Thinker · TH-0401
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German philosopher, sociologist and music theorist, a leading member of the Frankfurt School. Forced into exile by the Nazi…
Also known as Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund (birth name), Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno
1903 – 1969 · Frankfurt; Oxford; New York; Los Angeles
Traditions: Continental
Schools: Critical theory
Theodor W. Adorno was a German philosopher, sociologist and music theorist, a leading member of the Frankfurt School. Forced into exile by the Nazi regime, he worked in Oxford and the United States before returning to Frankfurt after the war. With Max Horkheimer he analysed the culture industry, the mass production of entertainment that he saw as fostering conformity. His aesthetics holds that art's autonomy is the source of its social truth-content, since autonomous works resist and expose the society that produces them.
Key ideas
- The culture industry turns art into standardised commodities that encourage passive conformity.
- Autonomous art carries social truth-content precisely by refusing direct social usefulness.
- Enlightenment reason, pursued as domination, can revert into myth.
- Negative dialectics refuses to let concepts claim identity with what they grasp.
Major works
- Dialectic of Enlightenment (Dialektik der Aufklärung, 1944/1947, with Max Horkheimer)
- Minima Moralia (1951)
- Negative Dialectics (Negative Dialektik, 1966)
- Aesthetic Theory (Ästhetische Theorie, 1970, posthumous)
In the conversation
- Reading group Reading group: ‘The Culture Industry’ chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment
- Debate Reproduction did not wither the aura of art; it made the aura more valuable
- Question What did Weber actually mean by “value-free” social science?
- Debate Critical theory diagnoses domination brilliantly but cannot say why it is wrong
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Theodor W. Adorno takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 5.2 Philosophy of Art What is art, what does it do, and why does it matter?