Kant, Adorno, and the Forms of History

Kant, Adorno, and the Forms of History sets the works of Theodor Adorno, Immanuel Kant and Peter Weiss in dialogue, revealing how an interrogation of the aesthetics of 'the whole' and the conception of history in Western thought reveals new ways of thinking about history and historically. To conceive of history as such it is necessary to conceive it as a whole, but doing so carries implications about its development and direction.Furthermore, such an idea makes it difficult to consider its parts without subsuming them to the whole, thereby making individuals merely instrumental to achieving the aims of history.William S. Allen brings the thought of Kant, Adorno and Weiss to bear on these tensions, tracing how Adorno's reconsideration of history through his readings of Kant's Critique of Judgement are distinct from formulations offered by other thinkers (Marx, Hegel, Lyotard).Allen establishes that Kant’s Critique of Judgement is not only a sustained analysis of the development of forms