After Adorno

Download or read book After Adorno written by Tia DeNora and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-06 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theodor W. Adorno placed music at the centre of his critique of modernity and broached some of the most important questions about the role of music in contemporary society. One of his central arguments was that music, through the manner of its composition, affected consciousness and was a means of social management and control. His work was primarily theoretical however, and because these issues were never explored empirically his work has become sidelined in current music sociology. This book argues that music sociology can be greatly enriched by a return to Adorno's concerns, in particular his focus on music as a dynamic medium of social life. Intended as a guide to 'how to do music sociology' this book deals with critical topics too often sidelined such as aesthetic ordering, cognition, the emotions and music as a management device and reworks Adorno's focus through a series of grounded examples.

Download or read book Social Philosophy after Adorno written by Lambert Zuidervaart and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-09 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lambert Zuidervaart examines what is living and what is dead in the social philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno, the most important philosopher and social critic in Germany after World War II. When he died in 1969, Adorno's successors abandoned his critical-utopian passions. Habermas in particular, rejected or ignored Adorno's central insights on the negative effects of capitalism and new technologies upon nature and human life. Zuidervaart reclaims Adorno's insights from Habermasian neglect while taking up legitimate Habermasian criticisms. He also addresses the prospects for radical and democratic transformations of an increasingly globalized world. The book proposes a provocative social philosophy 'after Adorno'.

Download or read book Art and Aesthetics After Adorno written by J. M. Bernstein and published by . This book was released on 2012-04 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory (1970) offers one of the most powerful and comprehensive critiques of art and of the discipline of aesthetics ever written. The work offers a deeply critical engagement with the history and philosophy of aesthetics and with the traditions of European art through the middle of the 20th century. It is coupled with ambitious claims about what aesthetic theory ought to be. But the cultural horizon of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory was the world of high modernism, and much has happened since then both in theory and in practice. Adorno's powerful vision of aesthetics calls for reconsideration in this light. Must his work be defended, updated, resisted, or simply left behind? This volume gathers new essays by leading philosophers, critics, and theorists writing in the wake of Adorno in order to address these questions. They hold in common a deep respect for the power of Adorno's aesthetic critique and a concern for the future of aesthetic theory in response to recent developments in aesthetics and its contexts.

Download or read book Autonomy After Auschwitz written by Martin Shuster and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-09-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could our modern commitment to freedom be related to or even cause a variety of extreme modern evils, most notably (but not exclusively) Auschwitz? Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomythe idea that we are beholden to no law except one imposed upon ourselvesis considered the truest philosophical expression of free human agency. In this context, philosopher Martin Shuster examines the notion of autonomy and its relationship to modern evil. Taking its cue from the work of Theodor Adorno, this book shows that the notion of autonomy, as emblematically conceived in this German philosophical tradition, is not only self-defeating and unstable, but also dangerous and connected to extreme evils like genocide because it ultimately dissolves our capacities for reason, especially practical reason, and thereby our very standing as agents. Examining Adorno s understanding of modern evil in the context of his debate with Kant on autonomous agency, Shuster shows how Adorno developed a conception of autonomous agency that manages to avoid any connection to extreme evil. Throughout, Adorno is put into dialogue not only with many traditional European philosophical interlocutors (including Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty), but innovatively, also with a variety of Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Bernard Williams, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin. Shuster aims to integrate and situate Adorno s work, then, within both traditions discussions of freedom and autonomy, demonstrate the deep ethical stakes that are involved in these debates, and offer new insights and lessons from Adorno s writings."

Download or read book Can One Live after Auschwitz? written by Theodor W. Adorno and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive collection of readings from the work of Theodor Adorno, one of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. What took place in Auschwitz revokes what Adorno termed the "Western legacy of positivity,” the innermost substance of traditional philosophy. The prime task of philosophy then remains to reflect on its own failure, its own complicity in such events. Yet in linking the question of philosophy to historical occurrence, Adorno seems not to have abandoned his paradoxical, life-long hope that philosophy might not be entirely closed to the idea of redemption. He prepares for an altogether different praxis, one no longer conceived in traditionally Marxist terms but rather to be gleaned from "metaphysical experience.” In this collection, Adorno's literary executor has assembled the definitive introduction to his thinking. Its five sections anatomize the range of Adorno's concerns: "Toward a New Categorical Imperative,” "Damaged Life,” "Administered World, Reified Thought,” "Art, Memory of Suffering,” and "A Philosophy That Keeps Itself Alive.” A substantial number of Adorno’s writings included appear here in English for the first time. This collection comes with an eloquent introduction from Rolf Tiedemann, the literary executor of Adorno’s work.

Download or read book Theodor W. Adorno written by Gerhard Schweppenhäuser and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-06 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Theodor W. Adorno written by Detlev Claussen and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives us our first clear look at how the man and his moment met to create “critical theory.” An intimate picture of the quintessential twentieth-century transatlantic intellectual, the book is also a window on the cultural ferment of Adorno’s day—and its ongoing importance in our own.