NDPR Mikko Immanen Adorno's Gamble: Harnessing German Ideology

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Nov 21, 2025, 4:53:20 PM (15 hours ago) Nov 21

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2025.11.8 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Mikko Immanen, Adorno’s Gamble: Harnessing German Ideology, Cornell University Press, 2025, 210pp., $29.95 (pbk) ISBN 9781501779527.

Reviewed by Nicholas Brignell, Newcastle University

Much has been written regarding the roster of thinkers who contributed to Theodor Adorno’s distinctive thought, most notably Marx, Hegel, Benjamin, Kant, Weber, Freud and Nietzsche. In Adorno’s Gamble: Harnessing German Ideology, Mikko Immanen is keen to make clear that he in no way intends to dispute these more conventional intellectual histories of Adorno’s thought (6, 154-155). Instead, his goal is to add to this list two early 20th-century radical right-wing critics of Western reason and civilisation: Ludwig Klages and Oswald Spengler. His contention is not that Adorno’s engagement with these two figures is “the key to Adorno’s thought” but...