Adorno's Aesthetic Theory

This paper reviews the influence of Weber and Lukács on the work of Adorno. It considers the way that Adorno's work differs from the important ideas that both Weber and Lukács put forth, particularly that of instrumental reason and reification. I then explore the way that Adorno's response to their ideas takes the form of an alternative metaphysics and aesthetic theory. I end by considering the limitations of Adorno's position and suggest a link of his theoretical project with the critical social ontology of Lukács as a path forward for a more robust critical theory of society.

Since at least the beginning of the 1990s, sympathetic readers of Theodor W. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory have struggled to make sense of his account of the truth content of the artwork. 1 The seemingly Hegelian commitment to the claim that art has such content stands high on the list of interpretive challenges precluding a full reappreciation of the work. 2 This article continues that practice, with some differences. The motivating question here focuses on Adorno's insistence in Aesthetic Theory that artworks bear a distinctive form of insight. This privileged insight discloses objective conditions about reality that, but for artistic truth, remain cloaked and inaccessible, and that the release or disclosure of truth content requires that the nondiscursive structure of the artwork interact in a specified mannercritical interpretation-with a related form of spirit, namely, the discursively structured practice of philosophical thinking. As I discuss in the final section, this view of art's truth content having an important reference to social condi

All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms * I am grateful to Andreas Huyssen and Anson Rabinbach for their comments. Thanks also to Stuart Liebman, for all of his help, to Nancy K. Miller, as ever, to Russ Castronovo, Beth Drenning, Jeffrey Escoffier, Gerhard Joseph, and Neil Levi for reading earlier versions of this essay, and to Yasemin Yildiz, for showing me the power of Adorno's thinking. 1. This controversy was reported in the New York Times 27 Jan. 1995: A3.

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) is a gigantic figure in musical aesthetics, and many still consider his views relevant, not only for analyzing the modernist music he was inspired by and that he inspired himself, but also for more contemporary developments in classical music. John Adams (b. 1947) is arguably the foremost contemporary composer who has tried to break away from the modernist musical language that was still very much dominant when he began his career as a composer, and he has been very outspoken about his antipathy toward the Schoenbergian-inspired compositional techniques that are at the background of Adorno's musical aesthetics, particularly his Philosophy of New Music. By presenting an interpretation of Adams's music that draws on some key aspects of John Dewey's aesthetics – aesthetic experience, rhythm, and his appreciation of common culture – I raise the question of how relevant Adorno's seminal book still is for understanding the aesthetics of the new music of today.

Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomy—the idea that we are beholden to no law except one we impose upon ourselves—has been considered the truest philosophical expression of human freedom. But could our commitment to autonomy, as Theodor Adorno asked, be related to the extreme evils that we have witnessed in modernity? In Autonomy after Auschwitz, Martin Shuster explores this difficult question with astonishing theoretical acumen, examining the precise ways autonomy can lead us down a path of evil and how it might be prevented from doing so.

Shuster uncovers dangers in the notion of autonomy as it was originally conceived by Kant. Putting Adorno into dialogue with a range of European philosophers, notably Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, and Habermas—as well as with a variety of contemporary Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin—he illuminates Adorno’s important revisions to this fraught concept and how his different understanding of autonomous agency, fully articulated, might open up new and positive social and political possibilities. Altogether, Autonomy after Auschwitz is a meditation on modern evil and human agency, one that demonstrates the tremendous ethical stakes at the heart of philosophy.

The most common criticism of Beckett’s theatre is its supposed obscurity. Early defenders of Godot and Endgame were themselves criticised as formalists for their inability to say what these plays were ‘about’ or ‘meant’. Adorno’s theory of the modernist artwork explained the historical development of art’s opaque content and Beckett’s own reluctance to explain his plays, solving an impasse in Beckett criticism with his account of the new historical role of aesthetic form as critique.

This study examines how key figures in the German aesthetic tradition—Kant, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno—attempted to think through the powers and limits of art in post-Enlightenment modernity. The aesthetic speculations of these thinkers, I argue, provide the conceptual resources for a timely dialectical defense of “aesthetic agency”— art’s capacity to make available uniquely valuable modes of experience that escape the purview of Enlightenment scientific rationality.

The book has two interrelated aims. First, it provides new interpretations of the aesthetic philosophies of Kant, Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno by focusing on aspects of their thought that have been neglected or misunderstood in both Anglo-American and German scholarship. Second, it attempts to demonstrate that their subtle investigations into the nature and scope of aesthetic agency have far-reaching implications for contemporary discourse on the arts.

Adorno’s readers are unsettled by the barest hint of anything that might be taken to be anti-science  Yet for Adorno, so-called “scientistic” tendencies are the very “conditions of society
and of scientific thought.” Yet his readers tend to refuse criticism of this kind. Scientific rationality cannot itself be problematic after all. Rather than science, it is scientism that is to be avoided. But is Adorno speaking of scientific rationality or scientistic rationality? 
Similar observations can be made with regard to animals (as Adorno saw them vs. his interpreters). And so on.  But overall, and in general, how are we to read Adorno?

This article follows up on the debate over the resistance potential of popular culture. The first part traces the historical constellation of ideas in which the question arose and remains to this day. The second part attempts to systematize different dimensions of ‘resistance.’ The third part examines the development and criticism of this approach in the field of Cultural Studies. This leads to the fourth part, which investigates the role “cultural radicalism” has played in this discussion. The fifth part introduces the concept of self-formation. The sixth discusses the ways in which the political relevance of popular culture has been evaluated, and how the ‘resistance’ approach can be further developed.

Proponents of critical global studies are committed to identifying the ways in which neo-liberal ideology and an Americanized world picture rationalize the multinational exploitation of impoverished groups and their resources. The authority of this field raises untimely questions about how such a critique can itself avoid rationalization. The influence of critical global studies was manifest in the 2002 Documenta11 in Kassel, Germany, directed by Okwui Enwezor. In its aim to represent the Zeitgeist of contemporary art every five years, the Documenta is widely regarded as the most significant event in the art world. The 2002 Documenta relied predominantly on visual media to archive local instances of socio-economic inequity and persecution. The prestige of this exhibit marks the "global" Documenta11 as a crucial opportunity for studying the strategic deployment of a high cultural venue to promote critical awareness among comfortable spectators from industrialized nations. In officiating an overtly political agenda for the exhibit, the curatorial team took the risk that Documenta11 might encourage visitors to take self-affirming pleasure in their sense of "enlightened" solidarity with its aims. The exhibit was also in danger of reifying the very suffering it displayed as a means to an institutionally sanctioned end. The Frankfurt School explicitly targets the egoism of "affirmative culture" which includes the culture of critique. This case study Wenn ich Kultur höre . . . entsichere ich meinen Browning. [Whenever I hear the word culture . . . I release the safety-catch of my Browning!] Hans Johst, Schlageter (Act 1, Scene 1) attributed to Hermann Göring

"Mostly rejection of Adorno’s aesthetics takes his questionable statements on performance art as its starting point. To face it, a reconstruction of the locus of these statements is vital. This requires a detour through some of Adorno’s fundamental ideas. Ensuing from the concept of aesthetic semblance, firstly the most crucial step will be to get a clear picture of the differences between his accounts of the performance of art, the performing arts, performance art and performativisation in art. Secondly, by investigating the complex conceptual relationships between these different definitions, we will arrive at a better understanding of his critical assessment of performance art. Finally, we may then be able to activate the dormant potential in Adorno’s ideas, which in turn will enable us to reposition his criticism.
"

Hay una asimetría en las últimas sonatas para piano de Beethoven entre el modo en que comienza un trino, respecto de lo que ocurre con éste después. Su aparición tiene siempre el carácter de una intensificación. Lo que comienza como intensificación deviene, como resultado de su prolongación en el tiempo, en objetivación: el trino se convierte en un modo de articulación del sonido, cuyo carácter intensificador se neutraliza. El resultado textural no es ya el de una integración, sino la yuxtaposición simultánea de elementos disímiles. Prima así, en lo textural, una condición no vinculante, antitética respecto de la forma integrada del allegro de sonata. La caracterización adorniana del estilo tardío de Beethoven señala la fragmentación, el carácter distanciado de sus obras, su objetivismo. La ausencia de síntesis, que Adorno identifica en la intención compositiva, se muestra aquí en el orden de los materiales. Su reificación como consecuencia de una tematización radical en la cual la dimensión relacional de lo temático se pierde por ausencia de opuestos; la desarmonización como consecuencia del desdibujamiento del límite entre sonido y nota; la aparición del transcurrir temporal como un principio generador de consecuencias radicales; la desintegración textural; así como la disolución de la forma orgánica por la metamorfosis de la elaboración extrema en repetición invariable, son aspectos de una misma antinomia. El análisis de la textura en las últimas sonatas para piano se relaciona con una interpretación estética del estilo tardío de Beethoven, entendido como crítica inmanente del clasicismo musical, a la vez que se formula una hipótesis historiográfica que identifica el origen de aspectos decisivos de la modernidad musical en la polaridad textural entre integración y desintegración extremas con que Beethoven trata sus materiales musicales.

Resumo: Este artigo se propõe a interpretar o conto de Guimarães Rosa, ―Cara-de-Bronze‖ a partir das ideias-chave da Teoria Estética de Theodor Adorno. Em seu momento analítico, o texto se deterá: no estudo da relação das partes entre si na composição da unidade do conto; na tensão da literatura com a música e o cinema na construção de sua forma; nas múltiplas técnicas estéticas utilizadas para expressar os enlaces da estória. No momento interpretativo, se orientará pelos seguintes aspectos qualitativos: os elementos miméticos que, como resíduos irracionais e vitais, se instalam no interior do conto: o boi e o buriti; as manifestações de desatinos dos personagens e suas relações com os estratos não-intencionais da obra-de-arte; e os antagonismos da sociedade que se manifestam no transcorrer da narrativa: sua dimensão dissonante, crítica e utópica. E, com fundamento na declaração de Adorno de que ―As obras, sobretudo as de mais elevada dignidade, aguardam a sua interpretação‖, ousam os autores apresentar indícios para desvendar o enigma desse conto-poema, assim como para detectar o conteúdo de verdade que nele se manifesta. Palavras-chave: Cara-de-Bronze; Guimarães Rosa; Teoria Estética; Theodor Adorno; conteúdo de verdade da obra de arte

Abstract: This paper aims to interpret the tale of Guimarães Rosa, ―Cara-de-Bronze‖, founded on the ideas of Aesthetic Theory, by Theodor Adorno. In its analytical moment, the text will comprise: the study of the relations of the tale parts in the composition of its unit; the tension between literature, music and cinema in constructing its shape; the multiple aesthetic techniques used to express the bindings of the story. In its interpretive moment, the text is guided by the following qualitative aspects: the mimetic elements that are installed inside of the tale, as irrational and vital residues: the ox and buriti; the madness manifestations of the characters and their relations with non-intentional strata of the work of art, and the antagonisms of society manifested in the course of the narrative: its dissonant, critical and utopian dimension. And, based on Adorno's statement that "The works of art, especially those of higher dignity, await interpretation", the authors of this paper dare to present evidence to unravel the enigma of this story-poem, as well as to detect the content of truth in it.

Contributors: Alexander García Düttmann, Michael Hirsch, Hans-Thies Lehmann, Burkhardt Lindner, Eckardt Lindner, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Marcus Quent, Marianne Seidler, Kerstin Stakemeier, Marcus Steinweg, Christoph Türcke, Jan Völker.

Die 1970 posthum herausgegebene »Ästhetische Theorie« ist ein Fragment gebliebenes Textgefüge. Ihr Autor, Theodor W. Adorno, entfaltet darin wesentliche Gedanken in einer Verflechtung von Kunst, Philosophie und Gesellschaft. // Im philosophischen Denken – das hier ästhetische Theorie wird – soll durch die Frage der Kunst der Anspruch auf eine andere gesellschaftliche Praxis erscheinen. Es ist diese besondere Konstellation, die einen Abstand zu gegenwärtigen Diskursen des Ästhetischen und Politischen markiert und Adornos »Ästhetische Theorie« aktueller denn je macht.

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Dialectic of Enlightenment at seventy: interview with Rodrigo Duarte

The main objective of this interview with Professor Rodrigo Duarte is to share with the readers of the journal Opinião Filosófica an important date: the seventieth anniversary of Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, written in California in 1944, but published in 1947 by Querido Verlag in Amsterdam. Although almost seven decades have passed since the publication, bringing the emergence of new types of social life, new formal features in cultural life and the consolidation of a new world economic order still remain highly topical. Duarte, an Adorno scholar from Brazil, shows that the concepts of the German philosopher are a valid source of knowledge in order to substantiate a critique of the contemporary culture.

It is suggested at the end of Franz Kafka's The Trial that the dog-like death of its main character, Joseph K, “should outlive him.” For Walter Benjamin the shame that survives K.'s death is not K's shame before others but others' shame for K. Benjamin calls this kind of shame Kafka's “noblest gesture” because it makes those who feel it experience their morality in the closest possible manner. In other words, this kind of shame evinces their morality. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that David Lurie, the main character of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, repeats Kafka's “noblest gesture” when he takes care to decently incinerate unwanted dog corpses. He feels shame not before others but for others and their disrespect for the dog bodies. In this manner, like Kafka's readers, he testifies to his morality.

In this paper, the concept of liquidation (Verfluessigung) from the chapter on Self-consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is reconstructed and then used to deconstruct the systematic transition from sculpture to painting in the passage on the “System of the individual arts” in G.W.F. Hegel’s 'Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art'. The aim is to show that such a deconstructed version of Hegel’s art philosophy provides a valid conceptual framework for the analysis of modern, particularly postmodern and contemporary art, which results as liquid or liquidated art. Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God is discussed as major evidence for the concomitant neo-Hegelian claim that modern art has discursive reflection as its necessary supplement.
keywords Liquidation, deconstruction, subjectivity, G.W.F. Hegel, Gerhard Richter, Schädel [Skull] (1983), Damien Hirst, For the Love of God (2007).

This book examines the role of Samuel Beckett in contemporary philosophical aesthetics, primarily through analysis of both his own essays and the various interpretations that philosophers (especially Adorno, Blanchot, Deleuze, and Badiou) have given to his works. The study centres around the fundamental question of the relationship between art and truth, where art, as a negative truth, comes to its complete exhaustion (as Deleuze terms it) by means of a series of ‘endgames’ that progressively involve philosophy, writing, language and every individual and minimal form of expression. The major thesis of the book is that, at the heart of Beckett’s philosophical project, this ‘aesthetics of truth’ turns out to be nothing other than the real subject itself, within a contradictory and tragic relationship that ties the Self/Voice to the Object/Body. Yet a number of questions remain open. ‘What’ or ‘who’ lies behind this process? What is left of the endgame of art and subjectivity? Finally, what sustains and renders possible Beckett’s paradoxical axiom of the ‘impossibility to express’ alongside the ‘obligation to express’? By means of a thorough overview of the most recent criticism of Beckett, this book will try to answer these questions.

Contents: Beckett’s philosophy as a discourse on ‘exits’ – Beckett as Essayist – From Dante to Proust: Beckett’s Literary Criticism Years – In Dialogue with Van Velde: Painting and Philosophy – Theodor Adorno and Beckett – Beckett’s Aesthetics of truth – Exhausting the Possible Field of Narrative: Deleuze and Beckett – Beckett with Jerzy Grotowski – Thinking Differently from Thinking: The Body in Beckett’s Later Theatre – Beyond the Stalemate of Subjectivity.

This article aims to develop a brief explanation on Beckett’s theatre, how this famous Irish author had read Dante’s Divina Commedia and how deeply this literature had influenced in some aspects (especially aesthetical and narrative) the compositions written by Beckett, as well as to identify some correlations between the literary trajectory of Beckett and the purgatorial experience developed by Dante. In both authors there is a way through which their characters face the universal forces and the possibility to overcome their sins, purify their souls and achieve another state of narrative/personal living. It is not possible to track this path without facing Joyce as a middle term between the Florentine author and the Dubliner one, not as a kind of ascending level, but as a bridge that connects them particularly through the Joyce-Beckett partnership in Ulysses and how Beckett was introduced to the Commedia, probably in 1923-24.

Il contributo intende analizzare "Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore" come prodotto della stagione senile di Calvino, cominciata programmaticamente con il trasferimento a Parigi del 1967. In particolare, nel romanzo si può riconoscere la divaricazione tra convenzioni artistiche e soggettività dell'autore, innescata dall'approssimarsi della morte, su cui Adorno fondava il concetto di "stile tardo". Si cercherà di mostrare come lo spreco formale del romanzo senza self, virtuosistico e barocco, rispecchi in realtà l'etica del difficile del suo autore, per il quale ogni cosa, uomini e libri, va giustificata all'interno di un progetto fatto di «scelte volontarie» e di «rinunce attive».

In 1967 Italo Calvino moved to Paris and programmatically decided to enter into his old age. This choice also influences the style of his following narrative production. In this perspective, my essay faces the novel "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" looking at the notion of "late style" coined by Theodor W. Adorno, which assumes the closeness of the death to the author as the cause of a divergence between artistic conventions and his subjectivity. I will try to show how the formal waste of the selfless virtuosic novel actually reflects its author's ethics of difficulty. According to Calvino everything, men and books, needs to be justified by a project that implies «voluntary choices» and «active renunciations».

"El concepto que buscamos proviene de la Física aristotélica y se llama antiperístasis, la «acción de dos cualidades contrarias, una de las cuales por su oposición excita el vigor de la otra» (Autoridades, s. v.). La definición de Giordano Bruno es: «El vigor adquirido por un contrario debido a que, huyendo del otro contrario, se repliega, se une, se condensa y se concentra en la individualidad de su propia vir- tud» (De los heroicos furores, segunda parte, segundo diálogo, pág. 413). Sólo huyendo se repliega en sí; sólo en la contrariedad se condensa. El objeto no cobra vigor sino mediante la negación. En términos casi hegelianos, la unidad no está libre de contradicción, sino que debe abarcar a cada paso la contradicción que la enajena […] Un texto dialéctico de parte a parte, en guerra perpetua consigo mismo y complementariamente antagónico. «Estoque de dos filos, punzante por sus dos extremos», declara la subscriptio del emblema de la Dialéctica (Ripa, Iconografía, t. 1, pág. 278). Armonía heraclítea de tensiones contrarias: esto junto a aquello y contra aquello sin tregua ni fin".

La Teoría Estética (1970) de Adorno contiene unos pocos párrafos sobre el poema "Mausfallen-Sprüchlein" ("Fábula de la ratonera") de Eduard Mörike (1804-1875), ese inclasificable escritor suabo que fue tan de la Klassik como del romanticismo, tan Biedemeier como popular. En los "Paralipómenos" del libro también hay una breve referencia a otro poema de Mörike titulado "Das verlassene Mägdlein" ("La muchacha abandonada") (Adorno, 1997a: 187-90 y 140-1) 1. Adorno recurre a Mörike como ilustración de cómo el arte puede juzgar la realidad social sin emitir un juicio directo sobre ella, tan solo mediante la inmanencia radical en lo descrito. En la obra de arte, sostiene Adorno, se produce como un eco de la realidad que gene-ra algo infinito: "una duplicidad de lo determinado e indeterminado" (188). En lo que sigue analizaré un poema de Mörike titulado "Häusliche Szene" ("Escena doméstica") (1852) con el trasfondo de lo que W. G. Sebald escribió sobre el poeta en un ensayo de 1998 titulado "Was ich traure, weiss ich nicht" 2 , y de los mencionados comentarios de Adorno. Trataré de mostrar que la aproximación de Sebald a la obra de Mörike se limita a tratar a éste como un caso enfermizo, y acaba convirtiendo su poesía en un mero escapismo frente a las transformaciones del devenir social. Adorno, por el contrario, nos da pistas sobre cómo poder seguir entresacando un contenido de verdad a la lírica de Mörike. Este no sería un mensaje unívoco, ni el producto de un caso clínico más o menos interesante, sino más bien la formulación de un enigma que cada época tratará de resolver, sin lograrlo nunca.

ABSTRACT: Adorno's materialist thesis of the primacy of the object, the core idea of his Negative Dialectic, returns in transformed form to his aesthetic concerns and theory. Such materialist aesthetics is compelled to permanent intermittency: It must penetrate artistic objects, absorb something of them, if the talk of the inexchangeability of art is to be more than a hollow statement. In this respect, the primacy of the object in aesthetic terms also means a primacy of artworks over aesthetic theory. Materialist aesthetics according to Adorno must there- fore start from the artistic objects and return to them again and again, instead of moving away from them on increasingly hyper-abstract levels of discourse and meta-reflection. It is true that what is communicated in the material en- ters the realm of conceptual reflection, of reflection through reason. But this does not mean that philosophy can take precedence over aesthetic practice. In contrast, only that which is already laid out in the sensual itself can lead to aesthetic reflection.

RESUMEN: La tesis materialista de Adorno sobre la primacía del objeto, la idea central de su Dialéctica negativa, se retoma transformada en sus inquietudes estéticas y en su elaboración teórica. Tal estética materialista se ve abocada a una inter-mitencia permanente: si el discurso sobre la singularidad irreductible del arte no quiere quedar como una mera expresión vacía, debe penetrar los objetos artísticos, absorber algo de ellos. En este sentido, la primacía del objeto en tér-minos estéticos también significa una primacía de las obras de arte sobre la teoría estética. De acuerdo con Adorno la estética materialista debe partir de los objetos artísticos y volver a ellos una y otra vez, en lugar de alejarse de ellos desde la posición del discurso hiperabstracto y la metarreflexión. Es cier-to que lo que se transmite en el material incita al ámbito de la reflexión conceptual , de la reflexión en el ámbito de la razón. Pero esto no implica que la filosofía deba tener prioridad sobre la práctica estética. Solo lo que ya está dis-puesto en lo sensual, por el contrario, es lo que puede promover la reflexión estética.

This essay attempts through extended textual exegesis to clarify two fundamental concepts in late Adorno's metaphysical and philosophical-aesthetic writings respectively: "metaphysical experience" and the "riddle-character" of art. The first part of the essay explores how in Negative Dialectics Adorno reworks certain Kantian themes to provide an account of metaphysical experience as the exercise of the mind's capacity for thinking beyond the im-manently given that brings happiness despite failing to attain the absolute. The second part of the essay interprets concepts from Aesthetic Theory and related writings, including the internal/external, performative/cognitive perspectives on the artwork, and its similarity to language, to show how the riddle-character of art elicits an experience similar to metaphysical experience, in that it demonstrates the ability of mind to reach beyond its cognitive self-limitations into a response-dependent objectivity with utopian implications.
A través de una extensa exégesis textual, este ensayo pretende clarificar dos conceptos en los escritos tardíos de Adorno sobre metafísica y estética filosó-fica: "experiencia metafísica" y "carácter enigmático". La primera parte del en-sayo explora cómo Adorno reelabora ciertos temas kantianos en Dialéctica ne-gativa con miras a ofrecer una explicación de la experiencia metafísica como el ejercicio de la capacidad de pensar más allá de lo inmanentemente dado, que proporciona felicidad pese a no lograr alcanzar el absoluto. La segunda * Duke University (EEUU).

Este trabajo propone una revisión del materialismo sin imágenes que Adorno propone en su Dialéctica negativa a partir de la exploración de la importancia e impronta de lo sonoro en su pensamiento. De este modo, se trata, por un lado, de trascender la adscripción de la imagen al materialismo vulgar; y, por otro, de reflexionar sobre las consecuencias de la prohibición de las imágenes para el problema de la representación. Se analiza en la primera par-te del texto el significado de imagen en la filosofía adorniana. La segunda está dedicada a la noción de material musical –que nos permite pensar el materialismo adorniano desde lo sonoro– y se plan-tea el alcance de lo inobjetual [Ungegenständlich]

El presente ensayo se propone rastrear la afinidad electiva que unía a Adorno con la obra de Samuel Beckett. Ésta encarnaba una posición estética que el propio Adorno había perseguido durante toda su vida: la de una producción artística atravesada por una enorme exigencia formal que, a la vez que cuestionaba los presupuestos formales de la narrativa y el drama, lograba registrar, casi como un sismógrafo, los movimientos tectónicos sobre los que se asienta su momento socio-histórico. Así se articula una comprensión de la dimensión de crítica social del arte que no se reduce al mero partidismo o a transmitir un “mensaje”, pero que tampoco puede confundirse con un atrincheramiento en el hermetismo del “arte por el arte”.

Resumo: O objetivo central deste artigo é o de demonstrar como a filosofia da arte de Adorno, e mais especificamente sua concepção e valorização do nominalismo artístico, advém da forma pela qual o filó-sofo, a partir da tradição dialética, dialoga criticamente com temáticas encontradas no Romantismo, tais como o gênio e o original. O perten-cimento à tradição hegeliano-marxista é, portanto, fundamental para compreendermos seu ponto de vista otimista acerca das vanguardas ar-tísticas, bem como sua valorização do nominalismo crescente das obras de arte derivado de sua autonomia e especificidade formal. Palavras-chave: Gênio; Dialética; Nominalismo; Originalidade; Romantismo.

Nel rimandare a un orizzonte di non conciliazione, il sublime rappresenta per Adorno uno strumento ideale per mettere in luce le difficoltà, i paradossi e le sfide che la cultura deve affrontare dopo il fallimento della sua funzione etico-educativa. Il sublime è la categoria estetica più adatta per orientarsi in un universo artistico come quello adorniano, fortemente radicato su fondamenta etiche ed epistemologiche.

In quanto categoria che rimanda a un dissidio, cioè al contrasto tra il condizionato e l’incondizionato, il sublime si presenta come un concetto di difficile definizione. Le sue molteplici, possibili declinazioni rimandano in un certo senso al carattere non sistematico con cui Adorno svolge la sua riflessione sul tema, che ho cercato di organizzare e contestualizzare a partire dalle osservazioni disseminate nel corpus dei suoi scritti; in particolare, Ästhetische Theorie, Minima Moralia, Negative Dialektik, Noten zur Literatur e le Musikalische Schriften I-IV.

In various places of his vast philosophical-literary production, as well as in his diaries and letters, Günther Anders dwelt on the question of Auschwitz, sometimes dealing with it together with the other event-limit of the twentieth century, Hiroshima, sometimes as a conceptual node in its own right.  The aim of this article is to place an apparently marginal study with respect to the theme of the Shoah, such as his reading of Samuel Beckett's theater (contained in the first volume of his masterpiece The obsolescence of man), within his investigation of the "banality of evil", and in a close comparison with Adorno's much better known interpretation of Beckett’s Endgame. From the investigation of the two positions, Anders' consideration of the appropriateness of a post-Holocaust aesthetics is far more extreme, more Adornian, than Adorno's own.

Although the term “critical composition” was paradigmatically used by Nicolaus A. Huber in his text “Kritisches Komponieren” from 1972 (Huber 2000), one can argue that the early atonality and dodecaphony of the Second Viennese School — and their theorization by Adorno — laid the foundation for following generations of composers who  perceived  their  work  as  a  product  of  critical  thinking.  Following  an  Adornian  rationale, early atonal composition would be viewed as an immanently negative and aesthetically  indrawn  last  bastion  against  the  historical  tendency  of  the  material  in  Western  societies,  only  pre-conceptually  connected  to  society,  whereas  many  post-war composers turned toward analytical or politically committed forms of composition that introduced music as a means of critically reflecting on the interrelations between musical and social spheres.By outlining the emancipatory potential of John Cage’s music philosophy, I want to  counterpoint  the  conventional  notion  of  “critical  composition”  as  a  phenomenon  within the post-war avant-garde, which is deeply rooted in the European intellectual tradition of a sovereign subject. Against this background, the critical potentials of contemporary conceptions of composition “as an expanded field of artistic practice encompassing a range of different media and symbolic relationships” (Barrett 2016) can be grasped beyond the ideals of work autonomy and material progress.

El concepto de negatividad recorre el pensamiento dialéctico de Adorno en su intención de rebatir u oponerse a lo establecido, de rescatar del sometimiento y el olvido a las víctimas de cualquier voluntad de dominio. Este deseo de recuperación se asocia aquí al restablecimiento de las emociones negativas en la reflexión estética anglosajona actual, en especial el asco, que despreciado en la tradición estética moderna en nombre del placer, permite advertir una voluntad de dominio similar a la denunciada por Adorno y un enfoque dialéctico análogo al suyo también, en la reciente pretensión de devolverle a este afecto su dignidad.

Con Greenberg, la abstracción pictórica resultó ser
un arte liberado de su condición mimética y su carga afectiva.
Pero con Adorno, la dimensión comprometida y emocional artística
asomaría en este arte con carácter encriptado, atenuado
hoy al afirmarse que la no figuración puede causar un dolor
abierto y explícito. Dada la reciente rehabilitación además de
las emociones negativas, este trabajo explora los medios por los
que la abstracción expresa el asco, que como afecto físico y poco
racional, sería contrapuesto a ella. El aspecto cognoscitivo últimamente
reconocido desmiente esta suposición y la del arte
abstracto como arte puro e insensible.

The paper develops a systematic interpretation of Hegel’s notion of the end of art and argues that the end of art has consequences for art in general. Since every work of art has to reinvent what art is in some way it is confronted with the possibility of failure in the very aim that it sets for itself. As such, art has to be understood as an unstable, modern practice. Thus, Hegel’s conception of the classical form of art has to be understood as the expression of his wish to safeguard art from its instability. In other words, according to Hegel’s own conception of art, the classical form of art has to be understood as a fiction. As a modern practice, art is inherently bound up with art criticism, the site where works of art are evaluated according to whether or not the way they carry out their aim of positing a challenge to other human practices makes a valuable contribution to these practices for recipients.

Adornos Ästhetische Theorie gilt als eine der wirkmächtigsten und einflußreichsten Kunsttheorien und ästhetischen Schriften des 20. Jahrhunderts» -bereits dieser Satz und dessen unzählbare Wiederholung in nur wenig variiertem Wortlaut bezeugen, wie sehr sich dieses Werk in den Kanon des kunstphilosophischen Denkens eingeschrieben hat, und wie selbstverständlich ihm diese Prominenz attestiert wird. Entsprechend findet sich kaum ein Fachbereich in den Geisteswissenschaften, der Adornos unabgeschlossenes Spätwerk nicht auf seiner Lektüreliste führen würde. Die Ästhetische Theorie hat nahezu jede Fachgrenze überschritten und reklamiert ihre Relevanz nicht nur in allen Kunst-, Literatur-und Kulturwissenschaften, sondern auch in der Soziologie, der Politik-und Geschichtswissenschaft.

La notion de pureté joue un rôle fondamental dans l'esthétique de la modernité. Inversement, le refus contemporain de la pureté en art ainsi que l'apologie de l'hétérogène et de l'hybridité peuvent apparaître comme les symptômes d’une certaine fin de l’ère moderne. L’ultime enjeu du concept de pureté – et du refus de ce concept –, c’est en effet l’existence ou non d’une logique des transformations historiques. On se propose ici de le montrer à partir de l'exemple de trois critiques majeurs : un apologiste de la pureté, Paul Valéry, et deux contempteurs de celle-ci, Charles Maurras et Theodor W. Adorno, lesquels ne sont pas sans partager paradoxalement une certaine conception de l'histoire.

EBERHARD ORTLAND corrected a mistake I made in the review:

You mention that Schopenhauer "was born in the same street as Adorno", which is a fascinating story, but not quite true: Schopenhauer was, in fact, born in Danzig in 1788; he moved to Frankfurt (from Berlin) in 1831 and lived at Schöne Aussicht 17 from 1843 until 1859, when he moved to another flat in the more splendid house next door, Schöne Aussicht 16, where he died in 1860. - Adorno's great-grandfather Bernhard Wiesengrund (1801-1871) moved to Frankfurt in 1864 and set up his wine business at Schöne Aussicht 7 in 1867. Adorno's grandfather David Theodor Wiesengrund (1838-1920) succeeded his father as head of the family business in 1868. A brother of Adorno's grandfather, Benedict Wiesengrund (1843-1903) also lived nearby at Schöne  Aussicht 13 in the 1870ies. I don't know (and Müller-Doohm doesn't seem to know it either) if the family later acquired also the house Schöne Aussicht 9, or whether Oscar Wiesengrund (1870-1946) had just rented an apartmend next door when he came back to Frankfurt in 1896 to join the family business. Anyway, Teddie was born in this house, Schöne Aussicht 9, in 1903 and lived there during his childhood until the family moved to a more quiet neighbourhood in Oberrad in 1914. Schopenhauer had (posthumously) become a prominent figure in the neighbourhood where Adorno grew up, the house at Schöne Aussicht 16, where he had died, was dubbed "Schopenhauerhaus" later in the 19th century. Thus it was inevitable that Adorno got into contact with Schopenhauer's fame and probably also with some of Schopenhauer's writings already in his youth, but I don't think he ever was such a dedicated Schopenhauerian as Max Horkheimer was during and shortly after the First World War.

Este texto se propõe analisar o aforismo “Atitudes a respeito da práxis:
efeito, vivência, comoção”, do livro Teoria Estética, de Theodor Adorno, na tentativa de se aproximar do sentido e da abrangência do conceito “a obra-de-arte como práxis”; e, por meio desse exercício teórico, dialogar com o conto de Guimarães Rosa, “A Benfazeja”, do livro Primeiras Estórias, investigando seu efeito social e o movimento para a maioridade dos personagens e dos leitores. Serão abordados os seguintes eixos teóricos do aforismo: a relação entre a arte e a teoria na práxis; o efeito social como a relação direta da arte à práxis e o engagement como uma força estética produtiva; a experiência de interpretação da obra-de-arte enquanto irrupção
da objetividade na consciência subjetiva e formação da consciência. Em “A
Benfazeja”, à luz dos eixos teóricos expostos, serão tensionados os tópicos: a reencarnação da hibris do herói trágico na debilidade física da mulher sertaneja e sua sina de salvar a comunidade, sacrificando-se a si mesma; o discurso crítico do que vem de fora, narra os acontecimentos e desenvolve tentativas de formar as consciências das pessoas do lugarejo; a exortação final do narrador na esperança de que as gerações futuras rasguem o véu de Maia e enxerguem o verum dos fatos; a arte em “A Benfazeja” como expressão de uma práxis produtiva.

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno has reflected several times on the theme of art's language (or languages) as a fundamental one. Within the Aesthetic Theory (1970), which is his most important text about aesthetics, it can be found many hints about it. In this paper, our aim is to reinterpret some of the central ideas of Adorno's aesthetic theory, paying specific attention to the role granted to the linguistic element. More specifically, the paradigm, which holds most of Adorno's considerations, ought to be seen as the one of a mute language spoke by the works of art. This thesis indeed seems to match with the claims of Adorno about the meaning of a negative aesthetic and with the critical function of art toward the social reality. We believe that this peculiarity goes along with Adorno's reflection since its beginning. Therefore, it should be considered as a particularly meaningful characteristic of his theory, which allows to understand to which extent the aesthetic experience could be contemplate as one of the last shelters of freedom within a " totally administered society " , as analysed by the philosopher. Eventually, we try to show how this idea should be traced back to the singular meaning of the word 'mimesis' in Adorno's thought. The constellation that gravitates around this concept may explain several aspects of the relation between art and language.

La discusión entre memoria y olvido no parece ser nueva en la historia del pensamiento occidental. Su importancia ha hecho de esta vieja disputa la piedra angular que hoy en día sigue sirviendo como fundamento a no pocos discursos éticos sobre la necesidad del recuerdo o del olvido en las experiencias traumáticas vividas por una colectividad. No en vano, las respuestas ante cómo afrontar un pasado traumático que ha dejado secuelas para el presente, pueden situarse en dos polos bien definidos: o bien, es preciso rememorar el pasado para evitar que lo peor de él renazca en el presente, o bien, conviene olvidar las desgracias que yacen en la historia para privilegiar un presente que no tendría por qué asumir las responsabilidades de las pretéritas generaciones. Este libro es una investigación sobre le rol que juega la construcción de la memoria histórica colectiva en la reflexión ética sobre las víctimas de la violencia. En él se pueden apreciar dos momentos que al hilo argumentativo de algunas tesis del pensamiento de Theodor W. Adorno y de sus colegas más cercanos como Walter Benajmin y Max Horkheimer, intentan aproximarse al contexto filosófico en el cual se inserta el problema de la memoria como postura ética y su relación con la historia.

Every cluttered suburban basement is a time machine. When a television that has sat discarded for a long while is suddenly taken up and experimentally (why not?) plugged in we experience a direct, yet fleeting connection to something like materially reversible time. Miraculously functional garbage: this is the form taken by redemption in an era of mass disposability. Against an expectation of inscrutable inner rot--one grounded, incidentally, not in any working knowledge of the circuits, but in the mere offensiveness to taste of a form's clunky anachronism--the machine modestly announces itself as capable of being counted among the things that are still here.