Overview

Theodor W. Adorno died in 1969 and his last major work, Ästhetische Theorie, was published posthumously a year later. Few philosophers have been as well versed in contemporary art, especially music, as Adorno, and even fewer have written so much that is of interest to the social sciences. Yet only recently have his aesthetic writings begun to receive sustained attention in the English-speaking world. This collection of essays is an important contribution to the growing discussion of Adorno's aesthetics in Anglo-American scholarship. The essays in the volume, by many of the major Adorno scholars in the United States and Germany, are organized around the twin themes of semblance and subjectivity. Whereas the concept of semblance, or illusion, points to Adorno's links with Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, the concept of subjectivity recalls his lifelong struggle with a philosophy of consciousness stemming from Kant, Hegel, and Lukács. Adorno's elaboration of the two concepts takes many dialecical twists. Art, despite the taint of illusion that it has carried since Plato's Republic, turns out in Adorno's account of modernism to have a sophisticated capacity to critique illusion, including its own. Adorno's aesthetics emphasizes the connection between aesthetic theory and many other aspects of social theory. The paradoxical genius of Aesthetic Theory is that it turns traditional concepts into a theoretical cutting edge. Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought

Full Product Details

Author:   Tom Huhn (School of Visual Arts) ,  Lambert Zuidervaart (Professor of Philosophy, Institute for Christian Studies) ,  Lambert Zuidervaart
Publisher:   MIT Press Ltd
Imprint:   MIT Press
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.590kg
ISBN:  

9780262581769

ISBN 10:   0262581760
Pages:   368
Publication Date:   22 January 1999
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

"Mimesis and mimetology - Adorno and Lacoue-Labarthe, Martin Jay; ""Aesthetic Theory's"" mimesis of Walter Benjamin, Shierry Weber Nicholsen; Benjamin, Adorno, surrealism, Richard Wolin; concept, image, name - on Adorno's ""Utopia of Knowledge"", Rolf Teidemann; concerning the central idea of Adorno's philosophy, Rudiger Bubner; why rescue semblance? metaphysical experience and the possibilities of ethics, J.M. Bernstein; Adorno's notion of natural beauty - a reconsideration, Heinz Paetzold; Kant, Adorno, and the social opacity of the aesthetic, Tom Huhn; art history and autonomy, Gregg M. Horowitz; construction of a gendered subject - a feminist reading of Adorno's ""Aesthetic Theory"", Sabine Wilke and Heidi Schlipphacke; the philosophy of dissonance - Adorno and Schoenberg, Robert Hullot-Kentor."

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Author Information

Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. He is the author of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory (MIT Press), Artistic Truth, Social Philosophy after Adorno, Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation, and other books.

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