The omnipotence drive and its vicissitudes

Abstract

This paper aims to show the centrality that the issue of suffering in the philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Theodor Adorno. The starting point is a precise cut in the work of both authors aiming at a brief reconstruction of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, with emphasis on the conception of Will, developed in The World as Will and Representation, of 1818, and a presentation of the main concepts that compose the conception of negative dialectics, exposed by Adorno in the work of the same name in 1966. Finally, I defend the thesis that, on one hand, Adorno approaches Schopenhauer by giving centrality to the question of suffering and, more specifically, to a bodily or physical kind of suffering. On the other hand, I show that there are irreconcilable elements between the two philosophies insofar as the notion of negative dialectics intends to move away from all forms of idealism, and the metaphysical system developed by Schopenhauer would not have been able, according to Adorno, to effectively break with the idealist philosophy.