A Philosophy of History "after Auschwitz": Theodor Adorno`s Theory of Catastrophe and Contingency

The German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno famously wrote that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”—a phrase that in its triteness has led countless interpreters to characterize Auschwitz as a point of "civilizational rupture." I propose a radical re-reading of this phrase, emphasizing the continuity of barbarism in civilization before and after Auschwitz (which Adorno explicitly connected to WWI, Hiroshima, and Vietnam), grounded in a genealogy of "after Auschwitz" across Adorno`s entire corpus. Beyond literature, Adorno also used "After Auschwitz" to instantiate "never again" imperatives for politics, education, metaphysics, and human life itself. Grounding these imperatives is a new philosophy of history after Auschwitz that centers on the ambiguous concept of catastrophe (die Katastrophe), which simultaneously implies the continuity of the “permanent catastrophe” of an unjust world order, as well as the utter shock represented by Auschwitz. As Adorno polemically wrote, "Millions of Jews have been murdered, and this is to be seen as an interlude and not the catastrophe itself." The catastrophic philosophy of history invoked by this claim captures both impending historical trends and the possibility of breaking away from them. Moving beyond Adorno’s alleged pessimism, I illustrate that because the figure of Auschwitz represents the deepest form of negativity, it also gestures toward utopia, for how reality could be otherwise than it contingently is. Hence catastrophes are not only destructive: insofar as they allow us insight into this essential contingency, they also function as turning points around which to reevaluate the conceptual frameworks that constitute our world.