Aesthetic Theory
Encyclopedia
- For the academic discipline, see aestheticsAestheticsAesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
.
Aesthetic Theory is a book by the 20th century German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
Theodor Adorno which was culled from drafts written between 1961 and 1969, ultimately published posthumously in 1970. Although anchored by the philosophical study of art
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, the book is interdisciplinary and incorporates elements of political philosophy
Political philosophy
Political philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
and other philosophical pursuits in keeping with Adorno's boundary-shunning methodology.
In the book, Adorno retraces the historical evolution of art into its paradoxical state of "semi-autonomy" within capitalistic modernity, considering the socio-political implications of this progression. Some critics have described the work as Adorno's magnum opus and ranked it among the most important pieces on aesthetics published in the 20th century.
Summary
In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno is concerned not only with such standard aesthetic preoccupations as the function of beauty and sublimity in art, but with the relations between art and society. He feels that modern art's freedom from such restrictions as cult and imperial functions that had plagued previous eras of art has led to art's expanded critical capacity and increased formal autonomy. With this expanded autonomy comes art's increased responsibility for societal commentary. However, Adorno does not feel that overtly politicized content is art's greatest critical strength: rather, he champions a more abstracted type of "truth-content" (Warheitsgehalt). Unlike KantKANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
ian or idealist aesthetics, Adorno's aesthetics locates truth-content within the art object, rather than in the perception of the subject. Such content is, however, affected by art's self-consciousness at the hands of its necessary distance from society, which is perceptible in such instances as the dissonances inherent in modern art. Throughout, Adorno praises dramatist Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, to whom the book was dedicated.
History
Aesthetic Theory was edited by Gretel Adorno (the philosopher's widow) and Rolf Tiedemann from Adorno's working drafts. It was culled from unfinished manuscripts Adorno composed between May 4, 1961 and July 16, 1969, with the bulk of the composition taking place between October 25, 1966 and January 24, 1968, followed by a series of revisions undertaken between September 1968 and July 1969, weeks before his death in August of that year.While its initial English translation in 1984 saw extensive liberties taken by Adorno's English publisher, Robert Hullot-Kentor's 1997 translation attempted to reproduce the paratactical
Parataxis
Parataxis is a literary technique, in writing or speaking, that favors short, simple sentences, with the use of coordinating rather than subordinating conjunctions...
and mostly paragraph-less presentation of the original text. This translation currently acts as the work's standard English version.
Selected further reading
- Bernstein, J.M. The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from KantKANTKANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
to Derrida and Adorno. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. 188-274. - Eagleton, TerryTerry EagletonTerence Francis Eagleton FBA is a British literary theorist and critic, who is regarded as one of Britain's most influential living literary critics...
. "Art After Auschwitz: Theodor Adorno". In The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. 341-65. - Huhn, Tom and Lambert Zuidervaart, eds. Semblance of Subjectivity: Essays in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.
- Jameson, FredricFredric JamesonFredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
. Late Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic. London and New York: Verso. 1990. - Kaufman, Robert. "Red Kant, or the Persistence of the Third 'Critique' in Adorno and JamesonFredric JamesonFredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
". Critical Inquiry 26.4 (2000): 682-724. - Nicholson, Shierry Weber. Exact Imagination, Late Work: On Adorno's Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.
- Zuidervaart, Lambert. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory: The Redemption of Illusion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.