Adorno’s Aesthetics as a Literary

Theory of Art Mario Farina

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/adornos-aesthetics-as-a-literary-theory-of-art-mario-fa
rina/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Aesthetics and Politics Theodor Adorno

https://textbookfull.com/product/aesthetics-and-politics-theodor-
adorno/

Aesthetics of Negativity Blanchot Adorno and Autonomy

1st Edition William S. Allen

https://textbookfull.com/product/aesthetics-of-negativity-
blanchot-adorno-and-autonomy-1st-edition-william-s-allen/

The Art of Super Mario Odyssey Nintendo

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-art-of-super-mario-odyssey-
nintendo/

Why is that art?: aesthetics and criticism of

contemporary art Barrett

https://textbookfull.com/product/why-is-that-art-aesthetics-and-
criticism-of-contemporary-art-barrett/
Aesthetics as philosophy of perception 1st Edition
Nanay

https://textbookfull.com/product/aesthetics-as-philosophy-of-
perception-1st-edition-nanay/

Literary theory a practical introduction Third Edition

Rivkin

https://textbookfull.com/product/literary-theory-a-practical-
introduction-third-edition-rivkin/

Hegel’s Aesthetics: The Art of Idealism Lydia L Moland

https://textbookfull.com/product/hegels-aesthetics-the-art-of-
idealism-lydia-l-moland/

Film, art, and the third culture : a naturalized

aesthetics of film 1st Edition Smith

https://textbookfull.com/product/film-art-and-the-third-culture-
a-naturalized-aesthetics-of-film-1st-edition-smith/

A Companion To Adorno Peter E. Gordon

https://textbookfull.com/product/a-companion-to-adorno-peter-e-
gordon/
Adorno’s Aesthetics
as a Literary Theory
of Art

m a r io fa r i n a
Adorno’s Aesthetics as a Literary Theory of Art
 Mario Farina

Adorno’s Aesthetics
as a Literary Theory
of Art
Mario Farina
Department of Letters and Philosophy
University of Florence
Firenze, Italy

ISBN 978-3-030-45280-3    ISBN 978-3-030-45281-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45281-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

Generally deemed inadequate to account for the postmodern issues of

the second half of the twentieth century, Adorno’s philosophical contri-
butions, as Fredric Jameson acknowledged thirty years ago, have been
met by two main groups of objections (Jameson 1996, p. 229). As to the
first, with Jürgen Habermas at the head, Adorno’s philosophy is seen as
being burdened by the Marxian orthodox idea of class struggle, and
thereby as unable to understand contemporary society.1 The second
strand of criticism, instead, looks more closely at Adorno’s aesthetics as at
a typically modernist, and therefore non-postmodernist, explanation of
art. This second set of objections can be traced back to Jean-Françoise
Lyotard, and how he sees Adorno’s emancipatory idea of history as by-­
product of the modern hope in the integrity of subjectivity (Lyotard
1974, pp. 127–137). Along the same line can also be placed Peter Bürger’s
approach and his idea of postmodernism as a peculiar and negative defi-
nition of what is simply a phase of modernity itself. In this regard, Bürger
sees in Adorno’s aesthetics an obstinate reluctance in dealing with the fact
that the contemporary condition of art includes both progression and

1
As Habermas writes, Adorno and Horkheimer “held fast to the basic assumptions of the theory of
value as the core of their tacit orthodoxy, and in this way they blinded themselves to the realities of
a developed capitalism based on the pacification of class conflict through welfare-state measures”
(Habermas 1987, p. 334).

v
vi Preface

regression as part of the same progressive and developmental movement

(Bürger 1983, pp. 177–197). These paradigmatic and interconnected
positions—Adorno as a too obstinate Marxist or as too modernist to have
a clear understanding of late- or postmodernity—have defined the theo-
retical ground for large part of the criticism targeting Adorno’s under-
standing of philosophy of art, such as the wide skepticism with which
even non-specialists judge his interpretation of Jazz music, as exemplified
by Eric J. Hobsbawm’s words: “Adorno wrote some of the most stupid
pages ever written about jazz” (Hobsbawm 1993, p. 300).
Connected to the question of modernism is also the second mortal sin
of Adorno’s aesthetics, namely its ban on aesthetic pleasure and enjoy-
ment. As Espen Hammer shows, in fact, while vindicating the role of
classical beauty, a new conservative cultural trend in authors such as
Roger Scruton and Alexander Nehamas vehemently attacks one of the
pillars of Adorno’s comprehension of art and also what supposedly quali-
fies it as a modernist aesthetic theory (Hammer 2015, pp. 247–249).
Also because of its “modernist” connotation, the postmodern strand of
Adorno’s detractors understands his rejection of aesthetic pleasure as the
result of his miscomprehension and culturally elitist disgust for popular
mass culture,2 as exemplified by the “perverse rant against popular music”
that Jerrold Levinson (2015, p. 44) finds in his musicology.
There is no doubt, in fact, that Adorno’s philosophy of art is permeated
by tensions originating in how the subject relates to the enjoyment of the
artistic object. “Aesthetic enjoyment”—writes Adorno in a personal note of
1955—“in the superficial sense of the enjoyment of the artistic object as if
it were a piece of sensuous world, in general does not exist and any aesthet-
ics that starts with that is dull. I have never enjoyed an artwork” (TWAA:
20688). This tension, as the scholarly literature has pointed out, also defines
the historical turning point in the development of art, that Adorno calls
“de-artification” of art, and that Richard Wolin describes as the “final dis-
solution of the essential aesthetic qualities which have until this century
been inseparable from the concepts of art itself” (Wolin 2004, p. 11).

2
As Erica Weitzman (2008, p. 185) suggests, “Adorno has been vigorously and exhaustively criti-
cized, by people from every point on the political spectrum, for being a pseudo-revolutionary kill
joy, a narrow-minded elitist, a closet conservative, the fetishizer of his own (historically particular)
miserabilism!”.
 Preface vii

According to this framework then, the difficulties Adorno objectively

faces in the understanding of the most advanced tendencies of art in his
time—Adorno is indeed infamous for rarely mentioning the most rele-
vant post-avant-gardist phenomena—can be explained in terms of some
sort of aesthetic conservatism and elitism that prevents his otherwise bril-
liant analysis of artistic products from applying to the art of the second
half of the twentieth century. At variance with mainstream interpreta-
tions, what I intend to argue in this book is not only that the develop-
ment of Adorno’s philosophy of art is inspired by a more complex
constellation of elements than the sum of modernism and Marxist dog-
mas, but also that Adorno’s contributions suit particularly well the most
advanced products of postmodernism. Adorno’s work in aesthetics can be
ultimately seen as an attempt to react to the essential tensions exposed by
contemporary art and which originate from a theoretical principle that I
identify as “the dissolution of the aesthetic element”. In accordance with
large part of the aesthetic debate of the second half of the past century,
Adorno acknowledges an epochal turn in the qualification of art. This
turn consists in the cancellation of the difference between art and every-
day objects, or rather in the trend fostering the annulment of any aesthetic
distinction among them. What should be remarked in this regard is the
contrast between Adorno’s fear for the transformation of art into a com-
mon good and, for example, the satisfaction with which Arthur Danto
welcomes this tendency. In Aesthetic Theory Adorno writes that “cut loose
from its immanent claim to objectivity, art would be nothing but a more
or less organized system of stimuli-conditioning reflexes […]. The result
would be the negation of the difference between artworks and merely
sensual qualities; it would be an empirical entity, nothing more than—in
American argot—a battery of tests, and the adequate means for giving an
account of art would be program analysis or surveys of average group
reactions to artworks or genres” (ÄT: 394 [264]). In passages like this,
Adorno focuses on the same set of problems standing behind the institu-
tional theory of art and Danto’s idea of the end of art, eventually leading
to the theory of the aesthetic indiscernibility of art and non-art. Although
dealing with the same set of historical and philosophical questions,
remarkable differences can be nevertheless detected in their respective
reactions.
viii Preface

What I suggest in this book is in particular to read Adorno’s reaction

to what he perceives as the dissolution of the aesthetic element of art as
laying the ground for the elaboration of a literary theory of art. I will
argue, in fact, that the process of dissolution of the aesthetic is closely
linked to what one can understand as the thing-like nature of the work of
art. In Adorno’s definition of the aesthetic, in fact, the work—as thing, as
objectual element—directly participates to the economic process in
which things become the mediator of the social relationship between
people, in other words it enters the logic of the capital.3 On the contrary,
literature—as an artistic form—is not constituted by things, but by
meaning-relationships that allude to things and to the way in which they
relate to one another. My proposal—it should be made preliminarily
clear—does not entail in any way the convergence of all the arts into lit-
erature, nor the effective dissolution of visual art in general. On the con-
trary, what I intend to show is the fact that in the effective historical
development of art, literature can be seen as the one artistic form which
is able to act as aesthetic guarantee of the existence of something like art
in general. And this is so precisely because its aesthetic material, namely
language, cannot be completely absorbed in the economic process of pro-
duction. In this regard, supportive elements to the theoretical core of my
position can be found, for example, in Eva Geulen’s acknowledgment of
Adorno’s philosophy of art as a philosophy of language. She indeed
observes that “the tension between universality and particularity is great-
est in language, precisely because of the resistance mounted by its discur-
sivity or semanticity. Artworks are said to be like language when they
develop and sustain the tension that characterizes the literary artefact: to
say the particular in a form that is generic” (Geulen 2006a, p. 58; see also
Geulen 2006b, p. 92).
My overall goal is therefore to show that Adorno’s aesthetic, far from
being an old iron, a historical find to be placed in the museum of theo-
ries, actually provides a set of philosophical tools that can be fruitfully
applied within the context of the contemporary theory of art, as

3
According to Marx’s famous quotation, in fact, “capital is not a thing, but a social relation between
persons which is mediated through things” (Marx 1990, p. 932).
 Preface ix

exemplified also by other recent contributions to the critical debate.4

These tools are notably those of the aesthetics as a philosophy of litera-
ture. The last chapter of this book, in fact, is an attempt to pursue an
interpretation of American postmodern novels within the conceptual
framework of Adorno’s aesthetics as a philosophy of literature. Although
I have no intention of jumping into the debate about postmodernism in
general, about its being a part of modernity or an autonomous historical
category, I believe that Adorno’s aesthetic elements are particularly suited
to clarify the otherwise evasive literary nature of American postmodern
novels. While pursuing this aim, I take American postmodern novels as
an extant category in the contemporary literary debate and I refrain pro-
grammatically from assessing its consistency. My merely instrumental use
of the category is meant to allow me to investigate whether the literary
products it designates have something in common and possibly what it is.
I have divided the book into five chapters. In the first, I will present the
very first determination of the aesthetic in Adorno’s thought and thus
introduce what I read as his construction of the aesthetics. In the second,
I will focus on Adorno’s philosophy of music, and I will detect in it the
principle of the dissolution of the aesthetic. In the third chapter, I will
present the process of the literary reconstruction of the aesthetic, while
turning to Adorno’s late aesthetic production, in particular to his Aesthetic
Theory and the collection, Notes to Literature. In the fourth, I will point to
what I see as the basic theoretical lines of Adorno’s philosophy of litera-
ture, namely a complete set of theoretical tools that can be applied to the
most advanced results of literary production. Finally, in the fifth and last
chapter, I will investigate and account for the formal issues of American
postmodern novels in what I see as its morphological development from
Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, through Wallace’s Infinite Jest, to DeLillo’s
Underworld.

Firenze, Italy Mario Farina

4
I refer to the book of Josh Robinson (2018), published under the title of Adorno’s Poetics of Form,
where he shows the connection of Adorno’s literary aesthetic with the contemporary debate about
historicism and formalism, and to which I will refer again in the following.
x Preface

References
Bürger, Peter. 1983. Das Altern der Moderne. In Adorno-Konferenz 1983, ed.
Ludwig von Friedeburg, and Jürgen Habermas, 177–197. Frankfurt a.
M.: Suhrkamp.
Geulen, Eva. 2006a. Adorno and the Poetics of Genre. In Adorno and Literature,
ed. David Cunningham, and Nigel Mapp, 53–66. London/New York:
Continuum.
Geulen, Eva. 2006b. The End of Art. Readings in a Rumor after Hegel. Trans.
J. McFarland. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 2. Lifeworld
and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Trans. Thomas McCarthy.
Boston: Beacon Press.
Hammer, Espen. 2015. Happiness and Pleasure in Adorno’s Aesthetics. In The
Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 90 (4): 247–259.
Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1993. The Jazz Scene. New York: Pantheon Book.
Jameson, Fredric. 1990. Late Marxism. Adorno, or the Persistence of the Dialectics.
London: Verso.
Levinson, Jerrold. 2015. Musical Concerns. Essay in Philosophy of Music. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Lyotard, Jean-Françoise. 1974. Adorno as the Devil. In Télos, 19: 127–137.
Marx, Karl. 1990. The Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Trans.
B. Fowkes. London/New York: Penguin.
Robinson, Josh. 2018. Adorno’s Poetics of Form. Albany: SUNY.
Weitzman, Erica. 2008. No “Fun”: Aporias of Pleasure in Adorno’s “Aesthetic
Theory”. In The German Quarterly, 81 (2): 185–202.
Wolin, Richard. 2004. The De-aestheticization of Art: On Adorno’s Aesthetische
Theorie. In Theodor W. Adorno, ed. Gerard Delanty, vol. II: 5–30. London/
Thousand Oak/New Delhi: SAGE Publications.
 Acknowledgments

For the institutional and material support during the conception and
writing of this book, I am grateful to the Department of Letters and
Philosophy (Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia – DILEF) of the
University of Florence; the Walter Benjamin Archive, Akademie der
Künste Berlin; the School of Philosophy, University College, Dublin.
This book has been developed within the context of the research proj-
ect “Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno and the Idea of Natural History”
(2017–2019), financially supported by the Department of Letters and
Philosophy of the University of Florence, and under the scientific super-
vision of Professor Gianluca Garelli, to whom I offer my most sincere
thanks for the precious advice and constant encouragement. I also
extend my thanks to Professor Brian O’Connor for having welcomed
me at his at the University College, Dublin during my research
period there.
My research interest for Adorno has begun over fifteen years ago, dur-
ing my B.A. dissertation at the University of Pavia (defended in 2005),
and it would be impossible to acknowledge all the scholars, colleagues,
and classmates who influenced my studies, the name of many of whom
can be found in the index of this book. Nevertheless, I cannot help but
remember the lively discussions with Professor Markus Ophälders, the
formative experience during my PhD under the supervision of Professor

xi
xii Acknowledgments

Maurizio Pagano, and the always vivid human and intellectual example
of Professor Flavio Cassinari.
I sincerely thank Palgrave Macmillan for deciding to host this book in
its collection. Among the people with whom I had the pleasure to work,
I am especially thankful to April James, who first has shown interest in
my research, and Lauriane Piette, who has brilliantly and carefully fol-
lowed the development of this text.
A special thanks goes to Dr. Tessa Marzotto, who with enviable
patience has turned into real English the mumbling through which I
tend to offend this beautiful language.
Finally, my most sincere acknowledgment is devoted to Serena Feloj:
both as Serena, with whom I decide to spend my life every day, and as
Professor Feloj, the most brilliant discussant and the most stimulating
mind one could hope for.
 Contents

1 Construction of “Aesthetics” as Construction of “the

Aesthetic”  1
1.1 Kierkegaard (i): The Autonomy of Art and the
Historicity of “the Aesthetic”   3
1.2 Kierkegaard (ii): The Myth and the History  15
1.3 The Anti-Romantic Choice and Its Consequences: Art
and Society  24
1.4 The Model of the Culture Industry  38
References 47

2 The Philosophy of Music and the Dissolution of the

Aesthetic 53
2.1 A Philosophy of Art as Philosophy of New Music  54
2.2 The Failure of the Artwork  64
2.3 The Dissolution of the Aesthetic  79
References 88

3 Literature and the Reconstruction of the Aesthetic 93

3.1 Art, Its Right to Exist, and Aesthetic Conservatism  96
3.2 The Deaestheticization of Artistic Material 106

xiii
xiv Contents

3.3 The Literary Reconstruction of the Aesthetic (i): Three

Examples115
3.4 The Literary Reconstruction of the Aesthetic (ii): The
Form of Literature 124
3.5 The Literary Reconstruction of the Aesthetic (iii): The
Reflection of the ‘I’ and the Literary Material 128
References137

4 Adorno’s Philosophy of Literature: A Theory of Literary

Interpretation143
4.1 What Literature Is About: Reality, Truth, and Ontology 146
4.2 The Interpretation of Literature and Its Unity 156
4.3 The Form 161
4.4 The Content and the Author 169
4.5 Interpreting Literature: The Case of Franz Kafka 175
References183

5 Beyond Modernism: The American Postmodern Novel189

5.1 A Theory of the Novel as Literary Genre 192
5.2 The American Postmodern Novel as Literary Form 199
5.3 Conclusion: The Novel as Postmodernist Genre 223
References227

Index231
 Abbreviations

Adorno’s Works
In the following list the abbreviation “GS” refers to the edition of Adorno’s
writings: Gesammelte Schriften, 20 Vols., ed. Rolf Tiedemann et al.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1997.

A Amorbach. In Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica. In Kulturkritik und

Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 302–309.
AaS Der Artist als Statthalter. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 114–126.
AdP Die Aktualität der Philosophie. In Philosophische Frühschriften, GS, 1,
pp. 325–344.
ÄT Ästhetische Theorie, GS, 7.
AzK Aufzeichnungen zu Kafka. In Prismen. Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft.
In Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 284–287.
B Beethoven. Philosophie der Musik, ed. R. Tiedemann. Frankfurt a. M.:
Suhrkamp, 1993.
B-L Balzac-Lektüre. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 139–157.
BW1 Th.W. Adorno, W. Benjamin. Briefwechsel 1928–1940, ed. Henri
Lonitz. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1994.
BW2 Th.W. Adorno, A. Berg. Briefwechsel 1925–1933, ed. Henri Lonitz.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1997.
BW3 Th.W. Adorno, T. Mann. Briefwechsel 1943–1955, ed. Christoph
Gödde, and T. Sprecher. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2002.
xv
xvi Abbreviations

BW4 Th.W. Adorno, M. Horkheimer. Briefwechsel 1927–1969, 4 Vols., ed.

Christoph Gödde, and Henri Lonitz. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2003.
CWB Charakteristik Walter Benjamins. In Prismen. Kulturkritik und
Gesellschaft. In Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 238–253.
DdA Dialektik der Aufklärung, GS, 3.
DSH Drei Studien zu Hegel, GS, 5.
E Engagement. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 409–430.
EaF Der Essey als Form. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 9–33.
EMS Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie. Zwölf theoretische Vorlesungen, GS, 14.
EV Erpreßte Versöhnung. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 251–280.
EzP Einleitung zum »Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie«.
In Soziologische Schriften I, GS, 8, pp. 280–353.
FdK Die Funktion des Kontrapunkts in der neuen Musik. In Klangfiguren.
In Musikalische Schriften I, GS, 16, pp. 145–169.
Fh Funktionalismus heute. In Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica. In
Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 375–395.
IdN Die Idee der Naturgeschichte. In Philosophische Frühschriften, GS, 1,
pp. 345–365.
IKh Ist die Kunst heiter?. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 599–606.
JdE Jargon der Eigentlichkeit. Zur deutschen Ideologie, GS, 6.
JdP Im Jeu de Paume gekritzelt. In Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica. In
Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 321–325.
K Kierkegaard. Konstruktion des Ästhetischen, GS, 2.
KPK Kleine Proust-Kommentare. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11,
pp. 203–215.
KuG Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft. In Prismen. Kulturkritik und
Gesellschaft. In Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 11–30.
KuK Die Kunst und die Künste. In Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica.
In Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 432–453.
MM Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, GS, 4.
ND Negative Dialektik, GS, 6.
OL Ohne Leitbild. In Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica. In Kulturkritik und
Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 291–309.
P Parataxis. Zur späten Lyrik Hölderlins. In Noten zur Literatur, GS,
11, pp. 447–491.
 Abbreviations xvii

Pei Prefazione all’edizione italiana [Preface to the Italian Edition].

In Th.W. Adorno. Kierkegaard. La costruzione dell’estetico. Trans.
A. Burger Cori, pp. 9–13. Milano: Longanesi, 1962.
PnM Philosophie der neuen Musik, GS, 12.
RaS Rückblickend auf den Surrealismus. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11,
pp. 101–105.
RüK Résumé über Kulturindustrie. In Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica. In
Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 337–345.
RüL Rede über Lyrik und Gesellschaft. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11,
pp. 49–68.
RüR Rede über den‚ Raritätenladen‘von Charles Dickens. In Noten zur
Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 515–522.
SdE Standort des Erzählers im zeitgenössischen Roman. In Noten zur
Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 41–48.
TWAA Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno Archiv [with the abbreviation TS., I
refer to the pages of the typescripts preserved in Theodor Wiesengrund
Adorno Archive, Frankfurt a. M., and available in reproduction in
Walter Benjamin Archive, Akademie der Künste, Berlin].
ÜeN Über epische Naivität, in Noten zur Literatur, I, GS, 11, pp. 34–40.
ÜFM Über den Fetischcharakter in der Musik und die Regression des
Hörens. In Dissonanzen. Musik in der verwalteten Welt, GS, 14,
pp. 14–50.
VA Valérys Abweichungen. In Noten zur Literatur, GS, 11, pp. 158–202.
VH Verfremdetes Hauptwerk. Zur Missa Solemnis. In Moments musicaux.
In Musikalische Schriften IV, GS, 17, pp. 145–161.
VPM Valéry, Proust, Museum. In Prismen. Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft. In
Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 181–194.
VüW Versuch über Wagner. In Die musikalischen Monographien, GS, 13.
VzU Vorschlag zur Ungüte. In Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica. In
Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 330–336.
WnK Warum ist die neue Kunst so schwer verständlich?. In Musikalische
Schriften V, GS, 18, pp. 824–831.
ZgL Zur gesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik. In Musikalische Schriften V,
GS, 18, pp. 729–777.
ZM Zeitlose Mode. Zum Jazz. In Prismen. Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft. In
Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, GS, 10.1, pp. 123–137.
xviii Abbreviations

Translations
AaA Art and the Arts. In Can One Live After Auschwitz? A Philosophical
Reader. Trans R. Livingstone, pp. 368–387. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
AT Aesthetic Theory. Trans. R. Hullot-Kentor. London-New York:
Continuum, 1997.
B Beethoven. The Philosophy of Music: Fragments and Texts. Trans.
E. Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
CI The Culture Industry. Selected Essays in Mass Culture, ed. Jay Bernstein.
London-New York: Routledge, 1991.
Cor1 W. Benjamin. The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin. 1910–1940.
Trans. M.R. Jacobson, and E.M. Jacobson. Chicago-London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Cor2 Th.W. Adorno, A. Berg. Correspondence 1925–1935. Trans.
W. Hoban. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2005.
Cor3 Th.W. Adorno, T. Mann. Correspondence 1943–1955. Trans.
N. Walker. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2006.
DoE Dialectics of Enlightenment, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans.
E. Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.
EoM Essays on Music. Trans. S.H. Gillespie. Berkeley-Los Angeles-­London:
University of California Press, 2002.
FT Functionalism Today. In Rethinking Architecture. A Reader in Cultural
Theory, ed. Neil Leach, pp. 5–18. London-New York. Routledge, 1997.
HTS Hegel. Three Studies. Trans. S.W. Nicholsen. Cambridge (MA)-
London: MIT Press.
INH The Idea of Natural History. Trans. R. Hullot-Kentor. In Praxis
International 4, N. 2: 111–124.
IPD Introduction. In Th.W. Adorno et al., The Positivism Dispute in
German Sociology. Trans. G. Adey, and D. Frisby, pp. 1–67. London:
Heinemann, 1976.
JoA Jargon of Authenticity. Trans. K. Tarnowski, and F. Will. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Ki Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic. Trans. R. Hullot-Kentor.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
MM Minima Moralia. Reflections on a Damaged Life. Trans. E. Jephcott.
London-New York: Verso, 2005.
 Abbreviations xix

ND Negative Dialectics. Trans. E.B. Ashton. London-New York:

Routledge, 2004.
NtL1 Notes to Literature. Vol 1. Trans. S.W. Nicholsen. New York-­
Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1991.
NtL2 Notes to Literature. Vol 2. Trans. S.W. Nicholsen. New York-­
Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1991.
PNM Philosophy of New Music. Trans. R. Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
Pr Prisms. Trans. S. Weber, and S.W. Nicholsen. Cambridge (MA):
MIT Press.
PRP Present Relevance of Philosophy. Trans. D. Robertson. August 31, 2018
[https://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-translation-of-die-
aktualitat-der.html]. Retrieved November 01, 2019.
SF Sound Figures. Trans. R. Livingstone. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1999.
SoW In Search of Wagner. Trans. R. Livingstone. London-New York:
Verso, 2005.
 1
Construction of “Aesthetics”
as Construction of “the Aesthetic”

In one of the most influential books for Adorno’s philosophical educa-

tion, the Hungarian intellectual György Lukács defines what he under-
stands as the “autonomy of the artwork” in terms of the result of a
historical, and broadly speaking metaphysical, external pressure. “Art”
writes Lukács in The Theory of the Novel (1920) “has thus become inde-
pendent [selbständig]: it is no longer a copy, for all the models have gone;
it is a created totality, for the natural unity of the metaphysical spheres
has been destroyed forever” (Lukács 1971a, p. 37). It would be no exag-
geration if one were to state that this very idea of the autonomy (in
German, Selbständigkeit or Autonomie) of the artwork is one of the most
seminal and most persisting ideas in the whole of Adorno’s aesthetic pro-
duction. Already in a short piece written in the 1930s Adorno asks him-
self Why is the New Art so Hard to Understand?, and his answer calls into
question precisely this idea of art’s autonomy, taken as the outcome of the
historical development of capitalistic society. Adorno understands in fact
“the reification of art as the result of a socio-economic development that
transforms all goods into consumer goods”, and, accordingly, he states
that “the autonomy of art, its quality of being a law onto itself, the impos-
sibility of arranging it at will according to the dictates of use, is […] the

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Farina, Adorno’s Aesthetics as a Literary Theory of Art,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45281-0_1
2 M. Farina

expression of that reification” (WnK: 825–826, EoM: 128). To be fair,

the actual theoretical guiding light in Adorno’s argument, however, is
here not the early, Hegelian Lukács of The Theory of the Novel, but the
late, already Marxist author of History and Class Consciousness (1923). As
the scholarly literature has rightly noticed,1 Lukács’ pathbreaking work of
1923 has been decisive for Adorno. He even confided to Alban Berg that
Lukács “has had a more profound intellectual influence on me more than
almost anyone else” (BW2: 17, Cor2: 9). Proving its long-lasting effect,
the concept of autonomy can be found also in Adorno’s latest and unfin-
ished work, that is the Aesthetic Theory, for example where he writes that
“art’s double character as both autonomous and fait social is incessantly
reproduced on the level of its autonomy” (ÄT: 16, AT: 5).2
The aim of the first chapter of this volume is precisely to understand in
which terms this very peculiar and paradoxical idea of the autonomy of
art—an autonomy that comes about as the result of an external and social
pressure—leaves a permanent mark on Adorno’s inquiries and the entire
process required by the construction of his “aesthetics” (as philosophical
discipline) by means of the construction of “the aesthetic” (as the qualify-
ing element of that branch of knowledge). From a general point of view,
the notion of autonomy determines the most basic and recurrent dynam-
ics in Adorno’s philosophy of art, that is the tension between a normative
dimension of the artwork and its incessant and necessary leaning toward
the production of newness. The normative nature derives, in fact, from
the bond between the artwork and the a-temporal notion of aesthetic
model, whereas the orientation toward what is new builds the inalienable
character that sets the artwork apart from the simple repetition of already
existing things. In order to be defined as “art”, the product has to prove
its own originality in relation to the context.3 The connection between

1
The relevance of Lukács for the young Adorno is out of discussion and widely accepted. See Susan
Buck-Morss (1977, pp. 25–28), Hall (2006, pp. 155–157), and especially Adorno’s monumental
biography written by Stefan Müller-Doohm, where the author specifies the relevance of History and
Class Consciousness for the young Adorno (Müller-Doohm 2005, pp. 36, 94).
2
While recognizing the role of art as a concretization of aesthetic concepts, Shea Coulson (2007,
pp. 109–121) risks to eliminate the double character of aesthetic products by intending art simply
as a mirror.
3
The connection between autonomy and normativity is what Christoph Menke refers to as the
antinomy of autonomy and sovereignty in modern aesthetics, namely as the idea that aesthetics
 1 Construction of “Aesthetics” as Construction of “the Aesthetic” 3

art’s autonomy and the double character of the artistic product is finally
what makes Adorno’s aesthetics an aesthetics of “the success of the art-
work” (das Gelingen des Kunstwerks). According to Adorno, art critique’s
task can be accomplished by assessing the work of art in terms of its suc-
cess (or failure) in showing its autonomy and its capability to express
social reality while simultaneously judging it. In this sense, a work of art
“succeeds” when it expresses the unreconciled nature of late capitalistic
society, by showing at the same time a way to artistically, that is gently
and not violently, recompose social fractures.
This chapter is devoted to the reconstruction of the origins of these
aesthetic concepts in Adorno and to the screening of their outcomes in
the first period of his production, that is, from the first writings (begin-
ning of the 1930s) to the Dialectics of Enlightenment (1944). In these
pages, I will address, therefore, the most relevant passages of Adorno’s
construction of the aesthetic.

1.1  ierkegaard (i): The Autonomy of Art

K
and the Historicity of “the Aesthetic”
As is well known, the monographic study published under the title
Kierkegaard. Construction of the Aesthetic is the reworking of Adorno’s
Habilitationsschrift, that is the academic text required to obtain the title
of freier Dozent, namely the go-ahead for teaching in a German univer-
sity. Actually, with the Kierkegaard Adorno was at his second attempt to
obtain the title, after his former tutor Hans Cornelius suggested he with-
drew the first proposal.4 To my purposes, it is not necessary to provide a
detailed account of Adorno’s arguments about Kierkegaard’s theoretical
legacy, as developed in the 1933 revision of his Habilitationsschrift.

seems to allude both to the autonomy of its products and to the fact that they exceed the bonds of
plural reason by creating a different normativity. Menke sees Adorno as the author who has most
clearly expressed this antinomy (see Menke 1999, vii–xiii).
4
Adorno tried to obtain the habilitation in 1927 with a study on The Concept of Unconscious in
Transcendental Theory of Mind; but he succeeded only three years later with the Kierkegaard. The
entire story of the habilitation is accurately retraced by Müller-Doohm (2005, pp. 98–109,
119–125).
4 M. Farina

However, it is worth mentioning that the book’s aim is twofold: to over-

turn the canonic interpretation of Kierkegaard’s accounts about aesthet-
ics; and to contribute, although heterodoxically, to the Kierkegaard
renaissance, at the time very much in vogue in German universities.
As to the first, Kierkegaard is renowned for having doomed the aes-
thetic stage of life to a significant downplaying, by arguing that it funda-
mentally fails to attain its true goals, that is to say, sensuous satisfaction
(Hampson 2013, pp. 135–138). At variance with this well-established
interpretation of the value of the aesthetic in Kierkegaard, Adorno tries to
show in which sense it is precisely this kind of unattainable aesthetic sat-
isfaction what can best illustrate Kierkegaard’s notion of existence as “the
historical origin of objectless inwardness” (K: 55, Ki: 37). Moreover,
hinging upon his intuition, Adorno comprehensively challenges the exis-
tentialist approach, that is to say, the mainstream of the Heideggerian
ontological position, very popular at the time in the German academy.
With the release of Time and Being (1927), in fact, Heidegger highlighted
the existential and finite dimension of Kierkegaard’s subjectivity, in par-
ticular its role in the context of “being-toward-death”, as Adam Buben
(2016, pp. 109–120) has recently emphasized. Adorno, to the opposite,
sheds light on the equally present theological element, that is, on the idea
of “leap” or salto mortale into faith (Kierkegaard 2009, pp. 85–90),
namely what allows the ultimate resolution of the finite abyss of the
“objectless inwardness”. By acknowledging this theological dimension,
Adorno shows that in Kierkegaard, beyond his mystical turn, the only
way to justify the religious leap into faith is not through the firm choice
of ethical life, but in the light of the infinite and never reachable satisfac-
tion of the aesthetic one.5
At variance with ontologist trends, the overall sense of the Kierkegaard-­
book for Adorno is, in a nutshell, that of a christening of his inquiries in
aesthetics, here achieved by presenting “the aesthetic” element as the
form of knowledge in which it is possible to express the social condition
of the subject. In fact, the lack of integrity, the gap between subject and

5
For that reason, according to the interpretation of Robert Hullot-Kentor, Adorno’s book on
Kierkegaard “intends to recuperate the sphere of the aesthetic from the dialectic experience”
(Hullot-Kentor 2006, p. 79).
 1 Construction of “Aesthetics” as Construction of “the Aesthetic” 5

objectivity, the late capitalistic oppression of the individual cannot be

fully grasped, according to him, by means of the ontological affirmative
statements about anguish and death, but should rather be investigated by
the indefinite, indirect, and unsatisfied gaze of the aesthetics. In a dialec-
tical argument worthy of Hegel, the way in which Kierkegaard highlights
the deficiencies of the aesthetic life is taken precisely as what allows to
achieve a clear and effective construction of the aesthetic element. Only
in the leap into transcendence Kierkegaard sees the chance to justify the
perfect self-knowledge of subjectivity, a chance that is denied to aesthet-
ics, because of its continuous deferment of satisfaction; exactly in this
intuition, Adorno recognizes the relevance of Kierkegaard’s aesthetic con-
struction, namely the fact that its incomplete nature allows to express
reality in the terms of its fragmented essence: “It is rather a totality of
ruins, and in the depths of the chasms between them a dialectic surges
that does not flow uninterruptedly from one to the other” (K: 130, Ki:
90). What Adorno criticizes in Kierkegaard is however the idea of the
leap into faith, conceived as the attempt to give rise to an idealistic and
“positive” (ideologically comforting) ontology that denies the fragmented
(and realistic) representation of the world by means of the aesthetic.
Kierkegaard, Adorno writes, “repudiates the aesthetic semblance without
pursuing the course of the dialectics to its end, a course which the tran-
scendence of semblance makes evident in its semblance itself ” (K: 194,
Ki: 137). The “dialectic course” of the aesthetic, however, is visible,
Adorno would claim, as soon as one radicalizes the theological element of
Kierkegaard’s thought and leaves behind the purely ontological and exis-
tential level.
What Adorno achieves in the study on Kierkegaard is something close
to the finetuning of his aesthetics’ basic conceptual tools, as already
deployed in his musicological short essays for the Musikblätter des
Anbruchs and the Frankfurter Zeitung, well before their theoretical foun-
dation had been made explicit. The concept of autonomy of art, the dou-
ble character of the artwork, and the relation between art and society, all
the concepts he has drawn from his early readings and family
6 M. Farina

environment6 form the theoretical structure of Adorno’s interpretative

method, and the study on Kierkegaard gives him the chance to make
them explicit through the strenuous conceptual construction of a book,
accustomed as he was to writing short essays. As Adorno clearly states, he
takes the field of aesthetics as a form of knowledge that spurns the abstract
laws of conceptuality without being at the same time arbitrary. In the first
section of the Kierkegaard he considers the relation between philoso-
phy—that is, the conceptual discipline par excellence—and art, by stat-
ing that “the more exclusively philosophical form is crystallized as such,
the more firmly it excludes all metaphors that externally approximates it
into art, so much the better is art able to survive as art by strength of its
own law of form” (K: 23–24, Ki: 14). With these words, and following
Hegel’s example, Adorno intends to criticize any attempt to conceive the
artwork, or the aesthetic in general, as the sensible upholstery of a con-
ceptual thought.7 The artwork, on the contrary, is a product in which the
conceptual—that is universal—dimension and the element of particular-
ity rise together. The aesthetic element is therefore the kind of feature of
human knowledge which is able to identify a single, particular, element
whose validity is that of being a model, without qualifying, though, as a
criterion, a canon, or an abstract concept. As I will show in the next
pages, this determination of the aesthetic corresponds, to an extent, to a
reinterpretation of the most basic conceptual elements developed by
Kant in his third critical work.
With the last of his major works, namely the Critique of the Power of
Judgement (1790), Kant lays the groundwork to an assessment of aesthet-
ics as an autonomous discipline, the groundbraking contribution in this
respect being Kant’s distinction between determining and reflecting judg-
ment. It would be misleading to identify the third Critique as the answer
to one single problem, or to one single author. The overall efforts

6
Maria Calvelli-Adorno della Piana, the mother of Theodor Wiesengrund, was a pretty well-known
opera singer, and she passed on to her son a talent and passion for music. Besides family heritage,
great relevance in Adorno’s aesthetic formation has been played by the friendship with Siegfried
Kracauer and his art sociology, as Stefan Müller-Doohm (2005, pp. 44–45) underlines. Moreover,
one should not forget the effect of Bloch’s expressionistic philosophy as outlined in The Spirit of
the Utopia.
7
Hegel sharply criticizes the idea that art can be reduced to a simple sensible make-up of abstract
concept. For Hegel’s critique of fabula docet in art, see: Hegel (1975, p. 50).
 1 Construction of “Aesthetics” as Construction of “the Aesthetic” 7

showcased in the text can be seen, in fact, as the attempt to provide an

answer to the problem of Kant’s age in general, that is to say, the problem
of the normativity of what is non-normative at all. When the German
philosopher, Odo Marquard, identifies the Enlightenment as the attempt
to come to terms with the loss of a religious, and therefore normative,
explanation of the world by means of what he sees as a set of compensa-
tion theories (Kompensationstheorien),8 he has in mind, most likely, the
main questions Kant deals with in his third Critique.
The reflecting judgment is Kant’s special tool, devised to account for
the peculiar normativity of the aesthetic experience. Not the simple aver-
age of every single personal taste, as in the empiricist explanation; not the
normative application of an inherited canon, as in the classicist one, the
aesthetic taste is rather the result of a particular human power, that is, the
power of the reflecting judgment (see Guyer 1997, p. 59). To the pur-
poses of this inquiry, however, the key point lies here in the particular
kind of normativity of the reflecting judgment.9 The essential difference
between determining (or intellectual) judgments and reflecting ones con-
sists, in fact, in how they respectively relate the universal dimension of
the norm to the specific individuality of the single particular. As Kant
puts it, the distinction between the two kinds of judgment is defined
precisely on the basis of the relation to the universal or to the particular:

If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) is given, then the power of
judgment, which subsumes the particular under it (even when, as a tran-
scendental power of judgment, it provides the conditions a priori in accor-
dance with which alone anything can be subsumed under that universal),
is determining. If, however, only the particular is given, for which the

8
See for example what Marquard says in his essay “Indicted and Unburdened Man in Eighteenth-­
Century Philosophy”: “Perhaps it is permissible […] to move a late phenomenological concept
forward into the 18th century and say that we are dealing here with philosophies that provide new
definitions of man which attempt to compensate for a human loss of “life-world”, and a loss that is
specific to the middle of the century” (Marquard 1989, p. 41).
9
The question of the normativity of Kant’s reflecting judgment is one of the most difficult problems
concerning Kantian thought in general. Hannah Ginsborg has recently asserted the presence of a
special kind of normative power in reflective judgment: “What I take Kant to be pointing to, in his
connection between aesthetic judgement and the capacity for empirical conceptualization, is a kind
of normativity involved in perceptual experience which is independent of the normativity typically
associated with cognitive judgement” (Ginsborg 2015, p. 173).
8 M. Farina

universal is to be found, then the power of judgment is merely reflecting.

(Kant 2000, pp. 66–67)

According to the general theory I have here tried to merely sketch out,
the aesthetic judgment is never based on an abstract concept of beauty
owned by the judging subject, but rather on a subjective feeling that
reveals the presence of beauty itself. As it clearly demolishes any direct
normative perspective, the fortune of such theory determines a definitive
break in aesthetics with any explicitly classicist theory of art.
The reader might already have started to see the close connection
between the above outlined mechanism behind the reflecting judgment
and what in the opening lines of this chapter I have introduced as the
double character of the artwork in Adorno, that is to say, its being a par-
ticular, individual, product whose existence alludes to an overall, and
therefore general, meaning. In this respect, Adorno defines the work of
art as “the minute precision and concreteness of a model” (K: 197, Ki:
138), and the model he has in mind is very close to the Kantian univer-
sality of the ideal of beauty. More precisely, the aesthetic model is the
universal field to which every single artwork belongs, although, unlike
intellectual concepts, a particular work could never be abstractly drawn
from it. Given the concepts of “red” and “sphere”, we can infer what a
“red sphere” is; on the contrary, the model of the aesthetic can only be
recognized every time we consider an artwork, and it can never be
acquired once and for all. Because of that, the work of art is always
affected by the tension between the universal dimension of the exemplary
element and the particularity of something new, a tension that Adorno
defines by highlighting the necessary temporal dimension of the work:
“What truly endures in artworks is not that from which time has been
abstracted”, that is, the abstract concept of beauty; it is rather the case
that “those motives assert themselves whose hidden eternity is most
deeply embedded in the constellation of the temporal” (K: 34, Ki: 21).
By means of a typically dialectical argument, Adorno detects the constant
and durable element of artworks precisely in the fact that they constantly
change without ceasing to be recognized as artwork, then without ceasing
to relate directly to a universal model.
 1 Construction of “Aesthetics” as Construction of “the Aesthetic” 9

Pupil of the neo-Kantian scholar Cornelius, and certainly fascinated

by neo-Kantian ideas,10 Adorno tries in this way to move in the direction
of a historicization of the Kantian theory of reflecting judgment. As is
well known, in fact, the Kantian subjective universality of beauty is
grounded upon the ideal of natural, not artistic, beauty. When Kant
writes that “nature was beautiful, if at the same time it looked like art;
and art can only be called beautiful if we are aware that it is art and yet it
looks to us like nature” (Kant 2000, p. 179), he is not putting art and
nature on an equal footing. The beauty of nature is what allows to recog-
nize the beauty of art, although beautiful nature looks like art in the sense
that it seems specially made to cause our pleasure.11 Precisely due to his
assumptions concerning the natural origin of beauty, Kant’s transcenden-
tal determination of aesthetic taste does not imply any sort of historical
determination. On the contrary, since Adorno takes aesthetics strictly
speaking as pertaining to human-generated artworks, he has to take into
account their historic dimension. Art is in fact, for Adorno, an exclusively
human and historic product and it cannot be conceived of as if it were a
natural and spontaneous phenomenon. This is why the tension between
universal and particular established by Kant turns, in Adorno, into the
tension between a temporal and a-temporal dimension of the artwork;
this dialectical connection expresses, finally, the fact that the universal
notion of “the art”—what I have defined as the field of “the aesthetic”—
keeps changing historically, but it does not have the power to erase, or
modify, the works of the past and their aesthetic ideal. The fact that now-
adays Damien Hirst’s shark is an artwork and, say, a hypothetical paint-
ing in Leonardo’s style is simply kitsch, does not prevent the fact that La
Gioconda is still an artwork exactly as much as Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup
Cans. The universal field in which artworks exist as works of art consists,
then, in the historical existence and development of the aesthetic element.

10
On Adorno’s youthful neo-Kantism, especially in his relationship with Hans Cornelius, see what
Brandon Bloch (2017, p. 6) maintains: “The debate about the legacy of Kant that defined German
philosophy during Adorno’s intellectually formative years, and in which Cornelius’s works inter-
vened, centered on the capacity of the human subject to generate objective knowledge”.
11
See, for example, how Malcolm Budd (2002, pp. 43–46) describes the natural determination of
the ideal of beauty in Kant.
10 M. Farina

This transition toward the historicization of the Kantian judgment

leads Adorno into the field of Hegel’s (and Marxian12) philosophy, and it
ultimately explains why he resorted to the study of Kierkegaard—an anti-­
historical thinker par excellence—in order to define his own construction
of a historical aesthetics. Rather than explicitly relying on Hegel’s phi-
losophy, Adorno derives in fact his own historic aesthetics from an inter-
pretation of Kierkegaard’s (non-historical) thought; this apparently
counterintuitive path clearly defines Adorno’s approach to aesthetics
through the construction of what he understands as “the aesthetic”, and
can be first and foremost elucidated by taking into account the following
passage:

Kierkegaard, in contrast to Hegel, failed to achieve historical concretion—

the only authentic concretion; he absorbed it into the blind self, volatilized
it in the empty spheres: he thereby surrendered philosophy’s central claim
to truth—the interpretation of reality—while calling on a theology from
which his own philosophy extracted the pith. More emphatically than all
previous philosophers, Hegel posited the question of concretion, but suc-
cumbed helplessly to it by believing that he had produced it […]. Both
philosophers remain idealists (K: 133, Ki: 93).

In this passage Adorno sums up the overall problem of history in his

definition of the aesthetic. On the one hand, Hegel has determined aes-
thetics from the strict point of view of its historical development, but he
has grounded it on “the claim of ‘absolute’ spirit” (K: 134, Ki 93), that is
on a metaphysical and eternal category, removing in this way any con-
creteness from it; on the other hand, Kierkegaard engages in the analysis
of the concrete and particular subject, but he renounces to any kind of
historic determination. Adorno’s move is therefore that of showing the
presence of a historical determination (in Hegelian sense) precisely in
Kierkegaard’s argument, despite the fact that it belongs to a project of
construction of the aesthetic developed precisely with the intention of
giving up history. Thus, this is Adorno’s idea, history can emerge without

12
Hullot-Kentor (2006, pp. 84–85) sees Adorno’s Kierkegaard book as the turning point that
reveals Adorno as a Marxist thinker.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 MP24989.
McWilliams, Carey.
MP24896.
Mead, Jennifer H.
MP25480.
Meader, Elaine A.
MU8937.
Meader, Frederick P.
MU8937.
Meader (Fred) Productions.
MU8937.
Mean streets.
LP43626.
Meanwhile back at the office.
LP43505.
Measurement and statistics.
MP25336.
Medcom, Inc.
MP25428.
Medical Center.
LP43272 - LP43274.
LP43284 - LP43306.
LP43319.
LP43321 - LP43343.
LP43471 - LP43494.
LP43578 - LP43601.
Medical Illustration and Audiovisual Education, Baylor College of
Medicine, Houston. SEE Baylor College of Medicine, Houston.
Medical Illustration and Audiovisual Education.
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston.
MP25378.
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston. Department of
Psychiatry.
 MP25378.
Medication and treatment, your child’s eyes.
MP25119.
Meet Mister Mischief.
R570076.
Meier, Don.
MP24855 - MP24859.
Meiosis.
MP25308.
Melendez, Bill.
LP43227.
LP43627.
Melody maestro.
R570399.
Melody of youth.
R571695.
Memoirs of a strawberry.
MP24804.
Memory of the park.
MP24987.
Mendelson, Lee.
LP43227.
LP43627.
Menkle Services.
MP25328.
MP25329.
Men of two worlds.
LF126.
R574817.
Merrick, David.
LP43372.
Mertz, Paul M.
 MU8938.
Mesa trouble.
LP43630.
Metric system.
MP25389.
Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Inc.
LP42938 - LP42941.
LP42950 - LP42952.
LP42963 - LP42968.
LP43099 - LP43100.
LP43210 - LP43225.
LP43265 - LP43306.
LP43318 - LP43343.
LP43471 - LP43494.
LP43578 - LP43601.
LP43619 - LP43620.
MP24742 - MP24745.
R566404.
R567066.
R567067.
R567068.
R568471.
R568696.
R570212.
R570213.
R570603.
R570604.
R571439.
R572096.
R572097.
R572724.
R572725.
R573465.
R574263.
R574264.
R577226 - R577229.
R577598.
 R578942 - R578945.
R579955.
Metromedia Producers Corporation.
LP43203.
Mexican baseball.
R579969.
Mexican or American.
MP24738.
M F T lecture [1 - 9]
MP24959 - MP24967.
M F T / M V T lecture [1 - 9]
MP25182 - MP25190.
MGM-TV.
LP42941.
LP42968.
LP43214 - LP43225.
LP43266.
LP43272 - LP43274.
LP43284 - LP43306.
LP43319 - LP43343.
LP43471 - LP43494.
LP43578 - LP43601.
Mice.
LP43532.
Michigan Farm Bureau.
MP25357.
Michigan Kid.
R572007.
Michno, Eugeniusz.
MP8943.
Mickey and the beanstalk.
LP43542.
Mickey Mouse.
 LP43544.
Mickey’s delayed date.
R577486.
Microscope illumination: the light path.
MP25307.
Microscopic middlemen.
MP25479.
Middle Ages: a wanderer’s guide to life and letters.
LP43079.
Middle of a heat wave.
LP43004.
Midland Federal Savings and Loan Association, Denver.
LP43348.
Midtown beat.
LP43392.
Mighty Mouse and the hep cat.
R572113.
Mighty Mouse in Aladdin’s lamp.
R579971.
Mighty Mouse in Crying “wolf.”
R572115.
Mighty Mouse in My old Kentucky home.
R570608.
Mighty Mouse in Svengali’s cat.
R567076.
Mighty Mouse in The Crackpot king.
R572111.
Mighty Mouse in the Dead end cats.
R579967.
Mighty Mouse in The Electronic mouse trap.
R572105.
Mighty Mouse in The Jail break.
 R572100.
Mighty Mouse in The Johnstown Flood.
R572102.
Mighty Mouse in The Sky is falling.
R579974.
Mighty Mouse in The Trojan horse.
R572103.
Mighty Mouse in The Wicked wolf.
R570609.
Mighty Mouse in Throwing the bull.
R572108.
Mighty Mouse in Winning the West.
R572106.
Mighty Mouse meets Deadeye Dick.
R579975.
Milbaker Productions.
LP43349.
Miller on special problems in the older diabetic.
MP24854.
Millerson case.
R578900.
Millie’s daughter.
R577559.
Million dollar misunderstanding.
LP43499.
Million dollar roundup.
LP43382.
Milton Berle is the life of the party.
LP43500.
Mime of Marcel Marceau.
LP43051.
Miracle.
 LP43240.
Mirisch Cinema Company, Inc.
LP43130 - LP43133.
LP43137.
LP43630 - LP43631.
LP43634 - LP43636.
Mirisch Corporation of California.
LP43609.
LP43633.
Miss Stewart, sir.
LP43213.
Mister Ace.
R569734.
Mister District Attorney.
R572325.
Mister Hex.
R578396.
Mister Majestyk.
LP43633.
Mitchell, Mary.
LF147.
Mitedos para operar el tractor hydrostatic.
MP25160.
Mitochondria in living cells.
MP25310.
Mitosis in animal cells.
MP25297.
MNP Texize Chemicals Company, division of Morton Norwich
Products, Inc. SEE Morton Norwich Products, Inc. MNP Texize
Chemicals Company.
Moat monster.
MP25333.
Mod, mod Lucy.
LP43550.
Mole Bajer, J.
MP25297.
MP25301.
MP25306.
MP25311.
Moment of decision.
LP43273.
Monaco and Fury versus Impala and Galaxie.
MP25028.
Monaco, Impala, Galaxie 500 comparison.
MP25027.
Monkey tone news.
R572005.
Monogram Pictures Corporation.
R569472 - R569477.
R572504 - R572506.
R574060 - R574061.
R577411 - R577416.
R578395 - R578396.
R579842 - R579843.
Monogram Publications, Inc.
MU8909.
Monte Carlo versus competition.
MU8948.
Moonwalk one.
MP25414.
Mordi Gassner’s immortal who’s who.
MU8910.
More exciting case.
LP43418.
Morris, Desmond.
 LP43622.
Morton Norwich Products, Inc. MNP Texize Chemicals Company.
MP25323.
MP25489.
Mossinson, Yigal.
LP42940.
Mother lode.
LP43228.
Motion Picture Department, Brigham Young University. SEE
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. Motion Picture
Department.
Motion Picture Services, Division of Instructional Communications,
Western Michigan University. SEE Western Michigan University,
Kalamazoo. Division of Instructional Communications. Motion
Picture Services.
Motion Picture Unit, University of Iowa. SEE University of Iowa,
Iowa City. Motion Picture Unit.
Motivision, Ltd.
LP43349.
Motors.
MP24921.
MP24922.
Motors Insurance Corporation.
MP25067.
Motor system and reflexes, normal and abnormal signs.
MP25267.
Mouris, Francis Peter.
MU8951.
MU8952.
Mouse factory.
LP43524 - LP43547.
Mouton, Jane Srygley.
MP25291.
 MP25292.
Moyer, Martin.
MP24911.
Moyer (Martin) Productions.
MP24911
Ms.
MP25413.
Muggers.
LP42974.
Muir.
LP43233.
Multimedia Associates, Inc. Educational Innovators Press.
MP25043 - MP25048.
Murder.
LP43220.
Murder in Movieland.
LP43283.
Murder in the slave trade.
LP43281.
Murder machine.
LP43318.
Murder on the 13th floor.
LP43269.
Murdock’s gang.
LP43202.
Museum without walls.
MP25462.
Musical mania.
LP43169.
Musical moments from Chopin.
R578373.
Musifilm B. V.
 LU3672.
Muskrat family.
MP24760.
Mutual of Omaha.
MP24855 - MP24859.
MP25437 - MP25440.
Mutual of Omaha’s Wild kingdom.
MP24855 - MP24859.
MP25437 - MP25440.
My darling Clementine.
R568006.
Myers, Robert Eugene.
LP43125.
My old Kentucky home.
R570608.
My Shoes.
LP43119.
Mystery in Dracula’s castle.
LP43191.
LP43192.
Mystery of Amelia Earhart.
LP43360.
Mystery of Chalk Hill.
LP43384.
Mystery of the cosmic ray.
R572329.
Mystery of the green feather.
LP43388.
Mystery of the white horses.
R578904.
Mystery of the yellow rose.
LP43383.
 N
Naho Enterprises.
LP43625.
Naked ape.
LP43622.
Naples beat.
LP43387.
Narcisenfeld, Harvey.
MU8907.
Narcotics Education, Inc.
LP43344.
Nashville coyote.
LP43194.
National Association of Real Estate Editors.
MP25415.
National Broadcasting Company, Inc.
LP43615.
LP43616.
MP25483.
National Council of Senior Citizens.
MP24830.
National District Attorneys Association.
LP42972 - LP42976.
National Education Institute.
LP42972 - LP42976.
National Fire Protection Association.
MP25290.
National Foundation.
MP24886.
National Geographic Society.
MP24740.
MP24831.
MP25214 - MP25220.
MP25482.
National parks: America’s legacy.
MP25218.
National Society for the Prevention of Blindness, Inc., New York.
MP25227.
National Student Film Corporation.
LP43345.
National Telefilm Associates, Inc.
R568607 - R568608.
R569727 - R569745.
Nation of human pincushions.
LP43108.
Nature of life: living things interact.
MP25396.
Nature of life: the living organism.
MP25397.
Nature of light.
MP24891.
Nature’s colors: the craft of dyeing with plants.
MP25416.
Navajo arts and crafts.
MP24752.
Navajo girl.
LP42943.
NBC mystery movie.
LP43139.
NBC News.
MP25483.
NBC Sunday mystery movie.
LP43381 - LP43384.
LP43388 - LP43389.
LP43393 - LP43395.
NBC Wednesday mystery movie.
LP43385 - LP43387.
LP43390 - LP43392.
LP43496 - LP43499.
Neame, Ronald.
LF133.
Necessary end.
LP43419.
Neck.
MP25256.
Neff, Mort.
MP24860.
Neighbor pests.
R572096.
Nelson Company.
LP42972 - LP42976.
Nerves.
MU8904.
Nesting habits of Canada geese.
MP24793.
Network design.
MP24957.
New American Films, Inc.
LU3673.
Newdon Company.
LP43372.
New France.
MP25406.
Newman Foreman Company.
LP42953.
New Mexican connection.
LP43393.
New 66 series tractors.
MF24991.
News of the day.
R567417 - R567424.
R570429 - R570438.
R572657 - R572664.
R574062 - R574069.
R576809 - R576817.
R578731 - R578739.
Newspaper story.
MP24832.
New 2050A and 1850 loaders.
MP24990.
New voices in the South.
MP25105.
New York University.
LP43614.
Nicholson.
LP43233.
Night club boom.
MP25402.
Night cry.
LP43475.
Night in Casablanca.
R574926.
Night in paradise.
R570569.
Nightmare trip.
LP43437.
Night watch.
LP43413.
1974 cars: low speed crash costs.
MP24937.
1974 cars: low speed crash costs (foreign models)
MP25167.
1974 Chrysler and Plymouth station wagons.
MP25030.
1974 cleaner air system.
MP25023.
1974 Dodge station wagons.
MP25031.
1974 full size car body highlights.
MP25140.
Noah Films.
LP42940.
Noah’s ark.
LP43540.
Nobody loses all the time.
LP43034.
Nobody’s children.
MP25412.
Nocturne.
R570315.
Noise pollution.
LP43061.
No margin for error.
LP43476.
No medals.
LF155.
Nomination of Abraham Lincoln.
LP43359.
Nora Prentiss.
R571692.
Normal mitosis in plant cells (haemanthus)
MP25305.
North Carolina craftsman — Paul Minnis.
MU8975.
North Carolina craftsmen.
MU8975.
North from Mexico.
MP24896.
North Sea islanders.
MP24871.
No sanctuary.
LP43490.
Nosey, the sweetest skunk in the West.
LP43198.
Not just another woman.
LP42985.
Notorious.
R578231.
Not with a whimper.
LP43037.
Nova versus competition and Vega versus competition.
MU8944.
No way out.
LP43492.
Nowhere child.
LP43342.
Now is no more—A. J.’s family.
MU8905.
Now your injector.
MP25049.
Nurses wild.
LP43182.
 O
O’Brien’s stand.
LP43448.
Observation system - improving instruction.
MP25043.
Occlusive arterial disease.
MP25258.
Ocelots — den and cubs.
MP24777.
O’Connor, Rod.
MP25293 - MP25296.
MP25303 - MP25304.
MP25459.
Odd lot caper.
LP43049.
Odd man out.
R578287.
Ode to nature.
MP24909
O’Donnell, Robert H.
MP24914.
MP24915.
Odyssey Pictures Corporation.
LP43352.
Office of Education, United States. SEE United States. Office of
Education.
Officer training.
MP24931.
MP24932.
MP24933.
Offshore Productions.
MP25040.
Often and familiar ghost.
LP43410.
O’Hara, United States Treasury.
LP43229.
LP43231.
Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, Inc.
MP25357.
Old Pueblo Enterprises.
MP25293 - MP25296.
MP25459.
Old Pueblo Films.
MP25303.
MP25304.
Oldsmobile Division, General Motors Corporation. SEE General
Motors Corporation. Oldsmobile Division.
Oliver Twist.
LF146.
Ollinger’s last case.
LP43399.
Omnicom Productions, Inc.
LP43123.
Once a jolly swagman.
LF141.
Once the ferns.
LP42978.
Once upon a dream.
LF139.
O’Neill, Eugene.
LP42935.
One meat brawl.