Adorno and Horkheimer on Self-preservation and Bourgeois Philosophy

In the first part of my paper, I show how Adorno’s approach to history of philosophy is peculiar to Horkheimer’s lessons and writings on the history of philosophy. In the second part, I chiefly focus on Adorno lessons and writings of the Sixties. I focus attention on the fact that, in different texts (linked to different contexts and occasions), Adorno places emphasis on the principle of self-preservation as the cornerstone of bourgeois philosophy and as a concept which is rooted in the perception that bourgeois society has of itself.