Aesthetic Theory

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A&C Black, Jan 1, 1997 - Philosophy - 416 pages
Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was undoubtedly the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s, including such thinkers as Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory. Aesthetic Theory is Adorno's posthumous magnum opus and the culmination of a lifetime's investigation. Analysing the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful, Adorno shows how such concepts frame and distil human experience and that it is human experience that ultimately underlies aesthetics. In Adorno's formulation ‘art is the sedimented history of human misery'. Edited by Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedeman Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor.

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Contents

Art Society Aesthetics
1
Against the Question of Orgin
2
Truth Content and the Life of Works
3
On the Relation of Art and Society
4
Critique of the Psychoanalytic Theory of Art
8
The Art Theories of Kant and Freud
9
The Pleasure of Art
13
Aesthetic Hedonism and the Happiness of Knowledge
14
Form
140
Form and Content
143
The Concept of Articulation I
146
On the Concept of Material
147
Intention and Content
149
Intention and Meaning
151
The Crisis of Meaning
152
The Concept of Harmony and the Ideology of Closure
157

Situation
16
Language of Suffering
18
Its Philosophy of History
19
Experiment I
23
Defense of Isms
24
Isms as Secularized Schools
25
Modernity and Quality
26
The New and Duration
27
Dialectic of Integration and the Subjective Point
29
The New Utopia and Negativity
32
Modern Art and Industrial Production
33
Aesthetic Rationality and Criticism
34
Canon of Prohibitions
35
Experiment II Seriousness and Irresponsibility
37
Black as an Ideal
39
Relation to Tradition
40
Subjectivity and Collective
41
Solipsism Mimetic Taboo and Maturity
42
Metier
43
Expression and Contruction
44
On the Categories of the Ugly the Beautiful and Technique
45
Its Social Aspect and Its Philosophy of History
48
On the Concept of the Beautiful
50
Mimesis and Rationality
53
On the Concept of Construction
56
Technology
58
Dialectic of Functionalism
60
Natural Beauty
61
Natural Beauty as a Stepping Out into the Open
63
On Cultural Landscape
64
Natural Beauty and Art Beauty Are Interlocked
65
The Experience of Nature Is Historically Deformed
68
Aesthetic Apperception Is Analytical
69
Natural Beauty as Suspended History
70
Determinate Indeterminateness
71
Nature as a Cipher of the Reconciled
73
Its Metacritique
74
Transition from Natural to Art Beauty
77
Apparition Spiritualization Intuitability
78
Aesthetic Transcendence and Disenchantment
79
Art and the ArtAlien
81
The Nonexistent
82
Image Character
83
Explosion
84
Image Content Is Collective
85
Art as Spiritual
86
Immanence of Works and the Heterogeneous
88
On Hegels Aesthetics of Spirit
90
Dialectic of Spiritualization
91
Spiritualization and the Chaotic
93
Arts Intuitability Is Aparetic
94
Intuitability and Conceptuality
97
Semblance and Expression
100
Semblance Meaning and tour de force
105
Toward the Redemption of September
107
Expression and Dissonance
110
SubjectObject
111
Expression as Eloquence
112
Domination and Conceptual Knowledge
113
Expression and Mimesis
114
Aporias of Expression
115
Enigmaticalness Truth Content Metaphysics
118
Cui bono
119
Enigmaticalness and Understanding
120
Nothing shall be left unchanged
122
Enigma Script Interpretation
124
Interpretation as Imitation
125
Block
126
On the Truth Content of Artworks
127
Collective Content of Art
130
Truth as Semblance of the Illusionless
131
Mimesis of the Fatal Reconciliation
133
Methexis in Darkness
134
Coherence and Meaning
136
Logic Causality Time
137
Purposefulness without Purpose
139
Affirmation
159
Critique of Classicism
160
SubjectObject
163
Critique of Kants Concept of Objectivity
165
Precarious Balance
166
SubjectObject Dialectic
168
Genius
169
Originality
172
Fantasy and Reflection
173
Objectivity and Reification
174
Toward a Theory of the Artwork
175
Transcience
178
The Artwork as Monad and Immanent Analysis
179
Art and Artworks
181
Intelligibility
182
The Necessity of Objectivation and Dissociation
183
Unity and Multiplicity
186
The Category of Intensity
187
Why a work can rightfully be said to be beautiful
188
Depth
189
The Concept of Articulation II
190
On the Differentiation of Progress
191
Development of Productive Forces
192
The Transformation of Artworks
193
Interpretation Commentary Critique
194
The Sublime and Play
197
Universal and Particular
199
On Antiquitys GenreAesthetics
202
Philosophy of History of Conventions
203
One the Concept of Style
205
The Progress of Art
207
The History of Art Is Inhomogeneous
209
Progress and Domination of the Material
210
Technique
212
Art in the Industrial Age
217
Nominalism and Open Form
219
Construction Static and Dynamic
222
Society
225
Reception and Production
228
Choice of Thematic Material Artistic Subject Relation to Science
229
Art as Comportment
232
Ideology and Truth
233
Guilt
234
On the Reception of Advanced Art
235
Mediation of Art and Society
236
Kitsch and the Vulgar
238
Effect Lived Experience Shudder
241
Commitment
246
Aestheticism Naturalism Beckett
248
Against Administered Art
250
The Possibility of Art Today
251
Autonomy and Heteronomy
252
Political Option
254
Progress and Reaction
256
Art and the Poverty of Philosophy
258
The Problem of Solipsism and Flase Reconciliation
259
Paralipomena
262
Theories on the Origin of Art Excursus
325
Draft Introduction
332
The Changing Function of Naivete
335
Irreconcilability of Traditional Aesthetics and Contemporary Art
338
TruthContent and the Fetish Character of Artworks
340
The Need for Aesthetics
341
Aesthetics as the Refuge of Metaphysics
343
Aesthetic Experience as Objective Understanding
345
WorkImmanent Analysis and Aesthetic Theory
348
Universal and Particular
350
Critique of the Phenomenological Research of Origin
351
Relation to Hegels Aesthetics
352
Aesthetics of Form and Aesthetics of Content I
353
Norms and Slogans
355
Methodology Second Reflection History
357
Editors Afterword
361
Notes
367
Index
379
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About the author (1997)

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) was a founder and arguably the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School. He worked with Max Horkheimer at the New York Institute for Social Research and later taught at the University of Frankfurt until his death in 1969. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory.

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