Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno

An Introduction

  • Auteur: Rolleston, James; Schweppenhäuser, Gerhard; Fish, Stanley; Jameson, Fredric
  • Éditeur: Duke University Press
  • Collection: Post-Contemporary Interventions
  • ISBN: 9780822344544
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822390725
  • Lieu de publication:  Durham , United States
  • Année de publication électronique: 2009
  • Mois : Avril
  • Pages: 200
  • DDC: 193
  • Langue: Anglais
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) was one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers. In light of two pivotal developments—the rise of fascism, which culminated in the Holocaust, and the standardization of popular culture as a commodity indispensable to contemporary capitalism—Adorno sought to evaluate and synthesize the essential insights of Western philosophy by revisiting the ethical and sociological arguments of his predecessors: Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Marx. This book, first published in Germany in 1996, provides a succinct introduction to Adorno’s challenging and far-reaching thought. Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, a leading authority on the Frankfurt School of critical theory, explains Adorno’s epistemology, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and theory of culture.

After providing a brief overview of Adorno’s life, Schweppenhäuser turns to the theorist’s core philosophical concepts, including post-Kantian critique, determinate negation, and the primacy of the object, as well as his view of the Enlightenment as a code for world domination, his diagnosis of modern mass culture as a program of social control, and his understanding of modernist aesthetics as a challenge to conceive an alternative politics. Along the way, Schweppenhäuser illuminates the works widely considered Adorno’s most important achievements: Minima Moralia, Dialectic of Enlightenment (co-authored with Horkheimer), and Negative Dialectics. Adorno wrote much of the first two of these during his years in California (1938–49), where he lived near Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, whom he assisted with the musical aesthetics at the center of Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus.

  • Contents
  • Preface to the English Edition
  • Translator’s Preface
  • 1 The Project of Renewing Childhood by Transforming One’s Life
  • 2 Critical Theory
  • 3 Reason’s Self-Criticism
    • Defined Negation
    • The Two Faces of Enlightenment
  • 4 Rescuing What is Beyond Hope
    • Philosophy from the Perspective of Redemption
    • Primacy of the Object
  • 5 The Totally Socialized Society
    • The Concept of Society
    • Liquidation of the Individual
    • Critical Theory on Morality
  • 6 The Goal of the Emancipated Society
  • 7 The Powerless Utopia of Beauty
    • The Destruction and Salvation of Art
    • The Silence of Music
    • The Transition from Art to Knowledge
    • Theorizing Art and Culture in the Institute for Social Research
    • Benjamin and Kracauer: Theorizing Mass Art
    • Anarchistic and Bourgeois Romanticism: Adorno’s Critique of Benjamin
    • The Work of Art and the Concept of Truth
  • 8 The Failure of Culture
    • The Radically Pathetic and Guilty Culture
    • Enlightenment as Mass Deception
  • Biographical Timeline
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index

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