My English copy of Adorno’s “Minima Moralia” (seminal seminal text of post WWII response to vogue existentialism) translates „Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben“ as “Reflections on a Damaged Life” — this is not the proper translation; technically it is an honest and fitting translation, but. I’ve seen that translated also as “Reflections on Damaged Life,” losing the article to express what I interpret as Adorno’s point — it isn’t that *a* life has been damaged, rather that “life” as commonly understood, the process of *living* as an extant being has in its essence been damaged beyond conceivable repair. This interpretation holds true even 74 years after WWII’s end, and projects a means of resistance to the post-capitalist public information-totalitarianism knocking on our collective doors.
*addendum* — by the act of writing to a collective “us,” and addressing a future “we,” Adorno complicates the postwar logic of I and Thou.
