Theodor Adorno and his Aesthetic Theory

                                 Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno 

                                                       Carlos Arias Diaz 

                 

                                                                          Selfie

                                                                    Introduction

Born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund, Adorno was an incredibly well rounded German thinker of the early and middle 20th century. He was, of course, a philosopher, but also had created notable works and influences on the subjects of sociology, psychology, and musicology. 

                                                                      Early life

Adorno was born on September 11th, 1903 in Frankfurt, Germany. He was the only child of Maria Calvelli-Adorno della Piana, who was once a professional Italian singer, and Oscar Alexander Wiesengrund, who was an assimilated jew turned Protestant and who ran a successful wine business. He would prove to be a very intellectual child, graduating at the top of his class in 1921.  He was constantly surrounded by music, due to his mother's career as a singer and his aunt, who was a pianist and lived with them, so it is of no surprise that he studied musical composition under Alban Berg in Vienna in the early 1920's. Adorno was heading for a career in music, following in his mother's footsteps, and even creating musical compositions of his own. 

                                          

                                                      Adorno playing the piano in his older age

                                Here's a link to one of his piano compositions, written in 1921: 

Adorno eventually strayed from his path towards a musical profession, and in the late 1920's, decided to dedicate his life to teaching and studying philosophy at the University of Frankfurt, where he would stay until his death in 1969. 

Adorno was best known for being a leading member in the Frankfurt school of Critical Theory,  in which him and other thinkers, such as Walter Benjamin and Max Horkheimer, inspired by works of Marx and Kant, critiqued modern society and sought a source of social domination. Adorno, however, also had other notable works, such as his book Aesthetic Theory, which is anchored in the philosophical study of art. This is the work I will be diving into for this post. 

         

                                Adorno shaking hands with Max Horkheimer, who helped write the Critical Theory

                                                                Aesthetic Theory

Adorno's Aesthetic Theory was officially published in 1970, a year after his death. It was a culmination of a variety of his writing between the years of 1956 and 1969. Though the essence of the writings was on the philosophy of art and the relation art has to society, the individual works ranged from speaking about political philosophy to metaphysics, due to Adorno's disliking of boundaries and labels. The work has been described by some critics as Adorno's "magnum opus", due to its heavily influence on the study of aesthetics. Aesthetics, in philosophy, is defined by the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy as "the theory of beauty, or more broadly as that together with the philosophy of art." This branch of philosophy was originally focused on the sheer definition of art and beauty, but has since been expanded into looking now a analysing specific aspects of art and its value. More on this can be found here.

                  

                                                Some artwork of Adorno. I wonder what he'd think of it.

In the book, Adorno addresses topics that go deeper than the simple purpose of beauty and sublimity in art, but rather the socio-political implications of it and the progress of its evolution, especially in the modern age. He states that art, in previous eras, was in a state of "semi-autonomy", restricted by cult and imperial functions, which limited its ability to convey meaningful or fully intended messages to the world. He states that art in modern times (modern to him), is now much more free, reaching a truer state of autonomy, and thus now has, more than before, a responsibility to convey explicitly meaningful social commentary.  However, Adorno is not condoning the use of over-the-top politicised content, but rather he wants more abstracted "truth-content". "Truth-content" is defined by the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy as being "the way in which an artwork simultaneously challenges the way things are and suggests how things could be better, but leaves things practically unchanged", and is a central point in a lot of his arguments within the book. Adorno states that this truth-content is found within multiple dialectics that exists in the work's position relative to the subject and societal tradition and in dialectics within the work itself, such as between content of the work and its form. It is the truth-content that invites critical judgement of the art work, which are to be used to grasp the internal dynamics of the piece and the dynamics of the society and place in history in which the piece belongs. This is simply a rough summary of the ideas talked about within the book. To access the book and read for yourself if you are interested, the link to an online copy is here. I leave you with a quote from the book, which reads, 

"Rather than imitating reality, artworks demonstrate this displacement to reality. Ultimately, the doctrine of imitation should be reversed; in a sublimated sense, re­ ality should imitate the artworks. However, the fact that artworks exist signals the possibility of the nonexisting . The reality of artworks testifies to the possibility of the possible. The object of art's longing, the reality of what is not, is metamor­ phosed in art as remembrance."

                  

Works Cited

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/#4

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Theodor-Wiesengrund-Adorno

https://iep.utm.edu/adorno/