The lecture course Philosophical Elements of a Theory of Society is the eighth of fifteen transcribed courses by Adorno. Here, in the context of an introductory discussion of the philosophical traditions on which sociological theory formation rests, he develops a critique of both sociology and philosophy. Adorno emphasizes that theoretical work requires a specific mediation between philosophy and sociology. As well as criticizing the ‘fetishism of method’ in sociology, which seeks to impose rules on thought, and insisting that theoretical thought about society cannot be formulated simply through empirical findings, he also questions a characteristic of philosophy since the Enlightenment: the urge to create uniform systems that reflect bourgeois rule. Sociology and philosophy must face their own immanent critique – thus Adorno’s postulation. Following on from Marx, he develops philosophical elements of a social theory that break through the compulsion to achieve identity and lack of ambiguity in sociological theory formation in order to make ideas fruitful for critical sociological analysis and theory through an emphatic consideration of unregulated experience. Nonetheless, philosophical reflection always needs sociology too, so that it does not fall for the old idealistic illusion that the totality of real conditions could be grasped through thought alone. The dialectical method of philosophical interpretation must prove itself in relation to the ‘material’, the results of sociological research that are placed in different experimental situations and unfamiliar ‘constellations’.

In working with the transcripts from the tapes of Adorno’s unscripted lectures, we preserved their oral character. We corrected the transcripts – the tape recordings have not survived, sadly – only when clarity of content and syntactical structure required it in order for the text to be readable. Accordingly, punctuation marks such as colons and dashes are used more often than would be the case in a fully composed text. Obvious typographical errors that altered the grammar or meaning, as well as incomplete or interrupted sentences, were corrected or augmented without comment whenever there was no doubt as to the intended result. In a small number of cases, and only when they lacked any rhetorical significance, repetitions or uses of such particles as ‘so’, ‘well’ or ‘and’ were removed. Extensive portions of missing text are marked with […].

On the whole, the quality of the surviving transcripts varied considerably. In Lecture 13 especially, we felt obliged to cut small text fragments because, owing to technical problems with the tape, they were missing a sufficient amount of content to be incomprehensible. In four cases, missing transcripts had to be replaced with notes taken by Hilmar Tillack, which are more summary in nature. As the reader can see from the gaps between the lecture dates – which always took place on Tuesdays and Thursdays – there are four lectures missing between the second (15 May) and third (2 June) lectures. Two were cancelled because of public holidays, on 19 May (Whitsun) and 28 May (Corpus Christi). It was impossible to establish whether the other two lectures were also cancelled or have simply not survived. Two others are missing between the fourth (4 June) and fifth (16 June) lectures. As Adorno remarks in the text, these were cancelled; the content of Lecture 5 also follows on directly from Lecture 4. Lectures 14 (16 July) and 15 (21 July), which were documented as notes, were swapped in the surviving manuscripts, as Adorno states at the end of Lecture 13 (14 July) that he will expand on the question of ‘system’ in the ‘next session’, which takes place in the notes only in Lecture 15. The notes were therefore integrated into the full text in the correct order.

The explanations in the notes, the index and the overview are intended to serve the reader’s understanding. The related passages and explanations from Adorno’s writings clarify some of the oral elaborations, as well as showing the many connections between his lectures and his written work. We have also included explanations of certain theoretical and methodological concepts of authors who are now little known, perhaps even unknown. In order to clarify elements of argumentation that are important for the larger context of the lectures, especially when more expansive questions are only touched on here, these have been quoted at greater length. The overview offers the reader some assistance in finding passages on certain topics.