Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life

Alienation is one of the core problems with modernity, according to Adorno. He uses the term to describe the process by which human beings become separated from their societies and from their own sense of their human nature.

Dialectical reasoning is a form of logic where two contrasting or opposed concepts and ideas are compared to each other until one arrives at an insight. Adorno deploys this form of logic constantly in Minima Moralia.

According to the philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, division of labor is how a society distributes tasks and jobs to different individuals. In Adorno’s eyes, division of labor is one of the ways society has become mechanized and workers have become alienated from each other.