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'The division of the world into important and unimportant matters, which has always served to neutralize the key phenomena of social injustice as mere exceptions, should be followed up to the point where it is convicted of its own untruth. The division which makes everything objects must itself become an object of thought, instead of guiding it.'

Theodor Adorno#88

SocialDivisionHierarchyImportanceJusticeObjects

About this quote

What does it mean?
Dividing the world into important and unimportant things hides social injustice, and this division itself must become an object of thought.
In plain terms
We must question the very splits that label things as unimportant.
What can you take from it?
Make the hierarchy itself a subject of critique.

Where it applies

  • media analysis
  • policy review
  • education

Putting it to work

  • reframe priorities
  • audit decision‑making processes

Questions to consider

  • How does labeling something unimportant affect its treatment?

Another view

People may resist questioning long‑standing hierarchies.

More from Theodor Adorno

  1. 'The dialectic cannot stop short before the conceptsof health and sickness, nor indeed before their siblings reason and unreason.'

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  2. 'The film has succeeded in transforming subjects so indistinguishably into social functions, that those wholly encompassed, no longer aware of any conflict, en…

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  3. 'The decay of giving is morrored in the distressing invention of gift-article, based on the assumption that one does not know what to give because one really d…

    Permalink to quote #86

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