernity: From Jaeggi to Horkheimer

In this paper I aim to highlight some essential aspects concerning the notion of “form of life” adopted by Rahel Jaeggi as the main framework needed for problematizing capitalism as a social whole rather than as a mere economic system, and the project of critique of forms of life which she developed. Jaeggi explicitly refers to Adorno insofar as she does not elaborate or propose a substantial model of the good life, but rather insists on what does not work in our forms of life. I would like especially to underline the references to Horkheimer in her work. My aim is to show how the notion of form of life and the critique of forms of life are present in Horkheimer’s texts, particularly those written during the 1930s, and how the Horkheimerian programme of these years is outlined as a critique of modernity, i.e. of the bourgeois form of life.