Theodor W. Adorno
1903-1969 · German · Critical Theory, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Music, Sociology, Moral Philosophy
Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
Theodor Adorno trained as a composer in Schoenberg's Vienna circle before he became a philosopher, and he never stopped hearing the modern world as a kind of music gone wrong. Born in Frankfurt in 1903 to a Jewish wine merchant and a Catholic singer, he fled the Nazis for Oxford, then New York, then Los Angeles, where in the unlikely sunlight of wartime exile he wrote some of the bleakest pages of twentieth-century thought.
Topics Theodor W. Adorno addresses
- negative dialectics
- non-identity
- identity thinking
- the dialectic of enlightenment
- the culture industry
- constellation
- the priority of the object
- immanent critique
- mimesis
- the authoritarian personality
- the jargon of authenticity
- aesthetic autonomy
- the new music
- the aging of the new music
- musical material
- the dialectical composer
- the culture industry thesis
- administered world
- damaged life
- the new categorical imperative
- suffering and moral philosophy
- the preponderance of the object
- natural history
- second reflection
Questions to put to Theodor W. Adorno
Negative Dialectics and the Critique of Identity
- What do you mean by identity thinking?
- How does constellation work as a philosophical method?
- What is the priority of the object, and why does it matter?
- How can you critique without offering a positive alternative?
- What's the difference between negative dialectics and negative theology?
Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Administered World
- How does enlightenment undermine itself?
- What do you mean when you say the whole is the false?
- How is instrumental reason continuous with myth?
- What's the difference between the administered world and totalitarianism?
- Why can't wrong life be lived rightly?
The Culture Industry and Mass Deception
- What is the culture industry?
- How does standardization disguise itself as individuation?
- What do you mean by the regression of listening?
- Does your critique apply to digital streaming platforms today?
- How is your view different from saying audiences are just passive dupes?
- Why can't individual consumers overcome the commodity form through their choices?
Aesthetic Autonomy and Musical Modernism
- How does an artwork register social antagonism?
- What is truth content in a work of art?
- Why do you see Schoenberg as progressive and Stravinsky as reactionary?
- What's at stake for you in defending aesthetic autonomy?
- How do you respond to the rehabilitation of the avant-gardes you criticized?
- What did you mean by late style in Beethoven?
Morality After Auschwitz
- What is the new categorical imperative you formulated after Hitler?
- Why ground morality in bodily suffering rather than rational argument?
- How do you understand moral responsibility in damaged life?
- What's the difference between your approach and Kant's categorical imperative?
- Can there be any positive moral guidance, or only negative prohibitions?
The Jargon of Authenticity and the Critique of Heidegger
- What is the jargon of authenticity?
- How does authenticity-talk function as ideology?
- What's your argument against ontology as a philosophical program?
- Why did you spend so much energy on Heidegger's linguistic style?
- Does your critique still apply to philosophers who distance themselves from Heidegger's politics?
Converse with Theodor W. Adorno on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Theodor W. Adorno's own writing, cited to the page.