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Informationen zum Autor Gerhard SchweppenhÄuser is Professor of Design, Communication, and Media Theory at the University of WÜrzburg in Germany. He has written many books building on the sociocultural, analytical mission of the Frankfurt School, including two focused on Adorno. James L. Rolleston is Professor Emeritus of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Duke University. He has written books on Kafka, Rilke, and modern German poetry. His translation of Bernd Witte’s Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography won the German Literary Prize of the American Translators Association. His and Kai Evers’s translation of Peter Weiss’s last play, The New Trial, is also published by Duke University Press. Klappentext 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. Zusammenfassung A translation of a succinct introduction to the challenging and far-reaching thought of Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969), one of the twentieth centurys most important thinkers. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface to the English Edition vii Translator's Preface xi 1. The Project of Renewing Childhood by Transforming One's Life 1 2. Critical Theory 11 3. Reason's Self-Criticism 18 Defined Negation 20 The Two Faces of Enlightenment 26 4. Rescuing What is Beyond Hope 34 Philosophy from the Perspective of Redemption 34 Primacy of the Object 38 5. The Totally Socialized Society 51 The Concept of Society 52 Liquidation of the Individual 58 Critical Theory on Morality 68 6. The Goal of the Emancipated Society 77 7. The Powerless Utopia of Beauty 91 The Destruction and Salvation of Art 93 The Silence of Music 102 The Transition from Art to Knowledge 109 Theorizing Art and Culture in the Institute for Social Research 112 Benjamin and Kracauer: Theorizing Mass Art 120 Anarchistic and Bourgeois Romanticism: Adorno's Critique of Benjamin 125 The Work of Art and the Concept of Truth 128 8. The Failure of Culture 136 The Radically Pathetic and Guilty Culture 137 Enlightenment as Mass Deception 144 Biographical Timeline 159 Notes 163 Bibliography 171 Index 179...
