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'There is no question of the contemporary importance and relevance of these essays. T. W. Adorno is one of the great critics of the role of irrational authoritarianism in contemporary society.' Douglas Kellner
'This collection demonstrates the continuing relevance of Adorno's work to the analysis and understanding of modern times. A brilliant contribution to the sociology of racism, anti-Semitism and popular culture.' - Bryan S. Turner, co-editor, The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
'Theodor Adorno returns from the grave to deliver this timely warning about the dangers of superstition.' Review
Theodor W. Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer were two of the most
influential philosophers and cultural critics of the 20th century.
While Adorno became the leading intellectual figure of the
Frankfurt School, Kracauer's writings on film, photography,
literature and the lifestyle of the middle classes opened up a new
and distinctive approach to the study of culture and everyday life
in modern societies. This volume brings together for the first time
the long-running correspondence between these two major figures of
German intellectual culture. As left-wing German Jews who were
forced into exile with the rise of Nazism, Adorno and Kracauer
shared much in common, but their worldviews were in many ways
markedly different. These differences become clear in a
correspondence that ranges over a great diversity of topics, from
the nature of criticism and the meaning of utopia to the work of
their contemporaries, including Bloch, Brecht and Benjamin. Where
Kracauer embraced the study of new mass media, above all film,
Adorno was much more sceptical. This is borne out in his sharp
criticism of Kracauer's study of the composer Offenbach, which
Adorno derided as musically illiterate, as well as his later
criticism of Kracauer's Theory of Film. Exposing the very different
ways that both men were grappling intellectually with the massive
transformations of the 20th century, these letters shed fresh light
on the principles shaping their work at the same time as they
reveal something of the intellectual brilliance and human frailties
of these two towering figures of 20th century thought. This unique
volume will be of great value to anyone interested in critical
theory and in 20th century intellectual and cultural history.
In summer 1960, Adorno gave the first of a series of lectures
devoted to the relation between sociology and philosophy. One of
his central concerns was to dispel the notion, erroneous in his
view, that these were two incompatible disciplines, radically
opposed in their methods and aims, a notion that was shared by
many. While some sociologists were inclined to dismiss philosophy
as obsolete and incapable of dealing with the pressing social
problems of our time, many philosophers, influenced by Kant,
believed that philosophical reflection must remain 'pure',
investigating the constitution of knowledge and experience without
reference to any real or material factors. By focusing on the
problem of truth, Adorno seeks to show that philosophy and
sociology share much more in common than many of their
practitioners are inclined to assume. Drawing on intellectual
history, Adorno demonstrates the connection between truth and
social context, arguing that there is no truth that cannot be
manipulated by ideology and no theorem that can be wholly detached
from social and historical considerations. This systematic account
on the interconnectedness of philosophy and sociology makes these
lectures a timeless reflection on the nature of these disciplines
and an excellent introduction to critical theory, the sociological
content of which is here outlined in detail by Adorno for the first
time.
Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was one of the twentieth century's
most influential thinkers in the areas of social theory,
philosophy, aesthetics, and music. This volume reveals another
aspect of the work of this remarkable polymath, a pioneering
analysis of the psychological underpinnings of what we now call the
Radical Right and its use of the media to propagate its political
and religious agenda.
The now-forgotten Martin Luther Thomas was an American
fascist-style demagogue of the Christian right on the radio in the
1930s. During these years, Adorno was living in the United States
and working with Paul Lazarsfeld on the social significance of
radio. This book, Adorno's penetrating analysis of Thomas's
rhetorical appeal and manipulative techniques, was written in
English and is one of Adorno's most accessible works. It is in four
parts: "The Personal Element: Self-Characterization of the
Agitator," "Thomas' Methods," "The Religious Medium,"and
"Ideological Bait." The importance of the study is manifold: it
includes a theory of fascism and anti-semitism, it provides a
methodology for the cultural study of popular culture, and it
offers broad reflections on comparative political life in America
and Europe.
Implicit in the book is an innovative idea about the relation
between psychological and sociological reality. Moreover, the study
is germane to the contemporary reality of political and religious
radio in the United States because it provides an analysis of
rhetorical techniques that exploit potentials of psychological
regression for authoritarian aims.
At first glance, Theodor W. Adorno's critical social theory and
Gershom Scholem's scholarship of Jewish mysticism could not seem
farther removed from one another. To begin with, they also harbored
a mutual hostility. But their first conversations in 1938 New York
were the impetus for a profound intellectual friendship that lasted
thirty years and produced more than 220 letters. These letters
discuss the broadest range of topics in philosophy, religion,
history, politics, literature, and the arts - as well as the life
and the work of Adorno and Scholem's mutual friend Walter Benjamin.
Unfolding with the dramatic tension of a historic novel, the
correspondence tells the story of these two intellectuals who faced
tragedy, destruction, and loss, but also participated in the
efforts to reestablish a just and dignified society after World War
II. Scholem immigrated to Palestine before the war and developed
his pioneering scholarship of Jewish mysticism before and during
the problematic establishment of a Jewish state. Adorno escaped
Germany to England, and then to America, returning to Germany in
1949 to participate in the efforts to rebuild and democratize
German society. Despite the differences in the lifepaths and
worldviews of Adorno and Scholem, their letters are evidence of
mutual concern for intellectual truth and hope for a more just
society in the wake of historical disaster. The letters reveal for
the first time the close philosophical proximity between Adorno's
critical theory and Scholem's scholarship of mysticism and
messianism. Their correspondence touches on questions of reason and
myth, progress and regression, heresy and authority, and the social
dimensions of redemption. Above all, their dialogue sheds light on
the power of critical, materialistic analysis of history to bring
about social change and prevent repetition of the disasters of the
past.
The Stars Down to Earth shows us a stunningly prescient Adorno.
Haunted by the ugly side of American culture industries he used the
different angles provided by each of these three essays to showcase
the dangers inherent in modern obsessions with consumption. He
engages with some of his most enduring themes in this seminal
collection, focusing on the irrational in mass culture - from
astrology to new age cults, from anti-semitism to the power of
neo-fascist propaganda. He points out that the modern state and
market forces serve the interest of capital in its basic form.
Stephan Crook's introduction grounds Adorno's arguments firmly in
the present where extreme religious and political organizations are
commonplace - so commonplace in fact that often we deem them
unworthy of our attention. Half a century ago Theodore Adorno not
only recognised the dangers, but proclaimed them loudly. We did not
listen then. Maybe it is not too late to listen now.
The creation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory in the
1920s saw the birth of some of the most exciting and challenging
writings of the twentieth century. It is out of this background
that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are
collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into
Adorno's thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry
commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated
individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno
was accused of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria by
his many detractors. In today's world, where even the least cynical
of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno's work
takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an
unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture.
A year after the end of the Second World War, the first
International Summer Course for New Music took place in the
Kranichstein Hunting Lodge, near the city of Darmstadt in Germany.
The course, commonly referred to later as the Darmstadt course, was
intended to familiarize young composers and musicians with the
music that, only a few years earlier, had been denounced as
degenerate by the Nazi regime, and it soon developed into one of
the most important events in contemporary music. Having returned to
Germany in 1949 from exile in the United States, Adorno was a
regular participant at Darmstadt from 1950 on. In 1955 he gave a
series of lectures on the young Schoenberg, using the latter's work
to illustrate the relation between tradition and the avant-garde.
Adorno's three double-length lectures on the young Schoenberg, in
which he spoke as a passionate advocate for the composer whom
Boulez had declared dead, were his first at Darmstadt to be
recorded on tape. The relation between tradition and the
avant-garde was the leitmotif of the lectures that followed, which
continued over the next decade. Adorno also dealt in detail with
problems of composition in contemporary music, and he often
accompanied his lectures with off-the-cuff musical improvisations.
The five lecture courses he gave at Darmstadt between 1955 and 1966
were all recorded and subsequently transcribed, and they are
published here for the first time in English. This volume is a
unique document on the theory and history of the New Music. It will
be of great value to anyone interested in the work of Adorno and
critical theory, in German intellectual and cultural history, and
in the history of modern music.
Adorno's lectures on ontology and dialectics from 1960-61 comprise
his most sustained and systematic analysis of Heidegger's
philosophy. They also represent a continuation of a project that he
shared with Walter Benjamin - 'to demolish Heidegger'. Following
the publication of the latter's magnum opus Being and Time, and
long before his notorious endorsement of Nazism at Freiburg
University, both Adorno and Benjamin had already rejected
Heidegger's fundamental ontology. After his return to Germany from
his exile in the United States, Adorno became Heidegger's principal
intellectual adversary, engaging more intensively with his work
than with that of any other contemporary philosopher. Adorno
regarded Heidegger as an extremely limited thinker and for that
reason all the more dangerous. In these lectures, he highlights
Heidegger's increasing fixation with the concept of ontology to
show that the doctrine of being can only truly be understood
through a process of dialectical thinking. Rather than exploiting
overt political denunciation, Adorno deftly highlights the
connections between Heidegger's philosophy and his political views
and, in doing so, offers an alternative plea for enlightenment and
rationality. These seminal lectures, in which Adorno dissects the
thought of one of the most influential twentieth-century
philosophers, will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy
and critical theory and throughout the humanities and social
sciences.
As an exile in America during the War, Theodor Adorno grew
acquainted with the fundamentals of empirical social research,
something which would shape the work he undertook in the early
1950s as co-director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social
Research. Yet he also became increasingly aware of the 'fetishism
of method' in sociology, and saw the serious limitations of
theoretical work based solely on empirical findings.In this lecture
course given in 1964, Adorno develops a critique of both sociology
and philosophy, emphasizing that theoretical work requires a
specific mediation between the two disciplines. Adorno advocates a
philosophical approach to social theory that challenges the drive
towards uniformity and a lack of ambiguity, highlighting instead
the fruitfulness of experience, in all its messy complexity, for
critical social analysis. At the same time, he shows how philosophy
must also realise that it requires sociology if it is to avoid
falling for the old idealistic illusion that the totality of real
conditions can be grasped through thought alone.Masterfully
bringing together philosophical and empirical approaches to an
understanding of society, these lectures from one of the most
important social thinkers of the 20th century will be of great
interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology and the
social sciences generally.
Although Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his association with
the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, he began his career as a
composer and successful music critic. Night Music presents the
first complete English translations of two collections of texts
compiled by German philosopher and musicologist Adorno—Moments
musicaux, containing essays written between 1928 and 1962, and
Theory of New Music, a group of texts written between 1929 and
1955. In Moments musicaux, Adorno echoes Schubert’s eponymous
cycle, with its emphasis on aphorism, and offers lyrical
reflections on music of the past and his own time. The essays
include extended aesthetic analyses that demonstrate Adorno’s aim
to apply high philosophical standards to the study of music. Theory
of New Music, as its title indicates, presents Adorno’s thoughts
and theories on the composition, reception, and analysis of the
music that was being written around him. His extensive
philosophical writing ultimately prevented him from pursuing the
compositional career he had once envisaged, but his view of the
modern music of the time is not simply that of a theorist, but
clearly also that of a composer. Though his advocacy of the Second
Viennese School, comprising composer Arnold Schoenberg and his
pupils, is well known, many of his writings in this field have
remained obscure. Collected in their entirety for the first time in
English, the insightful texts in Night Music show the breadth of
Adorno’s musical understanding and reveal an overlooked side to
this significant thinker.
"Dreams are as black as death." - Theodor W. Adorno. Adorno was
fascinated by his dreams and wrote them down throughout his life.
He envisaged publishing a collection of them although in the event
no more than a few appeared in his lifetime. "Dream Notes" offers a
selection of Adornos writings on dreams that span the last
twenty-five years of his life. Readers of Adorno who are accustomed
to high-powered reflections on philosophy, music and culture may
well find them disconcerting: they provide an amazingly frank and
uninhibited account of his inner desires, guilt feelings and
anxieties.Brothel scenes, torture and executions figure
prominently. They are presented straightforwardly, at face value.
No attempt is made to interpret them, to relate them to the events
of his life, to psychoanalyse them, or to establish any connections
with the principal themes of his philosophy. Are they fiction,
autobiography or an attempt to capture a pre-rational, quasi-mythic
state of consciousness? No clear answer can be given. Taken
together they provide a highly consistent picture of a dimension of
experience that is normally ignored, one that rounds out and
deepens our knowledge of Adorno while retaining something of the
enigmatic quality that energized his own thought.
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer are the leading figures of the
Frankfurt School and this book is their magnum opus. Dialectic of
Enlightenment is one of the most celebrated works of modern social
philosophy that continues to impress in its wide-ranging ambition.
Writing just after the Second World War and reflecting on the
bureaucracy and myths of National Socialism and the inanity of the
dawn of consumerism, Adorno and Horkheimer addressed themselves to
a question which went to the very heart of the modern age: 'why
mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is
sinking into a new kind of barbarism'. Modernity, far from
redeeming the promises and hopes of the Enlightenment, had resulted
in a stultification of mankind and administered society,
characterised by simulation and candy-floss entertainment. Tracing
humanity's modern fall to the very rationality that was to be its
liberation, the authors exposed the domination and violence that
underpin the Enlightenment project.
This volume makes available in English for the first time Adorno's
lectures on metaphysics. It provides a unique introduction not only
to metaphysics but also to Adorno's own intellectual standpoint, as
developed in his major work" Negative Dialectics,"
Metaphysics for Adorno is defined by a central tension between
concepts and immediate facts. Adorno traces this dualism back to
Aristotle, whom he sees as the founder of metaphysics. In Aristotle
it appears as an unresolved tension between form and matter. This
basic split, in Adorno's interpretation, runs right through the
history of metaphysics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Adorno finds this
tension resolved in the Hegelian dialectic.
Underlying this dualism is a further dichotomy, which Adorno
sees as essential to metaphysics: while it dissolves belief in
transcendental worlds by thought, at the same time it seeks to
rescue belief in a reality beyond the empirical, again by thought.
It is to this profound ambiguity, for Adorno, that the metaphysical
tradition owes its greatness.
The major part of these lectures, given by Adorno late in his
life, is devoted to a critical exposition of Aristotle's thought,
focusing on its central ambiguities. In the last lectures, Adorno's
attention switches to the question of the relevance of metaphysics
today, particularly after the Holocaust. He finds in 'metaphysical
experiences', which transcend rational discourse without lapsing
into irrationalism, a last precarious refuge of the humane truth to
which his own thought always aspired.
This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in
Adorno's work and will be a valuable text for students and scholars
of philosophy and social theory.
The surviving correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Theodor W.
Adorno. * This is the first time all of the surviving
correspondence between Adorno and Benjamin has appeared in English.
* Provides a key to the personalities and projects of these two
major intellectual figures. * Offers a compelling insight into the
cultural politics of the period, at a time of social and political
upheaval. * An invaluable resource for all students of the work of
Adorno and especially of Benjamin, extensively annotated and
cross--referenced.
Written between 1944 and 1947, Minima Moralia is a collection of
rich, lucid aphorisms and essays about life in modern capitalist
society. Adorno casts his penetrating eye across society in
mid-century America and finds a life deformed by capitalism. This
is Adorno's theoretical and literary masterpiece and a classic of
twentieth-century thought.
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