Introduction

In the mid-1960s, Adorno delivered a series of lectures on history and freedom. In a lecture on the concept of progress, he urges his students not to capitulate to sceptics who argue that concepts that are not easily defined are meaningless. Adorno counters that no matter how difficult or vague concepts such as progress or freedom might be, one must attempt to understand rather than dismiss them. To this end, he offers his own “remedy” for combating sceptics: “when someone asks what freedom is … tell him that he needs only to think of any flagrant attack on freedom” – which he illustrates with the following example, based on his own experience: “I am content to be able to say of freedom – by this I mean political freedom, not the free will – that being free means that, if someone rings the bell at 6.30 a.m., I have no reason to think that the Gestapo … or the agents of comparable institutions are at the door and can take me off with them without my being able to invoke the right of habeas corpus” (HF: 140).

A house search by the Gestapo could be a matter of life and death. Adorno emerged from his own search, which occurred during the early years of fascism, physically unscathed, but the consequences could easily have been dire. The incident serves, therefore, not only as an example of what freedom is not – the possibility of being carried off from one's own home by the Gestapo – but also an intimation of what it might be – the possibility of living without fear.