Theodor W. Adorno 1

Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno

Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jrgen Habermas (in the background, right), in 1964 in Heidelberg.

Other names Theodor Ludwig Adorno Wiesengrund

Born September 11, 1903Frankfurt am Main, Hesse-Nassau, Prussia, Germany

Died August 6, 1969 (aged65)Visp, Visp, Valais, Switzerland

Residence Germany

Nationality German

Era 20th century philosophy

Region Western philosophy

School Critical theoryMarxism

Maininterests Social theory, sociology, psychoanalysis, epistemology, aesthetics, musicology, massmedia

Notableideas Criticism of "actionism"[1]

Theodor W. Adorno (/drno/;[2] German: [adno]; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; September 11,1903 August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory ofsociety.He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has come to be associated withthinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, for whom the work of Freud,Marx and Hegel were essential to a critique of modern society. He is widely regarded as one of the 20th century'sforemost thinkers on aesthetics and philosophy, as well as one of its preeminent essayists. As a critic of both fascismand what he called the culture industry, his writingssuch as Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), Minima Moralia(1951) and Negative Dialectics (1966)strongly influenced the European New Left.Amidst the vogue enjoyed by existentialism and positivism in early 20th-century Europe, Adorno advanced a dialectical conception of natural history that critiqued the twin temptations of ontology and empiricism through studies of Kierkegaard and Husserl. As a classically trained pianist whose sympathies with the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg resulted in his studying composition with Alban Berg of the Second Viennese School, Adorno's commitment to avant-garde music formed the backdrop of his subsequent writings and led to his collaboration with Thomas Mann on the latter's novel Doctor Faustus, while the two men lived in California as

Theodor W. Adorno 2

exiles during the Second World War. Working for the newly relocated Institute for Social Research, Adornocollaborated on influential studies of authoritarianism, anti-semitism and propaganda that would later serve asmodels for sociological studies the Institute carried out in post-war Germany. Upon his return to Frankfurt, Adornowas involved with the reconstitution of German intellectual life through debates with Karl Popper on the limitationsof positivist science, critiques of Heidegger's language of authenticity, writings on German responsibility for theHolocaust, and continued interventions into matters of public policy. As a writer of polemics in the tradition ofNietzsche and Karl Kraus, Adorno delivered scathing critiques of contemporary Western culture. Adorno'sposthumously published Aesthetic Theory, which he planned to dedicate to Samuel Beckett, is the culmination of alifelong commitment to modern art which attempts to revoke the "fatal separation" of feeling and understanding longdemanded by the history of philosophy and explode the privilege aesthetics accords to content over form andcontemplation over immersion.

Life and career

Early years: FrankfurtTheodor Ludwig Adorno-Wiesengrund was born in Frankfurt am Main on September 11, 1903, the only child ofOscar Alexander Wiesengrund (18701946) and Maria Calvelli-Adorno della Piana (18651952). His mother, adevout Catholic from Corsica, was once a professional singer, while his father, an assimilated Jew who hadconverted to Protestantism, ran a successful wine-export business. Proud of her origins, Maria wanted her son'spaternal surname to be supplemented by the addition of her own name: Adorno. Thus his earliest publications carriedthe name Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno; upon his application for US citizenship, his name was modified to TheodorW. Adorno. His childhood was marked by the musical life provided by his mother and aunt: Maria was a singer whocould boast of having performed in Vienna at the Imperial Court, while her sister, Agathe, who lived with them, hadmade a name for herself as both a singer and pianist. He was not only a precocious child but, as he recalled later inlife, a child prodigy who could play pieces by Beethoven on the piano by the time he was twelve.[3] At the age of six,he attended the Deutschherren middle school before transferring to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gymnasium, where hestudied from 1913 to 1921. Prior to his graduation at the top of his class, Adorno was already swept up by therevolutionary mood of the time, as is evidenced by his reading of Georg Lukacs's The Theory of the Novel that year,as well as by his fascination with Ernst Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia, of which he would later write:

Bloch's was a philosophy that could hold its head high before the most advanced literature; a philosophy thatwas not calibrated to the abominable resignation of methodology I took this motif so much as my own thatI do not believe I have ever written anything without reference to it, either implicit or explicit.[4]

Yet Adorno's intellectual nonconformism was no less shaped by the repugnance he felt towards the nationalism which swept through the Reich during the First World War. Along with future collaborators like Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Ernst Bloch, Adorno was profoundly disillusioned by the ease with which Germany's intellectual and spiritual leadersamong them Max Weber, Max Scheler, Ernst Simmel, as well as his friend Siegfried Kracauercame out in support of the war. The younger generation's distrust for traditional knowledge arose from the way in which this tradition had discredited itself.[5] Over time, Oscar Wiesengrund's firm established close professional and personal ties with the factory of Karplus & Herzberger in Berlin. The eldest daughter of the Karplus family, Margarete, or Gretel, moved in the intellectual circles of Berlin, where she was acquainted with Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht and Ernst Bloch, each of whom Adorno would become familiar with during the mid-20s; after fourteen years, Gretel and Theodor were married in 1937. At the end of his schooldays, Adorno not only benefited from the rich concert offerings of Frankfurtin which one could hear performances of works by Schoenberg, Schreker, Stravinsky, Bartk, Busoni, Delius and Hindemithbut also began studying music composition at the Hoch Conservatory while taking private lessons with well-respected composers Bernhard Sekles and Eduard Jung. At around the same time, he befriended Siegfried Kracauer, the Frankfurter Zeitungs literary

Theodor W. Adorno 3

editor, of whom he would later write:For years Kracauer read [Kants] Critique of Pure Reason with me regularly on Saturday afternoons. I am notexaggerating in the slightest when I say that I owe more to this reading than to my academic teachers Underhis guidance I experienced the work from the beginning not as mere epistemology, not as an analysis of theconditions of scientifically valid judgments, but as a kind of coded text from which the historical situation ofspirit could be read, with the vague expectation that in doing so one could acquire something of truth itself. [6]

Academic Genealogy

Notable teachers

Hans Cornelius

Notable students

Jrgen Habermas

Leaving gymnasium to study philosophy, psychology and sociology at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University inFrankfurt, Adorno continued his readings with Kracauer, turning now to Hegel and Kierkegaard, and beganpublishing concert reviews and pieces of music for distinguished journals like the Zeitschrift fr Musik, the NeueBltter fr Kunst und Literatur and later for the Musikbltter des Anbruch. In these articles, Adorno championedavant-garde music at the same time as he critiqued the failings of musical modernity, as in the case of StravinskysThe Soldiers Tale, which he called in 1923 a dismal Bohemian prank.[7] In these early writings, he wasunequivocal in his condemnation of performances which either sought or pretended to achieve a transcendencewhich Adorno, in line with many intellectuals of the time, regarded as impossible: No cathedral, he wrote, can bebuilt if no community desires one.[8] In the summer of 1924, Adorno received his doctorate with a study of EdmundHusserl under the direction of the unorthodox neo-Kantian Hans Cornelius. Before his graduation, Adorno hadalready met with his most important intellectual collaborators, Max Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin. ThroughCornelius's seminars, Adorno met his future collaborator Max Horkheimer, through whom he was then introduced toFriedrich Pollock.

Vienna, Frankfurt, and BerlinDuring the summer of 1924, the Viennese composer Alban Berg's Three Fragments from Wozzeck, op. 7 premieredin Frankfurt, at which time Adorno introduced himself to Berg and both agreed the young philosopher and composerwould study with Berg in Vienna. Upon moving to Vienna in February 1925, Adorno immersed himself in themusical culture which had grown up around Schoenberg: in addition to his twice-weekly sessions with Berg, Adornocontinued his studies on piano with Eduard Steuermann and befriended the violinist Rudolf Kolisch. In Vienna, heattended public lectures of the satirist Karl Kraus with Berg and met Lukcs, who had been living in Vienna after thefailure of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Alban Berg, the man Adorno referred to as "my master and teacher," wasamong the most prescient of his young pupil's early friends:

[I am] convinced that, in the sphere of the deepest understanding of music ... you are capable of supremeachievements and will undoubtedly fulfill this promise in the shape of great philosophical works.[9]

After leaving Vienna, Adorno traveled through Italy, where he met with Kracauer, Benjamin, and the economist Alfred Sohn-Rethel, with whom he developed a lasting friendship, before returning to Frankfurt. In December 1926 Adorno's "Two Pieces for String Quartet," op.2 were performed in Vienna, which provided a welcome interruption from his preparations for the Habilitation. After writing the "Piano Pieces in strict twelve-tone technique," as well as songs later integrated into the Six Bagatelles for Voice and Piano, op. 6, Adorno presented his Habilitation manuscript, The Concept of the Unconscious in the Transcendental Theory of the Psyche, to Cornelius in November 1927. Cornelius advised Adorno to withdraw his application on the grounds that the manuscript was too close to his own way of thinking. In this manuscript, Adorno attempted to underline the epistemological status of the

Theodor W. Adorno 4

unconscious as it emerged out of Freud's early writings. Against the function of the unconscious in both Nietzscheand Spengler, Adorno argued that Freud's notion of the unconscious serves as a "sharp weapon ... against everyattempt to create a metaphysics of the instincts and to deify full, organic nature."[10] Undaunted by his academicprospects, Adorno threw himself once again into composition. In addition to publishing numerous reviews of operaperformances and concerts, Adorno's "Four Songs for Medium Voice and Piano", op.3 was performed in Berlin inJanuary 1929. Between 1928 and 1930 Adorno took on a greater role within the editorial committee of theMusikbltter des Anbruch. In a proposal for transforming the journal, Adorno sought to use Anbruch forchampioning radical modern music against what he called the "stabilized music" of Pfitzner, the later Strauss, as wellas the neoclassicism of Stravinsky and Hindemith. During this period he published the essays "Night Music", "OnTwelve-Tone Technique" and "Reaction and Progress". Yet his reservations about twelve-tone orthodoxy becamesteadily more pronounced: According to Adorno, twelve-tone technique's use of atonality can no more be regardedas an authoritative canon than can tonality be relied on to provide instructions for the composer.At this time, Adorno struck up a correspondence with the composer Ernst Krenek, with whom he discussed problemsof atonality and twelve-tone technique. In a letter of 1934 Adorno sounded a related criticism of Schoenberg:

Twelve-tone technique alone is nothing but the principle of motivic elaboration and variation, as developed inthe sonata, but elevated now to a comprehensive principle of construction, namely transformed into an a prioriform and, by that token, detached from the surface of the composition.[11]

At this point Adorno reversed his earlier priorities: now his musical activities came second to the development of aphilosophical theory of aesthetics. Thus, in the middle of 1929 he accepted Paul Tillich's offer to present anHabilitation on Kierkegaard, which Adorno eventually submitted under the title The Construction of the Aesthetic.At the time, Kierkegaard's philosophy exerted a strong influence, chiefly through its claim to pose an alternative toIdealism and Hegel's philosophy of history. Yet when Adorno turned his attention to Kierkegaard, watchwords like"anxiety," "inwardness" and "leap"instructive for existentialist philosophywere detached from their theologicalorigins and posed, instead, as problems for aesthetics.[12] As the work proceededand Kierkegaard's overcoming ofHegel's idealism was revealed to be a mere interiorizationAdorno excitedly remarked in a letter to Berg that hewas writing without looking over his shoulder at the faculty who would soon evaluate his work. Receiving favorablereports from Professors Tillich and Horkheimer, as well as Benjamin and Kracauer, the University conferred onAdorno the venia legendi in February 1931; on the very day his revised study was published, in March 1933, Hitlerseized dictatorial powers.[13]

Several months after qualifying as a lecturer in philosophy, Adorno delivered an inaugural lecture at the Institute forSocial Research, an independent organization which had recently appointed Horkheimer as its director and, with thearrival of the literary scholar Leo Lowenthal, social psychologist Erich Fromm and philosopher Herbert Marcuse,sought to exploit recent theoretical and methodological advances in the social sciences. His lecture, "The Actualityof Philosophy," created a scandal. In it, Adorno not only deviated from the theoretical program Horkheimer had laidout a year earlier, but challenged philosophy's very capacity for comprehending reality as such: "For the mind,"Adorno announced, "is indeed not capable of producing or grasping the totality of the real, but it may be possible topenetrate the detail, to explode in miniature the mass of merely existing reality."[14] In line with Benjamin's TheOrigin of German Tragic Drama and preliminary sketches of the Arcades Project, Adorno likened philosophicalinterpretation to experiments which should be conducted "until they arrive at figurations in which the answers arelegible, while the questions themselves vanish." Having lost its position as the Queen of the Sciences, philosophymust now radically transform its approach to objects so that it might "construct keys before which reality springsopen."[15]

Following Horkheimer's taking up the directorship of the Institute, a new journal, Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung, was produced to publish the research of Institute members both before and after its relocation to the United States. Though Adorno was not himself an Institute member, the journal nevertheless published many of his essays, including "The Social Situation of Music" (1932), "On Jazz" (1936), "On the Fetish-Character in Music and the

Theodor W. Adorno 5

Regression of Listening" (1938) and "Fragments on Wagner" (1938). In his new role as social theorist, Adorno'sphilosophical analysis of cultural phenomena heavily relied on the language of historical materialism, as conceptslike reification, false consciousness and ideology came to play an ever more prominent role in his work. At the sametime, however, and owing to both the presence of another prominent sociologist at the Institute, Karl Mannheim, aswell as the methodological problem posed by treating objectslike "musical material"as ciphers of socialcontradictions, Adorno was compelled to abandon any notion of "value-free" sociology in favor of a form ofideology critique which held on to an idea of truth. Before his emigration in autumn 1934, Adorno began work on aSingspiel based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer entitled The Treasure of Indian Joe, which hewould, however, never complete; by the time he fled Hitler's Germany Adorno had already written over a hundredopera or concert reviews and an additional fifty critiques of music composition. As the Nazi party became the largestparty in the Reichstag Horkheimer's 1932 observation proved chillingly prophetic: "Only one thing is certain," hewrote, "the irrationality of society has reached a point where only the gloomiest predications have any plausibility."[16] In September Adorno's right to teach was revoked; in March, as the swastika was run up the flag pole of townhall, the Institute's offices were searched by the Frankfurt criminal police. Adorno's house on Seeheimer Strasse wassimilarly searched in July and his application for membership in the Reich Chamber of Literature was denied on thegrounds that membership was limited to "persons who belong to the German nation by profound ties of character andblood. As a non-Aryan," he was informed, "you are unable to feel and appreciate such an obligation."[17] Soonafterwards Adorno was forced into fifteen years of exile.

Exile: Oxford, London, New York, Los AngelesAfter the possibility of transferring his habilitation to the University of Vienna came to nothing, Adorno consideredrelocating to Britain upon his father's suggestion. With the help of the Academic Assistance Council, Adornoregistered as an advanced student at Merton College, Oxford, in June 1934. During the next four years at Oxford,Adorno made repeated trips to Germany to see both his parents and Gretel, who was still working in Berlin. Underthe direction of Gilbert Ryle, Adorno worked on a dialectical critique of Husserl's epistemology. By this time, theInstitute for Social Research had relocated to New York City and began making overtures to Adorno. After monthsof strained relations, Horkheimer and Adorno reestablished their essential theoretical alliance during meetings inParis. Adorno continued writing on music, publishing "The Form of the Phonograph Record" and "Crisis of MusicCriticism" with the Viennese musical journal 23, "On Jazz" in the Institute's Zeitschrift, "Farewell to Jazz" inEuropischen Revue. Yet Adorno's attempts to break out of the sociology of music were, at this time, twice thwarted:neither the study of Mannheim he had been working on for years nor extracts from his study of Husserl wereaccepted by the Zeitschrift. Impressed by Horkheimer's book of aphorisms, Dawn and Decline, Adorno beganworking on his own book of aphorisms, what would later become Minima Moralia. While at Oxford, Adornosuffered two great losses: his Aunt Agathe died in June 1935, while Alban Berg died in December of the same year.To the end of his life, Adorno never abandoned the hope of completing Berg's unfinished Lulu.At this time, Adorno was in intense correspondence with Walter Benjamin on the subject of the latters Arcades Project. After receiving an invitation from Horkheimer to visit the Institute in New York, Adorno sailed for New York on June 9, 1937 and stayed there for two weeks. While in New York, Max Horkheimers essays The Latest Attack on Metaphysics and Traditional and Critical Theory, which would soon become instructive for the Institutes self-understanding, were the subject of intense discussion. Soon after his return to Europe, Gretel moved to Britain, where she and Adorno were married on September 8, 1937; a little over a month later, Horkheimer telegrammed from New York with news of a position Adorno could take up with the Princeton Radio Project, then under the directorship of the Austrian sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. Yet Adornos work continued with studies of Beethoven and Richard Wagner (published in 1939 as "Fragments on Wagner"), drafts of which he read to Benjamin during their final meeting, in December on the Italian Riviera. According to Benjamin, these drafts were astonishing for the precision of their materialist deciphering, as well as the way in which musical facts had been made socially transparent in a way that was completely new to me.[18] In his Wagner study, the thesis later to characterize

Theodor W. Adorno 6

Dialectic of Enlightenmentman's domination of naturefirst emerges. Adorno sailed for New York on February16, 1938. Soon after settling into his new home on Riverside Drive, Adorno met with Lazarsfeld in Newark todiscuss the Projects plans for investigating the impact of broadcast music.Although he was expected to embed the Projects research within a wider theoretical context, it soon becameapparent that the Project was primarily concerned with data collection to be used by administrators for establishingwhether groups of listeners could be targeted by broadcasts specifically aimed at them. Expected to make use ofdevices with which listeners could press a button to indicate whether they liked or disliked a particular piece ofmusic, Adorno bristled with distaste and astonishment: I reflected that culture was simply the condition thatprecluded a mentality that tried to measure it.[19] Thus Adorno suggested using individual interviews to determinelistener reactions and, only three months after meeting Lasarzfeld, completed a 160-page memorandum on theProjects topic, Music in Radio. Adorno was primarily interested in how the musical material was affected by itsdistribution through the medium of radio and thought it imperative to understand how music was affected by itsbecoming part of daily life. The meaning of a Beethoven symphony, he wrote, heard while the listener is walkingaround or lying in bed is very likely to differ from its effect in a concert-hall where people sit as if they were inchurch.[20] In essays published by the Institutes Zeitschrift, Adorno dealt with that atrophy of musical culture whichhad become instrumental in accelerating tendenciestowards conformism, trivialization andstandardizationalready present in the larger culture. Unsurprisingly, Adornos studies found little resonance amongmembers of the project. At the end of 1939, when Lazarsfeld submitted a second application for funding, the musicalsection of the study was duly left out. Yet during the two years during which he worked on the Project, Adorno wasnevertheless prolific, publishing The Radio Sympthony, A Social Critique of Radio Music and On PopularMusic, texts which, along with the draft memorandum and other unpublished writings, which are now found inRobert Hullot-Kentors recent translation, Current of Music. In light of this situation, Horkheimer soon found apermanent post for Adorno at the Institute.In addition to helping with the Zeitschrift Adorno was expected to be the Institute's liaison with Benjamin, who soonpassed on to New York the study of Charles Baudelaire he hoped would serve as a model of the larger ArcadesProject. In correspondence, the two men discussed the difference in their conceptions of the relationship betweencritique and artworks which had become manifest through Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of its TechnicalReproducibility." At around the same time Adorno and Horkheimer began planning for a joint work on "dialecticallogic," which would later become Dialectic of Enlightenment. Alarmed by reports from Europe, where Adornosparents suffered increasing discrimination and Benjamin was interned in Colombes, their joint study could entertainfew delusions about its practical effects. In view of what is now threatening to engulf Europe, Horkheimer wrote,our present work is essentially destined to pass things down through the night that is approaching: a kind of messagein a bottle[21] As Adorno continued his work in New York with radio talks on music and a lecture on SorenKierkegaard's doctrine of love, Benjamin fled Paris and attempted to make an illegal border crossing. After learningthat his Spanish visa was invalid and fearing deportation back to France, Benjamin took an overdose of morphinetablets. In light of recent events, the Institute set about formulating a theory of anti-Semitism and fascism. On oneside were those who supported Franz Neumann's thesis according to which National Socialism was a form of"monopoly capital"; on the other were those who supported Fritz Pollock's "state capitalist theory." Horkheimerscontributions to this debate, in the form of the essays "The Authoritarian State," "The End of Reason" and "The Jewsand Europe" served as a foundation for what he and Adorno planned to do in their book on dialectical logic.In November 1941 Adorno followed Horkheimer to what Thomas Mann called "German California,"[22] setting up house in a Pacific Palisades neighborhood of German emigres which included Bertolt Brecht and Arnold Schoenberg. Adorno arrived with a draft of his Philosophy of New Music, a dialectical critique of twelve-tone music, which Adorno himself felt, while writing, was already a departure from the theory of art he had spent the previous decades elaborating. Horkheimer's reaction to the manuscript was wholly positive: "If I have ever in the whole of my life felt enthusiasm about anything, then I did on this occasion," he wrote after reading the manuscript.[23] The two set about completing their joint work, which transformed itself from a book on dialectical logic to a rewriting of the

Theodor W. Adorno 7

history of rationality and the Enlightenment. First published in a small mimeographed edition in May 1944 asPhilosophical Fragments, the text would wait another three years before achieving book form when it was publishedwith its definitive title, Dialectic of Enlightenment, by the Amsterdam publisher Querido Verlag. This "reflection onthe destructive aspect of progress" proceeded through chapter which treated rationality as both the liberation fromand further domination of nature, interpretations of both Homers Odyssey and the Marquis de Sade, as well asanalyses of the culture industry and anti-semitism.Their joint work completed, the two turned their attention to studies on anti-semitism and authoritarianism incollaboration with the Nevitt Sanford-led Public Opinion Study Group and the American Jewish Committee. In linewith these studies, Adorno produced an analysis of the Californian radio preacher Martin Luther Thomas. Fascistpropaganda of this sort, Adorno wrote, "simply takes people for what they are: genuine children of todaysstandardized mass culture who have been robbed to a great extent of their autonomy and spontaneity"[24] The resultof these labors, the 1950 study The Authoritarian Personality was pioneering in its combination of quantitative andqualitative methods of collecting and evaluating data as well as its development of the F-scale. After the USAentered the war in 1941, the situation of the migrs, now classed "enemy aliens" became increasingly precarious asgovernment measures turned from anti-Nazism to anti-communism. Forbidden from leaving their homes between8pm and 6am and prohibited from going more than five miles from their houses, migrs like Adorno, who wouldnot be naturalized until November 1943, were severely restricted in their movements. In addition to the aphorismswhich conclude Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno put together a collection of aphorisms in honor of Horkheimersfiftieth birthday that would later be published as Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Thesefragmentary writings, inspired by a renewed reading of Nietzsche, treated issues like emigration, totalitarianism andindividuality, as well as everyday matters such as giving presents, dwelling and the impossibility of love. InCalifornia, Adorno made the acquaintance of Charlie Chaplin and became friends with Fritz Lang and Hanns Eisler,with whom he completed a study of film music in 1944. In this study, the authors pushed for the greater usage ofavant-garde music in film, urging that music be used to supplement, not simply accompany, the visual aspect offilms. Additionally, Adorno assisted Thomas Mann on his novel Doctor Faustus after the latter asked for his help.Would you be willing," Mann wrote, "to think through with me how the workI mean Leverkuhns workmightlook; how you would do it if you were in league with the Devil?[25] At the end of October 1949, Adorno leftAmerica for Europe just as The Authoritarian Personality was being published. Before his return, Adorno had notonly reached an agreement with a Tbingen publisher to print an expanded version of Philosophy of New Music, butcompleted two compositions: Four Songs for Voice and Piano by Stefan George, op.7, and Three Choruses forFemale Voices from the Poems of Theodor Daubler, op. 8.

Post-war Europe

Return to Frankfurt University

Upon his return, Adorno helped shape the political culture of West Germany. Until his death in 1969, twenty years after his return, Adorno contributed to the intellectual foundations of the Federal Republic, as a professor at Frankfurt University, critic of the vogue enjoyed by Heideggerian philosophy, partisan of critical sociology and teacher of music at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. Adorno resumed his teaching duties at the university soon after his arrival,Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Chronological items with seminars on "Kants Transcendental Dialectic," aesthetics, Hegel, Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Knowledge and The Concept of Knowledge. Adornos surprise at his students' passionate interest in intellectual matters did not, however, blind him to continuing problems within Germany: The literary climate was dominated by writers who had remained in Germany during Hitler's rule, the government re-employed people who had been active in the Nazi apparatus and people were generally loath to own up to their own collaboration or the guilt they thus incurred. Instead, the ruined city of Frankfurt continued as if nothing had happened,[citation needed] holding on to ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good despite the atrocities, hanging on to a culture that had itself been lost in rubble

Theodor W. Adorno 8

or killed off in the concentration camps. All the enthusiasm Adorno's students showed for intellectual matters couldnot erase the suspicion that, in the words of Max Frisch, culture had become an "alibi" for the absence of politicalconsciousness.[26] Yet the foundations for what would come to be known as "The Frankfurt School" were soon laid:Horkheimer resumed his chair in social philosophy and the Institute for Social Research, rebuilt, became a lightningrod for critical thought.

Essays on Fascism

Starting with his 1947 essay Wagner, Nietzsche and Hitler,[27] Adorno produced a series of influential works todescribe psychological fascist traits. One of these works was The Authoritarian Personality (1950),[28] published as acontribution to the Studies in Prejudice performed by multiple research institutes in the US, and consisting of a'qualitative interpretations' that uncovered the authoritarian character of test persons through indirectquestions.[citation needed] The books have had a major influence on sociology and remain highly debated. In 1951 hecontinued on the topic with his essay Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda, in which he said that"Psychological dispositions do not actually cause fascism; rather, fascism defines a psychological area which can besuccessfully exploited by the forces which promote it for entirely non-psychological reasons of self-interest."[29]

In 1952 Adorno participated in a group experiment, revealing residual National Socialist attitudes among therecently democratized Germans. He then published two influential essays, The Meaning of Working Through thePast (1959), and Education after Auschwitz (1966), in which he argued on the survival of the uneradicated NationalSocialism in the mind-sets and institutions of the post-1945 Germany, and that there is still a real risk that it couldraise again.[30] Later on, however, Jean Amrywho had been tortured at Auschwitzwould sharply object thatAdorno, rather than addressing such political concerns, was exploiting Auschwitz for his metaphysical phantom"absolute negativity" ("absolute Negativitt"), using a language intoxicated by itself ("von sich selber bis zurSelbstblendung entzckte Sprache").[31]

Public events

In September 1951 Adorno returned to the United States for a six-week visit, during which he attended the openingof the Hacker Psychiatry Foundation in Beverly Hills, met Leo Lowenthal and Herbert Marcuse in New York andsaw his mother for the last time. After stopping in Paris, where he met Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Michel Leiris andRene Leibowitz, Adorno delivered a lecture entitled "The Present State of Empirical Social Research in Germany" ata conference on opinion research. Here he emphasized the importance of data collection and statistical evaluationwhile asserting that such empirical methods have only an auxiliary function and must lead to the formation oftheories which would raise the harsh facts to the level of consciousness.[32]

With Horkheimer as dean of the Arts Faculty, then rector of the university, responsibilities for the Institute's workfell upon Adorno. At the same time, however, Adorno renewed his musical work: with talks at the KranichsteinerMusikgesellschaft, another in connection with a production of Ernst Kreneks opera Leben des Orest, and a seminaron Criteria of New Music at the Fifth International Summer Course for New Music at Kranichstein. Adorno alsobecame increasingly involved with the publishing house of Peter Suhrkamp, inducing the latter to publishBenjamins Berlin Childhood Around 1900, Kracauers writings and a two-volume edition of Benjamins writings.Adornos own recently published Minima Moralia was not only well received in the press, but also met with greatadmiration from Thomas Mann, who wrote to Adorno from America in 1952:

I have spent days attached to your book as if by a magnet. Every day brings new fascination concentratednourishment. It is said that the companion star to Sirius, white in colour, is made of such dense material that acubic inch of it would weigh a tonne here. This is why it has such an extremely powerful gravitational field; inthis respect it is similar to your book.[33]

Yet Adorno was no less moved by other public events: protesting the publication of Heinrich Mann's novel Professor Unrat with its film title, The Blue Angel; declaring his sympathy with those who protested the scandal of big-game

Theodor W. Adorno 9

hunting and penning a defense of prostitutes.

More essays on mass culture and literature

Because Adornos American citizenship would have been forfeited by the middle of 1952 had he continued to stayoutside the country, he returned once again to Santa Monica to survey his prospects at the Hacker Foundation. Whilethere he wrote a content analysis of newspaper horoscopes (now collected in The Stars Down to Earth), the essaysTelevision as Ideology and Prologue to Television; even so, he was pleased when, at the end of ten months, hewas enjoined to return as co-director of the Institute.Back in Frankfurt, he renewed his academic duties and, from 1952 to 1954, completed the essays Notes on Kafka,Valry Proust Museum and an essay on Schoenberg following the composer's death, all of which were included inthe 1955 essay collection Prisms. In response to the publication of Thomas Mann's The Black Swan, Adorno penneda long letter to the author, who then approved its publication in the literary journal Akzente. A second collection ofessays, Notes to Literature, appeared in 1958. After meeting Samuel Beckett while delivering a series of lectures inParis the same year, Adorno set to work on "Trying to Understand Endgame," which, along with studies of Proust,Valry and Balzac, formed the central texts of the 1961 publication of the second volume of his Notes to Literature.Adornos entrance into literary discussions continued in his June 1963 lecture at the annual conference of theHlderlin Society. At the Philosophers Conference of October 1962 in Mnster, at which Habermas wrote thatAdorno was "A writer among bureaucrats", Adorno presented "Progress."[34]

Although the Zeitschrift was never revived, the Institute nevertheless published a series of important sociologicalbooks, including a collection of essays entitled Sociologica (1955), the Gruppenexperiment (1955), a study of worksatisfaction among workers in Mannesmann called Betriebsklima and the Soziologische Exkurse, a textbook-likeanthology intended as an introductory work about the discipline.

Public figure

Throughout the fifties and sixties, Adorno became a public figure, not simply through his books and essays, but alsothrough his appearances in radio and newspapers. In talks, interviews and round-table discussions broadcast onHessen Radio, South-West Radio and Radio Bremen, Adorno discussed topics as diverse as The AdministeredWorld (September 1950), What is the Meaning of Working Through the Past? (February 1960) to The TeachingProfession and its Taboos (August 1965). Additionally, he frequently wrote for Frankfurter Allgemeine, FrankfurterRundschau and the weekly Die Zeit.At the invitation of Wolfgang Steinecke, Adorno took part in the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music inKranichstein from 1951 to 1958. Yet conflicts between the so-called Darmstadt school, which included composerslike Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Karel Goeyvaerts, Luciano Berio and Gottfried Michael Koenig, soonarose, receiving explicit expression in Adorno's 1954 lecture, "The Aging of the New Music", where he argued thatatonality's freedom was being restricted to serialism in much the same way as it was once restricted by twelve-tonetechnique. With his friend Eduard Steuermann, Adorno feared that music was being sacrificed to stubbornrationalization. During this time Adorno not only produced a significant series of notes on Beethoven (which wasnever completed and only published posthumously), but also published Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy in 1960. Inhis 1961 return to Kranichstein, Adorno called for what he termed a "musique informelle". which would possess theability "really and truly to be what it is, without the ideological pretense of being something else. Or rather, to admitfrankly the fact of non-identity and to follow through its logic to the end."[35]

Theodor W. Adorno 10

Post-war German culture

At the same time Adorno struck up relationships with contemporary German-language poets such as Paul Celan andIngeborg Bachmann. Adornos 1949 dictum"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric"posed the question ofwhat German culture could mean after Auschwitz; his own continual revision of this dictumin Negative Dialectics,for example, he wrote that "Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream";while in Commitment, he wrote in 1962 that the dictum "expresses in negative form the impulse which inspirescommitted literature"was part of post-war Germanys struggle with history and culture. Adorno additionallybefriended the writer and poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger as well as the film-maker Alexander Kluge.In 1963, Adorno was elected to the post of chairman of the German Sociological Society, where he presided overtwo important conferences: in 1964, on "Max Weber and Sociology" and in 1968 on "Late Capitalism or IndustrialSociety". A debate launched in 1961 by Adorno and Karl Popper, later published as the Positivist Dispute in GermanSociology, arose out of disagreements at the 1959 14th German Sociology Conference in Berlin.Adorno's critique of the dominant climate of post-war Germany was also directed against the pathos that had grownup around Heideggerianism, as practiced by writers like Karl Jaspers and Otto Friedrich Bollow, and which hadsubsequently seeped into public discourse. His 1964 publication of The Jargon of Authenticity took aim at the halosuch writers had attached to words like "angst", "decision" and "leap". After seven years of work, Adorno completedNegative Dialectics in 1966, after which, during the summer semester of 1967 and the winter semester of 1967-8, heoffered regular philosophy seminars to discuss the book chapter by chapter. Among the students at these seminarswere the Americans Angela Davis and Irving Wohlfarth. One objection which would soon take on ever greaterimportance, was that critical thought must adopt the standpoint of the oppressed, to which Adorno replied thatnegative dialectics was concerned "with the dissolution of standpoint thinking itself."

Confrontations with students

At the time of Negative Dialectics' publication, the fragility of West German democracy led to the increasing studentprotests. Monopolistic trends in the media, an educational crisis in the universities, the Shah of Persia's 1967 statevisit, German support for the war in Vietnam and the emergency laws combined to create a highly unstable situation.Like many of his students, Adorno too opposed the emergency laws, as well as the war in Vietnam, which, he said,proved the continued existence of the "world of torture that had begun in Auschwitz[36] The situation onlydeteriorated with the police shooting of Benno Ohnesorg at a protest against the Shah's visit. This death, as well asthe subsequent acquittal of the responsible officer, were both commented upon in Adorno's lectures. As politicizationincreased, rifts developed within both the Institute's relationship with its students as well as within the Institute itself.Soon Adorno himself would become an object of the students' ire. At the invitation of Peter Szondi, Adorno wasinvited to the Free University of Berlin to give a lecture on Goethe's Iphigenie in Tauris. After a group of studentsmarched to the lectern, unfurling a banner that read "Berlins left-wing fascists greet Teddy the Classicist," a numberof those present left the lecture in protest after Adorno refused to abandon his talk in favor of discussing his attitudeon the current political situation. Adorno shortly thereafter participated in a friendly[citation needed] andproductive[citation needed] meeting with the Berlin Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS) and discussed"Student Unrest" with Szondi on West German Radio. But as 1968 progressed, Adorno became increasingly criticalof the students' disruptions to university life. His isolation was only compounded by articles published in themagazine alternative, which, following the lead of Hannah Arendts articles in Merkur, claimed Adorno hadsubjected Benjamin to pressure during his years of exile in Berlin and compiled Benjamins Writings and Letterswith a great deal of bias. In response, Benjamins longtime friend Gershom Scholem, wrote to the editor of Merkur toexpress his disapproval of the "in part, shameful, not to say disgraceful" remarks by Arendt.[37]

Relations between students and the West German state continued deteriorating. In spring 1968, a prominent SDS spokesman, Rudi Dutschke, was gunned down in the streets; in response, massive demonstrations took place, directed in particular against the Springer Press, which had led a campaign to vilify the students. An open appeal

Theodor W. Adorno 11

published in Die Zeit, signed by Adorno, called for an inquiry into the social reasons that gave rise to thisassassination attempt as well as an investigation into the Springer Press' manipulation of public opinion. At the sametime, however, Adorno protested against disruptions of his own lectures and refused to express his solidarity withtheir political goals, maintaining instead his autonomy as a theoretician. Adorno rejected the so-called unity oftheory and praxis advocated by the students and argued that the students' actions were premised upon a mistakenanalysis of the situation. The building of barricades, he wrote to Marcuse, is "ridiculous against those who administerthe bomb."[38]

In September 1968 Adorno went to Vienna for the publication of Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link. Upon hisreturn to Frankfurt, events prevented his concentrating upon the book on aesthetics he wished to write: "Validstudent claims and dubious actions," he wrote to Marcuse, "are all so mixed up together that all productive work andeven sensible thought are scarcely possibly any more."[39] After striking students threatened to strip the Institute'ssociology seminar rooms of their furnishings and equipment, the police were brought in to close the building.Adorno began writing an introduction to a collection of poetry by Rudolf Borchardt, which was connected with atalk entitled "Charmed Language," delivered in Zurich, followed by a talk on aesthetics in Paris where he metBeckett again. Beginning in October 1966, Adorno took up work on Aesthetic Theory. In June 1969 he completedCatchwords: Critical Models. During the winter semester of 1968-9 Adorno was on sabbatical leave from theuniversity and thus able to dedicate himself to the completion of his book of aesthetics.For the summer semester Adorno planned a lecture course entitled "An Introduction to Dialectical Thinking," as wellas a seminar on the dialectics of subject and object. But at the first lecture Adorno's attempt to open up the lectureand invite questions whenever they arose degenerated into a disruption from which he quickly fled: after a studentwrote on the blackboard "If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease," three women students approachedthe lectern, bared their breasts and scattered flower petals over his head.[40] Yet Adorno continued to resist blanketcondemnations of the protest movement which would have only strengthened the reactionary thesis according towhich political irrationalism was the result of Adorno's teaching. After further disruptions to his lectures, Adornocanceled the lectures for the rest of the seminar, continuing only with his philosophy seminar. In the summer of1969, weary from these activities, Adorno returned once again to Zermatt, Switzerland, at the foot of Matterhorn torestore his strength. On August 6 he died of a heart attack.

Theory

Part of a series on the

Frankfurt School

Major works

Theodor W. Adorno 12

Reason and Revolution

The Work of Art in theAge of Mechanical Reproduction

Eclipse of ReasonThe Fear of Freedom

Dialectic of EnlightenmentMinima Moralia

Eros and CivilizationOne-Dimensional Man

Negative Dialectics

The Structural Transformationof the Public Sphere

The Theory of Communicative Action

Notable theorists

Max Horkheimer Theodor AdornoHerbert Marcuse Walter Benjamin

Erich Fromm Friedrich PollockLeo Lwenthal Jrgen Habermas

Important concepts

Critical theory Dialectic PraxisPsychoanalysis Antipositivism

Popular culture Culture industryAdvanced capitalism

Privatism Non-identityCommunicative rationality

Legitimation crisis

Adorno's work sets out from a central insight he shares with all early 20th century avant-garde art: The recognitionof what is primitive in ourselves and the world itself. Neither Picasso's fascination with African sculpture norMondrian's reduction of painting to its most elementary componentthe lineis comprehensible outside thisconcern with primitivism Adorno shared with the century's most radical art. At that time, the Western world, besetby world-wars, colonialist consolidation and accelerating commodification, sank into the very barbarism civilizationhad prided itself in overcoming. According to Adorno, society's self-preservation had become indistinguishable fromsocietally sanctioned self-sacrifice: of "primitive" peoples, primitive aspects of the ego and those primitive, mimeticdesires found in imitation and sympathy. Adorno's theory proceeds from an understanding of this primitive quality ofreality which seeks to counteract whatever aims to either repress this primitive aspect or further those systems ofdomination set in place by this return to barbarism. From this perspective, Adorno's writings on politics, philosophy,music and literature could be described as a lifelong critique of the ways in which each tries to justify self-mutilationas the necessary price of self-preservation. According to Adorno's translator Robert Hullot-Kentor, the centralmotive of Adorno's work thus consists in determining "how life could be more than the struggle forself-preservation." [41] In this sense, the principle of self-preservation, Adorno writes in Negative Dialectics, isnothing but "the law of doom thus far obeyed by history."[42] At its most basic, Adorno's thought is motivated by afundamental critique of this law.Adorno was chiefly influenced by Max Weber's critique of disenchantment, Georg Lukcs's Hegelian interpretation of Marxism, as well as Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Adorno, along with the other major Frankfurt School theorists Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, argued that advanced capitalism had managed to contain or liquidate the forces that would bring about its collapse and that the revolutionary moment, when it would have been possible to transform it into socialism, had passed. As he put it at the beginning of his Negative Dialectics (1966), philosophy is still necessary because the time to realise it was missed. Adorno argued that capitalism had become more entrenched through its attack on the objective basis of revolutionary consciousness and through liquidation of

Theodor W. Adorno 13

the individualism that had been the basis of critical consciousness.

MusicIn his early essays for the Vienna-based journal Anbruch, Adorno claimed that musical progress is proportional tothe composer's ability to constructively deal with the possibilities and limitations contained within what Adornocalled the "musical material." For Adorno, twelve-tone serialism constitutes a decisive, historically developedmethod of composition. The objective validity of the composition, according to Adorno, rests with neither thecomposer's genius nor the work's conformity with prior standards, but with the way in which the work coherentlyexpresses the dialectic of the material. In this sense, the contemporary absence of composers of the status of Bach orBeethoven is not the sign of musical regression; instead, new music is to be credited with laying bare aspects of themusical material previously repressed: The musical material's liberation from number, the harmonic series and tonalharmony. Thus, historical progress is only achieved by the composer who "submits to the work and seemingly doesnot undertake anything active except to follow where it leads." Because historical experience and social relations areembedded within this musical material, it is to the analysis of such material that the critic must turn. In the face ofthis radical liberation of the musical material, Adorno came to criticize those who, like Stravinsky, withdrew fromthis freedom by taking recourse to forms of the past as well as those who turned twelve-tone composition into atechnique which dictated the rules of composition.Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He arguedthat the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulatedthe population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures availablethrough consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economiccircumstances." Capitalist production so confines them, body and soul, that they fall helpless victims to what isoffered them."[] The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variationson the same theme. He wrote that "the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production ofconsumption goods" but this is concealed under "the manipulation of taste and the official culture's pretense ofindividualism".[43] By doing so, the culture industry appeals to every single consumer in a unique and personalizedway, all while maintaining minimal costs and effort on their behalf. Consumers purchase the illusion that everycommodity or product is tailored to the individual's personal preference, by incorporating subtle modifications orinexpensive "add-ons" in order to keep the consumer returning for new purchases, and therefore more revenue forthe corporation system. Adorno conceptualized this phenomenon as pseudo-individualization and thealways-the-same. [citation needed]

Adorno's analysis allowed for a critique of mass culture from the left which balanced the critique of popular culturefrom the right. From both perspectives left and right the nature of cultural production was felt to be at the root ofsocial and moral problems resulting from the consumption of culture. However, while the critique from the rightemphasized moral degeneracy ascribed to sexual and racial influences within popular culture, Adorno located theproblem not with the content, but with the objective realities of the production of mass culture and its effects, e.g. asa form of reverse psychology. [citation needed] Thinkers influenced by Adorno believe that today's society has evolvedin a direction foreseen by him, especially in regard to the past (Auschwitz), morals or the Culture Industry. The latterhas become a particularly productive, yet highly contested term in cultural studies. Many of Adorno's reflections onaesthetics and music have only just begun to be debated, as a collection of essays on the subject, many of which hadnot previously been translated into English, has only recently been collected and published as Essays on Music.[44]

Adorno's work in the years before his death was shaped by the idea of "negative dialectics", set out especially in his book of that title. A key notion in the work of the Frankfurt School since Dialectic of Enlightenment had been the idea of thought becoming an instrument of domination that subsumes all objects under the control of the (dominant) subject, especially through the notion of identity, i.e. of identifying as real in nature and society only that which harmonized or fit with dominant concepts, and regarding as unreal or non-existent everything that did not. [citation

Theodor W. Adorno 14

needed] Adorno's "negative dialectics" was an attempt to articulate a non-dominating thought that would recognize itslimitations and accept the non-identity and reality of that which could not be subsumed under the subject's concepts.Indeed, Adorno sought to ground the critical bite of his sociological work in his critique of identity, which he took tobe a reification in thought of the commodity form or exchange relation which always presumes a false identitybetween different things. The potential to criticise arises from the gap between the concept and the object, which cannever go into the former without remainder. This gap, this non-identity in identity, was the secret to a critique of bothmaterial life and conceptual reflection. [citation needed]

Adornos reputation as a musicologist has been in steady decline since his death. His sweeping criticisms of jazz andchampioning of the second Viennese school in opposition to Stravinsky have signally failed the test of time. Thedistinguished American scholar, Richard Taruskin [45] declares Adorno to be preposterously over-rated. Even afellow Marxist such as the historian and jazz critic Eric Hobsbawm saw Adorno's writings as containing some of thestupidest pages ever written about jazz. [46] Irritation with Adornos tunnel vision started even while he was alive.He may have championed Schoenberg, but the composer signally failed to return the compliment: I have never beenable to bear the fellowIt is disgusting, by the way how he treats Stravinsky. [47]

Marxist criticismsAccording to Horst Mller's Kritik der kritischen Theorie ("Critique of Critical Theory"), Adorno posits totality as anautomatic system. This is consistent with Adorno's idea of society as a self-regulating system, from which one mustescape (but from which nobody can escape). For him it was existent, but inhuman. Mller argues against theexistence of such a system and claims that Critical Theory provides no practical solution for societal change. Heconcludes that Jrgen Habermas, in particular, and the Frankfurt School in general, misconstrue Marx.

StandardizationThe phenomenon of standardization is a concept used to characterize the formulaic products of capitalist-drivenmass media and mass culture that appeal to the lowest common denominator in pursuit of maximum profit(Laughey:2007:204). It would suggest that in todays modern society (edited in 2012), according to Adorno weinhabit a media culture driven society in which one of its main characteristics is product consumption. Mass media isemployed to vehicle message about products and services to consumers in order to convince these individuals topurchase the commodity they are advertising. Standardization consists of the production of large amounts ofcommodities to then pursue consumers in order to gain the maximum profit possible.They do this by, as mentioned above, individualising products to give the illusion to consumers that they are in factpurchasing a product or service that was specifically designed for them: Adorno highlights the issues created withthe construction of popular music. Where different samples of music used in the creation of todays chart toppingsongs, are put together in order to create, re-create and modify numerous tracks by using the same variety of samplesfrom one song to another. He distinguishes the difference between Apologetic music & Critical music.Apologetic music is defined as the highly produced and promoted music of the pop music industry: music that iscomposed of variable parts and interchanged to create several different songs. The social and psychologicalfunctions of popular music [is that it] acts like a social cement (Adorno, 1990) to keep people obedient andsubservient to the status quo of existing power structures. (Laughey:2007:125)[48]

Whereas serious music, according to Adorno, achieves excellence when its whole is greater than the sum of its parts.The example he chooses to expose is that of Beethovens symphonies: [his] greatness shows itself in the completesubordination of the accidentally private melodic elements to the form as a whole. (Laughey:2010:125)Standardization not only refers to the products of the culture industry but to the consumers as well: consumers are daily, numerous times a day, being bombarded by media advertising. Being pushed and shoved into consuming products and services being presented to them by the media system. The masses have become conditioned by the culture industry: which makes the impact of standardization much more important. By not realizing the impact of

Theodor W. Adorno 15

social media and commercial advertising, the individual is caught in a situation where conformity is the norm.During consumption the masses become characterized by the commodities which they use and exchange amongthemselves. (Laughey:2007:124)

Adorno's responses to his criticsAs a pioneer of a self-reflexive sociology who prefigured Bourdieu's ability to factor in the effect of reflection on thesocietal object, Adorno realized that some criticism (including deliberate disruption of his classes in the 1960s) couldnever be answered in a dialogue between equals if, as he seems to have believed, what the naive ethnographer orsociologist thinks of a human essence is always changing over time.[49]

Adorno's sociological methods

The "Adorno-Ampel" (Adorno-traffic light) onSenckenberganlage, a street which divides the

Institute for Social Research from GoetheUniversity FrankfurtAdorno requested its

construction after a pedestrian death in 1962, andit was finally installed 25 years later.[50]

As Adorno believed that sociology needs to be self-reflective andself-critical, he also believed that the language the sociologist uses, likethe language of the ordinary person, is a political construct in largemeasure that uses, often unreflectingly, concepts installed by dominantclasses and social structures (such as our notion of "deviance" whichincludes both genuinely deviant individual and "hustlers" operatingbelow social norms because they lack the capital to operate above: foran analysis of this phenomenon, cf. Pierre Bourdieu's book The Weightof the World). He felt that those at the top of the Institute needed to bethe source primarily of theories for evaluation and empirical testing, aswell as people who would process the "facts" discovered...includingrevising theories that were found to be false. For example, in essayspublished in Germany on Adorno's return from the USA, and reprintedin the Critical Models essays collection (ISBN 0-231-07635-5),Adorno praised the egalitarianism and openness of US society based

on his sojourn in New York and the Los Angeles area between 1935 and 1955. [citation needed]

One example of the clash of intellectual culture and Adorno's methods can be found in Paul Lazarsfeld, theAmerican sociologist for whom Adorno worked in the middle 1930s after fleeing Hitler. As Rolf Wiggershausrecounts in The Frankfurt School, Its History, Theories and Political Significance (MIT 1995), Lazarsfeld was thedirector of a project, funded and inspired by David Sarnoff (the head of RCA), to discover both the sort of music thatlisteners of radio liked and ways to improve their "taste", so that RCA could profitably air more classical music.Lazarsfeld, however, had trouble both with the prose style of the work Adorno handed in and what Lazarsfeldthought was Adorno's "lack of discipline in ... presentation".[51]

Adorno himself provided the following personal anecdote:"What I mean by reified consciousness, I can illustratewithout elaborate philosophical contemplationmostsimply with an American experience. Among the frequently changing colleagues which the Princeton Projectprovided me with, was a young lady. After a few days, she had gained confidence in me, and asked mostkindly: Dr Adorno, would you mind a personal question?. I said, It depends on the question, but just goahead, and she went on: Please tell me: are you an extrovert or an introvert?. It was as if she, as a livingbeing, already thought according to the model of multi-choice questions in questionnaires. [52]

Theodor W. Adorno 16

Adorno translated into EnglishWhile even German readers can find Adorno's work difficult to understand, an additional problem for Englishreaders is that his German idiom is particularly difficult to translate into English. A similar difficulty of translation istrue of Hegel, Heidegger, and a number of other German philosophers and poets. As a result, some early translatorstended toward over-literalness. In recent years, Edmund Jephcott and Stanford University Press have published newtranslations of some of Adorno's lectures and books, including Introduction to Sociology, Problems of MoralPhilosophy and his transcribed lectures on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Aristotle's "Metaphysics", and a newtranslation of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. Professor Henry Pickford, of the University of Colorado at Boulder,has translated many of Adorno's works such as The meaning of Working Through the Past. A new translation hasalso appeared of Aesthetic Theory and the Philosophy of New Music by Robert Hullot-Kentor, from the University ofMinnesota Press. Adorno's correspondence with Alban Berg, Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction, and theletters to Adorno's parents, have been translated by Wieland Hoban and published by Polity Press. These freshtranslations are less literal in their rendering of German sentences and words, and are more accessible to Englishreaders. [citation needed] The Group Experiment, which had been unavailable to English readers, is now available in anaccessible translation by Jeffrey K. Olick and Andrew J. Perrin on Harvard University Press, along with introductorymaterial explaining its relation to the rest of Adorno's work and 20th century public opinion research.

Bibliography Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic (1933) Dialectic of Enlightenment (with Max Horkheimer, 1944) Composing for the Films (1947) Philosophy of New Music (1949) The Authoritarian Personality (1950) Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life (1951) In Search of Wagner (1952) Prisms (1955) Against Epistemology: A Metacritique; Studies in Husserl and the Phenomenological Antinomies (1956) Dissonanzen. Musik in der verwalteten Welt (1956) Notes to Literature I (1958) Sound Figures (1959) Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy (1960) Notes to Literature II (1961) Hegel: Three Studies (1963) Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (1963) Quasi una Fantasia (1963) The Jargon of Authenticity (1964) Night Music: Essays on Music 1928-1962 (1964) Negative Dialectics (1966) Alban Berg: Master of the Smallest Link (1968) Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (1969) Aesthetic Theory (1970) Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music; Fragments and Texts (1993) Current of Music (2006)

Theodor W. Adorno 17

Notes[1] Christine Fillion, "Adorno's Marginalien zu Theorie und Praxis: In Praise of Discontinuity", Humanitas, Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2012.[2][2] Oxford Dictionary of English[27] Adorno, TW (1947) Wagner, Nietzsche and Hitler in Kenyan Review Vol.ix (1)[28] Adorno, Politics and Economics in the Interview Material (http:/ / ada. evergreen. edu/ ~arunc/ texts/ frankfurt/ ap/ politics. pdf), ch.17[29] Hammer, Espen (2006) Adorno and the political (http:/ / books. google. com/ books?id=X3L5R3kiOh4C& pg=PA56), pp.567[30][30] Hammer (2006) p.69[31] Andreas Dorschel, 'Der Geist ist stets gestrt', in: Sddeutsche Zeitung nr. 129 (7 June 2004), p. 14.[45][45] Taruskin, Richard. 'The Oxford History of Western Music'. Oxford University Press, 2005, p.xiv.[46][46] Hobsbawm, Eric 'The Jazz Scene' 1993, p. 300. New York, Pantheon.[47][47] Letter of 5 December 1949, quoted in Stuckenschmidt, Arnold Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work, trans. H. Searle London: John

Calder, 1977.[49] For a comparison of Adorno's and Bourdieu's rather divergent conceptions of reflexivity, see: Karakayali, Nedim. 2004. Reading Bourdieu

with Adorno: The Limits of Critical Theory and Reflexive Sociology, Sociology (Journal of the British Sociological Association), v.38, n.2,pp. 351368. (http:/ / soc. sagepub. com/ cgi/ content/ abstract/ 38/ 2/ 351)

[52] Theodor W. Adorno, Stichworte. Kritische Modelle, 2nd edition. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969, p. 122 (also cited in Friedemann Grenz,Adornos Philosophie in Grundbegriffen. Auflosung einiger Deutungsprobleme. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974, p. 43.).

References Adorno, Theodor (1992). Notes to Literature: Volume two. New York: Columbia University Press. Adorno, Theodor (2000). Brian O'Connor, ed. The Adorno Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Adorno, Theodor (2002). Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. Adorno, Theodor (2003). Negative Dialectics. New York: Continuum. Arato, Andrew, ed. (1982). The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum. Claussen, Detlev (2008). Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Duro, Fabio Akcelrud (JulyAugust 2008). "Robert Hullot-Kentor in Conversation with Fabio Akcelrud Duro"

(http:/ / www. brooklynrail. org/ 2008/ 07/ art/ robert-hullot-kentor-in-conversation-with-fabio-ackelrud-durao).The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture. Retrieved 28 November 2011.

Mller-Doohm, Stefan (2005). Adorno: A Biography. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Wiggershaus, Rolf (1995). The Frankfurt School, Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Cambridge,

MA: MIT Press.

Further reading Gerhardt, Christina. Ed. Adorno and Ethics. New German Critique 97 (2006). Hohendahl, Peter Uwe. Prismatic Thought: Theodor W. Adorno. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Jarvis, Simon. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity, 1998. Jay, Martin. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research

19231950. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Jay, Martin. Adorno. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1984.

External links Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory. (http:/ / www. upress. umn. edu/ Books/ A/ adorno_aestheticpb. html)

University of Minnesota Press (http:/ / www. upress. umn. edu), 1996 Gerhardt, Christina. "Theodor W. Adorno." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Eds.

Michael Groden, Martin Greiswirth and Imre Szeman. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Guide, 2005. (http:/ /www. litguide. press. jhu. edu/ )

Theodor W. Adorno (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ adorno) entry by Lambert Zuidervaart in the StanfordEncyclopedia of Philosophy

Theodor W. Adorno 18

Gravesite (http:/ / www. findagrave. com/ cgi-bin/ fg. cgi?page=gr& GRid=7948579) Illuminations The Critical Theory Project (http:/ / www. gseis. ucla. edu/ faculty/ kellner/ illumina Folder/ ador.

htm) Odysseus and the Siren Call of Reason: The Frankfurt School Critique of Enlightenment (http:/ / www.

othervoices. org/ cubowman/ siren. html) published in Other Voices, n.1 v.1, 1997. "Adorno during the 1950s" by Juergen Habermas (http:/ / www. logosjournal. com/ habermas. htm)

Online works by Adorno The Adorno Reference Archive (http:/ / www. marxists. org/ reference/ archive/ adorno/ index. htm) at

Marxists.org. Contains complete texts of Enlightenment as Mass Deception, Supramundane Character of theHegelian World Spirit and Minima Moralia.

Negative Dialectics (http:/ / www. efn. org/ ~dredmond/ ndtrans. html) at efn.org.

Article Sources and Contributors 19

Article Sources and ContributorsTheodor W. Adorno Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=562629170 Contributors: 1297, 216.36.64.xxx, ACinfo, AdRock, Adalgise, Adamtristramlee, Akin kay, Alansohn,Aldux, All Hallow's Wraith, Allformweek, AllyD, Anclation, Andreasmperu, Andrew Norman, Andycjp, Antandrus, Anthony Krupp, Anthrophilos, Apalsola, Arsene, Asparagus, Atavi, Atlan,Attilios, BD2412, Barsoomian, Bartleby, Bbtommy, Begalangoram, Bejnar, Bender235, Biophily, Bjankuloski06en, Blathnaid, Bora Nesic, Bornintheguz, Brnstig, Buffyg, CCS81, Carabinieri,Causa sui, Cdg1072, Ceharanka, Charles Matthews, Chicheley, Christian Roess, Christina Gerhardt, Circumscriber, Cjs2111, Coffeepusher, Cognition, Conf, Conversion script, Cwhig1848,CyRxRich, D6, DASonnenfeld, DJ Silverfish, DSatz, Danohuiginn, Darwinek, David91, Deb, Demmy, Dgw, Diannaa, DionysosProteus, Dirac1933, Doctormatt, Dontworry, Dorfe, Download,Dsp13, Dunkelweizen, DynamoDegsy, Ekserevnitis, Eloquence, Erianna, Ernalve, Esperant, Ewulp, Fayenatic london, FeanorStar7, Ferhengvan, Florestan2006, Formeruser-81, Francetourdetour,Freako, Fredrik, Freshacconci, Gabbe, Gadfium, Gdarin, George Kaplan, Glen Worthey, Gobonobo, Graham87, Gregbard, Gryffindor, Halaleater1234, Hans castorp81, Hephaestos, Hmains,Howdoesitflee, Hu12, Hyacinth, Ian Pitchford, Intangible, Inwind, Ioeth, JCGTU, JForget, JHunterJ, Jacques Custard, Jahsonic, Jbonilla 61, Jboy, JeLuF, Jemmy Button, Jesper Gerved, Jjshapiro,Jlittlet, Jmy37, Joao Xavier, Johnbod, Johncmullen1960, Johnpacklambert, Jon Awbrey, Jon Harald Sby, Jpilo024, Juniper4589, Jurriaan, Jyril, KSchutte, Kam Solusar, Kane5187, Kanie,Karl-Henner, Karpouzi, Kelson, Kemokid70, Khazar2, Kingjeff, Kkm010, Knucmo2, Koavf, Krueschan, Ksmith, Kylealanhale, Lichtconlon, Liso, LittleWink, Lkaelin, Lucidish, Lulu of theLotus-Eaters, Lupo, M3taphysical, Magioladitis, Mani1, Massimo Macconi, Matheusbonibittencourt, Matthew Fennell, Maurice Carbonaro, Mav, Mayumashu, Miguelrdep, Mlessard, MobiusSoul, Monegasque, Mr-Thomas, Muijz, Nagelfar, Namenotek, Naval Scene, Nfu-peng, NiamhInTheSky, Niceguyedc, NickelShoe, Nishidani, Noosphere, Notyetlost, Nwe, Obradovic Goran,Ofrahod, Ohconfucius, Olessi, Omnipaedista, Owen, PamD, Paul Barlow, Paulcardan, Pauper Aristoteles, Penarc, Petri Krohn, PfiPfo, Phil Sandifer, Philip Cross, Pink!Teen, Poor Yorick, Pouya,Pteron, Publunch, Pulpculture, Q9, Quadell, Quuxplusone, R Lowry, R'n'B, RJFF, Radgeek, RafaAzevedo, Rastko Pocesta, Rbellin, Reyk, Rich Farmbrough, RichardF, Rjwilmsi,Rms125a@hotmail.com, Robina Fox, Rocastelo, Rothorpe, Rrburke, Rufwork, Ruhrjung, RyanGerbil10, SJP, Salt Yeung, Sangild, Schaengel89, SchuminWeb, Semitransgenic, Shanoman,Shenme, Sherlock Holmes Fan, Sicilianmandolin, Simonides, Sindinero, Softlavender, Soklapptdasnie, Spencerpiers, Spinoza1111, Stella Mercer, Stirling Newberry, Str1977, Straw Cat,Suidafrikaan, SummerWithMorons, Sun Creator, TBHecht, THB, Tdombos, Teneriff, TheMadBaron, TheOldJacobite, TheScotch, TheodorHu, Tillwe, Tomkeene, Tony Sidaway, TonyClarke,Tothebarricades.tk, Tsugaru, Tyrannus Mundi, Ump111, Universitytruth, UtherSRG, Vaganyik, Vbell, Vojvodaen, Waxworklibation, Whosyourjudas, Will Beback, William Allen Simpson,Wknight94, Woffie, Woland1234, Woodworm67, Xanchester, Zelchenko, Zujine, , , , pa, , 352 anonymous edits

Image Sources, Licenses and ContributorsFile:AdornoHorkheimerHabermasbyJeremyJShapiro2.png Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:AdornoHorkheimerHabermasbyJeremyJShapiro2.png License: CreativeCommons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: Jeremy J. Shapiro. Original uploader was Jjshapiro at en.wikipediaFile:Ffm-adorno-ampel001.jpg Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Ffm-adorno-ampel001.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 UnportedContributors: Dontworry, EvaK, T.h., Torben

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Theodor W. AdornoLife and careerEarly years: FrankfurtVienna, Frankfurt, and BerlinExile: Oxford, London, New York, Los AngelesPost-war EuropeReturn to Frankfurt UniversityEssays on FascismPublic eventsMore essays on mass culture and literaturePublic figurePost-war German cultureConfrontations with students

TheoryMusicMarxist criticisms

StandardizationAdorno's responses to his critics

Adorno's sociological methodsAdorno translated into EnglishBibliographyNotesReferencesFurther readingExternal linksOnline works by Adorno

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