Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory at Fifty

An issue of: New German Critique

Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory at Fifty
Journal Issue Pages: 224 Volume 48, Number 2 Number: 143 Published: August 2021 An issue of New German Critique
Special Issue Editor: Peter E. Gordon
It has been fifty years since Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory was first published in 1970, a year after his death. The work appeared at a historical moment when political tension on the left was at its height and the movements of pop art and postmodernism began eclipsing the modernist aesthetic values Adorno cherished. Aesthetic Theory was met with initial resistance, in part because its aesthetic criteria appeared antiquated. This issue reckons with the dialectical complexity of this often misunderstood and misinterpreted work. Essay topics include the metaphysics of landscapes, the potential of film as a medium for social critique, Adorno's conception of the spiritual in art, and a nuanced reading of his polemic against Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. Bringing together philosophers, art historians, musicologists, and literary theorists, this issue shows that Aesthetic Theory still has lessons that extend beyond disciplinary bounds.
 
Contributors. J. M. Bernstein, Hent de Vries, Peter E. Gordon, Eva Geulen, Martin Jay, Sherry Lee, Max Pensky, with two additional essays on Adorno by Mikko Immanen and Ricardo Samaniego de la Fuente

Buy

To subscribe to this journal visit the New German Critique page.

Price: $16.00
Request a desk or exam copy

Top