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Adorno, Freedom and Criminal Law: The ‘Determinist Challenge’ Revitalised

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Abstract

This article argues—against the present compatibilist orthodoxy in the philosophy of criminal law—for the contemporary relevance of a kind of critique of criminal law known as the ‘determinist challenge’, through a reconstruction of Theodor Adorno’s thought on freedom and determinism. The article begins by considering traditional forms of the determinist challenge, which expressed a widespread intuition that it is irrational or inappropriate for the criminal law to hold people responsible for actions that are causally determined by social and psychological forces in such a way that they cannot be said to have acted freely. Yet as traditionally presented it was possible for its opponents to interpret this challenge as an incompatibilist position within the traditional free will/determinism debate, and to present compatibilist arguments against it—in particular, that the determinist challenge is unmotivated and has implausible implications. It is argued that these compatibilist objections hold only on a certain interpretation of the determinist challenge, but that this interpretation is not the only one available. Adorno’s distinctive position on freedom and determinism is presented as an alternative version of the challenge, which cannot be assimilated to the terms of the traditional compatibilist/incompatibilist disputes. This novel, ‘metacritical’ version of the determinist challenge is essentially a social–historical, not metaphysical, thesis about the moral significance of the freedom-undermining effects of modern social forms. As such, it is argued, it is invulnerable to the usual compatibilist objections, and presents a serious challenge to our criminal legal institutions.

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Notes

  1. Even ‘hard incompatibilists’ like Pereboom (2014) accept the premise.

  2. Adorno is often cited by critical legal theorists (Kelman 1987; Cornell 1993; Cotterrell 1995; Douzinas 2000; Bowring 2002), but rarely receives more than passing mention (one exception is Norrie 2005, ch. 9); in the Adorno literature, issues of criminal justice are again only addressed occasionally and briefly (e.g. Freyenhagen 2013, pp. 95–100).

  3. This is admittedly a controversial interpretation of Adorno. I first began to explore it in my article (Reeves 2009a).

  4. For an instructive recent discussion see Hinshelwood (2013).

  5. Jutten is, in my view, too quick to defend Kant against Adorno on this issue (2010, pp. 561–564).

  6. For discussion see Freyenhagen 2013, pp. 255–270.

  7. On the thought of the space of life being a distinctive metaphysical space, see Thompson (2008).

  8. Steward’s argument that agency is proper to animal life generally (2012, Ch. 4) lends support to Adorno’s thought here.

  9. C.f. Freyenhagen (2013, pp. 266–270), who sees that Adorno rejects the causal theory of action, but remains non-committal over Adorno’s stance regarding the positivistic metaphysics of event-causalism that underpins and motivates it.

  10. For a detailed discussion of this claim, see Freyenhagen 2013.

  11. As contemporary constructivist Kantians tend to put it (e.g. Korsgaard 1996).

  12. See Wiggins (2008).

  13. The thought is already there in Freud (1961), but has been corroborated by the now vast bodies of research in the object relations and attachment traditions.

  14. The translation is Freyenhagen’s (2013, p. 76).

  15. See also Cook (2011), pp. 55–57; O’Connor (2013).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the following friends and colleagues who read and commented on earlier drafts, for their invaluable criticism, advice and encouragement: Peter Ramsay, Henrique Carvalho, Alan Norrie, Liat Levanon, Jaakko Immonen, Daniella Lock, and Alec Hinshelwood. I also thank the editors and reviewers for Law and Critique for their helpful comments.

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  1. School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK

    Craig Reeves

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Reeves, C. Adorno, Freedom and Criminal Law: The ‘Determinist Challenge’ Revitalised. Law Critique 27, 323–348 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-015-9171-y

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