Living as an exile in California during the Second World War, the German philosopher Theodor Adorno arrived at the bleak assessment that the broken modern world was no longer capable of sustaining an “ethical life,” that is, a life in which the individual pursuit of happiness would be linked at its core— for its being and its fulfillment— with a shared, political world. To paraphrase him: the right life cannot be lived in the wrong world. As a political organizer and educator myself, Adorno’s aphorism has long attuned me to the depth of the spiritual challenge facing those who fight for social justice: how can we pursue good, ethical lives in a world that entangles us with structures that limit or destroy others’ abilities to do the same? Many are familiar with Fannie Lou Hamer’s maxim that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” but what does it mean to live and grapple with that sort of unfreedom?
My presentation shares several stories from my own experiences organizing and teaching as a context to offer three approaches to living the contradiction of a right life in a wrong world: a redemptive understanding of fractured society— linking up institutions and people whose missions have been artificially divided; a reconstructive approach to moral intersubjectivity— building and sharing techniques for getting to the sources of ethical agreement beneath the distortions of public antagonism; and a concept of hope that doesn’t reject despair.
Adam Israel teaches philosophy at Adelphi University, offering seminars in ethics, existentialism, and the philosophy of religion. His research areas include political theory, the experience of time and history, and the production of public concerns. He co-founded All City, a NYC-based popular education project and organized as a hotel worker with the labor union UNITE HERE in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
Please join by 11, the meeting will be closed at 11:10