Elias and the Frankfurt School
Abstract
Elias and the Frankfurt School Artur Bogner Introduction When in 1977 the City of Frankfurt awarded the first Theodor W. Adorno Prize to Norbert Elias, Wolf Lepenies pointed in his lauda- tory speech to some remarkable parallels between these two seemingly rather different authors. He quoted the passage from the Dialectic of Enlightenment concerned with the idea of an 'under- ground history' of the body (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1979: 231-2) and drew the conclusion: 'Beyond all differences of language and style of argumentation, this position by itself is enough to justify the assertion that of all those who left their mark on German sociology in the years since the war, the work of Elias is closest to that of Theodor W. Adorno' (Lepenies, 1978: 63-4). The secondary literature has not followed this hint except for a few scattered remarks about common themes in the writings of Adorno and Elias (e.g. Rittner, 1975: 158; Kropp, 1980: 123, n.25; Kuzmics, 1984: 88). Elias himself, in his speech in acceptance of the Adorno Prize, emphasized the differences between his and Ador- no's approach (Elias, 1977). The same happened too in a review of his writings by Susan Buck-Morss, author of an