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Notes -
I think the amount that academic Marxist philosophers reference their own intelligence is about on par with how often Motte posters reference their own intelligence. Probably less, actually.
Anyway, this statement:
Seems to be in tension with this statement:
If it is possible to make mistakes and live a meaningless life, how can you know a priori that "ordinary people" are living meaningful lives? How do you know that they're not making the types of mistakes that you've already admitted are possible? Don't we have to look at the facts and see how people are actually living, rather than simply believing it as an article of faith that people are making all the right decisions?
Perhaps, you might say, you have looked at the facts, and you have concluded that ordinary people are generally living meaningful lives. You believe that Adorno has looked at the same facts and come to a different judgement. And that's fine! That's a substantive point of disagreement that we can have a further discussion about. All I'm saying is that we should make the conversation about that, rather than Adorno's arrogance or elitism.
No one is saying that you have to "let" anybody define anything.
I've run into this sort of objection a few times on TheMotte and it's possible that it stems from a cultural difference between the humanities and technical fields.
In STEM fields, when you cite a published paper and say "X made Y claim in Z paper", this is roughly equivalent to an assertion that there is strong evidence that Y claim is true, because it made it through peer review and was published in a reputable journal. Although there are many caveats, there is a certain presumption that the top scientists getting published are authorities and we should believe what they say. They're contributing to a stable body of knowledge whose integrity is validated by the scientific community, and the role of the student is to absorb this knowledge rather than trying to poke holes in it.
In philosophy, the presumption of authority is much weaker. Students don't go into philosophy class and get taught "living a meaningful life is X Y Z because Adorno said so". The presentation is more like "Adorno said living a meaningful life is X Y Z... ok, now here's next week's reading, also by a famous philosopher, which says the exact opposite". You're supposed to talk back to the text. You're supposed to challenge his definitions and his framing. That's a good thing. That's the process working as intended. You don't have to "let" him define anything because you're free to disagree with anything and everything he says.
I can't say there's no presumption of authority in philosophy, if for no other reason than the fact that published philosophers have spent a lot of time working on the questions they're addressing, so they've probably gotten better at it than people who haven't spent the same amount of time. But in general a philosophy text should be approached as a potential partner in a dialogue, rather than as something from which you are supposed to extract verifiable, concrete information.
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