Abstract
In his short story In the Penal Colony, Franz Kafka describes a torture and execution device that carves the commandment broken by a condemned prisoner into his body, a procedure that takes twelve hours and results in the prisoner’s death. The workings of the machine are described in a distant, cold and impersonal way that contrasts acutely with the gruesome suffering undergone by the machine’s victim.
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Notes
Butler 1998: 41. See for a discussion of Adorno’s moral philosophy and writing style in connection with Kafka’s In the Penal Colony: Lee 2005: 113–21.
For example, Schopenhauer is not mentioned in otherwise excellent studies that (partly) focus on Adorno’s concern with embodiment like Lee 2005, Bernstein 2001, Zuidervaart 2007. Cook mentions Schopenhauer only once, regarding Adorno’s concern with the suffering of animals (Cook 2011: 127). In Adorno’s Practical Philosophy: Living Less Wrongly — in my view the best study of Adorno’s moral philosophy available — Freyenhagen discusses Schopenhauer only briefly regarding Adorno’s references to compassion (Freyenhagen 2013: 130–2). In Peter Dews’ The Idea of Evil (2008) we do find several references to the similarities between Schopenhauer and Adorno. I mention these references throughout this book. In several studies published in German, furthermore, the similarities between the two authors are explored extensively. See Gimmel 2011, Wischke 1994, 1996, Früchtl 1991.
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© 2014 Mathijs Peters
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Peters, M. (2014). Introduction. In: Schopenhauer and Adorno on Bodily Suffering. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412171_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412171_1
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