Bøger af Theodor W. Adorno

Den moderne kulturs historie fra 1700-tallet og frem til i dag opdelt i temaer. Hvert tema belyses gennem en række uddrag af centrale tekster fra hele den omhandlende periode. Blandt forfatterne er Durkheim, Loos, Corbusier, Benjamin, Adorno,Habermas, Woolf, Sontag og Hitler

Den tyske frankfurterskole-filosofs sene hovedværk. ‘Negativ dialektik’ er et opgør med idealismen i europæisk filosofisk tænkning. Filosofien har undertrykt fænomenes særpræg og individualitet. Virkeligheden er altid rigere end de begrebslige udlægninger af den. Idealismen prøver at oprette en identitet mellem begreb og sag, mellem subjekt og objekt. Ved at ignorere den del af sagen, der ikke går op i begrebet, afskærer filosofien sig ikke blot fra at erkende verden som den er, men også fra at tænke “det, som kunne være anderledes” – utopien, det gode liv – og binder sig til den slette realitet. Hans væsentligste eksempel er kunsten, som ikke har noget praktisk formål og derfor ikke kan sættes på begreb. Der er to vigtige navne i Adornos tænkning, på den ene side Auschwitz, der for ham var den ultimative katastrofe og den lille by Amorbach i nærheden af Frankfurt am Main. I Amorbach, hvor musik spillede en stor rolle, tilbragte Adorno ferierne i sin barndom, og han forbandt den med en lykke, der kun kunne genskabes som et forsvindende ekko af stednavne, da han vendte tilbage fra USA efter krigen. Kernen i den negative dialektik er for Adorno, at katastrofen aldrig må ses som det hele i historien, heller ikke efter Auschwitz, men som en grænse, der er åben mod lykkens ingenmandsland. De biografiske kortprosatekster ‘Amorbach’ er ligesom det filosofiske hovedværk ‘Negativ dialektik’ fra 1966.

Th.W. Adorno, en af grundlæggerne af Frankfurterskolens kritiske teori, er en af vor tids største filosoffer. Han var meget optaget af musik og ville oprindeligt være komponist. Han skrev en lang række bøger om musik. Wagner – forsøg på en tolkning (1937) forsøger at demaskere komponisten i lyset af nazismens fremmarch. ‘Mahler – en musikalsk fysiognomik’ (1960) er en del af Adornos projekt om det modernes gennembrud. Helt tilbage i 1938 besluttede Adorno at skrive en bog om Beethoven – for ham måske den største af de klassisk-romantiske komponister, men han blev aldrig færdig. Livet igennem skrev han artikler om Beethoven foruden en lang række noter, fragmenter og udkast til dele af bogen. Adorno døde i 1969, og forskeren og lederen af Adorno­arkivet, Rolf Tiedemann, påtog sig opgaven at samle alle stumperne til en bog. Det medfører, at bogen ikke har værkkarakter i betydnin­gen afrundethed, indre sammenhæng, fuldendthed. Den er et værkfragment. Og til gengæld fyldt med modsætningsfyldte vurderinger, analyser, klarheder om Beethoven, som måske ikke ville have kunnet få plads i en færdig bog.Et af Adornos fragmenter lyder:“På lignende måde, som der kun findes Hegels filosofi, findes der kun Beethoven i vestens musikhistorie.”

Den 6. april 1967 holdt den store tyske filosof Theodor W. Adorno et foredrag ved universitetet i Wien efter at være blevet inviteret af en studenterforening. I dette foredrag beskriver Adorno sin dybe og smertende bekymring ved at se, hvordan højreradikalismen i 1960’erne igen er ved at vinde fodfæste i Tyskland og Europa – og så kort efter Holocaust og dermed et af verdenshistoriens mørkeste kapitler har udspillet sig.En 50 år gammel filosofisk flaskepost fra en tænker, der kendte til konsekvenserne af radikal populisme og accelererende højredrejning. Og en privilegeret indgang til en af de vigtigste filosoffer i det 20. århundrede.

This text on aesthetics includes major sections on: Art, Society, Aesthetics; the Categories of the Ugly, the Beautiful, the Technics; Natural Beauty; Coherence and Subject-Object; and Towards a Theory of the Artwork.

ÆSTETISK TEORI er Adornos sidste værk og et hovedværk i det 20. århundredes tænkning. Bogen samler et helt livs overvejelser om den moderne kunsts egenart og sociale forankring. Den har aldrig tidligere været oversat til dansk, men Klim har tidligere udgivet hovedværket “Negativ dialektik”, “Aspekter af den nye højreradikalisme” samt Adornos værker om Mahler, Wagner og Beethoven.Theodor W. Adorno var en af de vigtigste filosoffer i efterkrigstidens Europa. Med rette kendt for sin socialforskning og politiske tænkning, men ligeledes en afgørende æstetisk filosof. Over halvdelen af Adornos samlede værker er studier af kunst, musik og litteratur – og kulminationen på hans æstetiske refleksioner findes i dette værk, som udkom året efter hans død. Et værk der på én gang samler og videreudvikler hans tænkning om den moderne kunst.Bogen forsynes med et fyldigt efterskrift ved Tobias Dias, som forsker i Adornos forfatterskab.

Essays by Adorno on art and cinema, available in English for the first time.   In Without Model, Theodor W. Adorno strikingly demonstrates the intellectual range for which he is known. Taking the premise of the title as his guiding principle, that artistic and philosophical thought must eschew preconceptions and instead adapt itself to its time, circumstances, and object, Adorno presents a series of essays reflecting on culture at different levels, from the details of individual products to the social conditions of their production. He shows his more nostalgic side in the childhood reminiscences of ‿Amorbach‿, but also his acute sociocultural analysis on the central topic of the culture industry. He criticizes attempts to maintain tradition in music and visual art, arguing against a restorative approach by stressing the modernity and individuality of historical works in the context of their time. In all of these essays, available for the first time in English, Adorno displays the remarkable thinking of one both steeped in tradition and dedicated to seeing beyond it. Â

Adorno's study of Alban Berg is a unique document. Itself now a part of music history, it is a personal account, by a pre-eminent philosopher and aesthetician, of the life and musical works of his mentor, friend and composition teacher. Shortly after Berg's death in 1935, Adorno contributed several analyses to the first Berg biography. Thirty years later he incorporated these chapters and several subsequent essays into one volume. Beyond analyses of individual pieces, the book explores the historical and cultural significance of Berg's music, its relationship to that of other twentieth-century composers, and to the larger issues of contemporary life. This is a classic study, made available here for the first time in English, and it provides a key to understanding Adorno himself as well as offering an individual perspective on one of the major composers of the twentieth century.

Egentlighedens jargon (1964) betegner den eksistentielle snakkesalighed, der går tilbage til Martin Heideggers Væren og tid (1927) og derfra spredte sig til psykologi, pædagogik, æstetik, teologi m.v. Både som en art selvlegitimerende og ”dyb” metafysik og som en ideologisk kværn, der gør tanken blind for realiteternes verden. Den, der pynter sig med ord, bliver snarere enfoldig end opbyggelig, snarere part i tidens kritikløshed og medløberi end engageret og handlende, og det er det fatale ved al den tale om ”egentlighed”. Sorteper er det ”man”, der lever ”uegentligt” ved ikke at have forstået sin ”tilstedeværen” som ”kastethed” og ”væren hen imod døden”. I dag hjemsøger egentlighedens jargon – i fortyndet, trivialiseret form – meget af den eksistenspsykologi og managementteori, der til det ulidelige puster sig op med positiviteter, udfordringer og hurraord.Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) gik til kilden (Heidegger) og nogle af dens forgreninger (Jaspers, Bollnow) for at vise, hvor forurenet og forplumret dette tankens vand ud af ørerne var og er. Det er kritisk teori, når den er bedst og polemisk-intellektuelt bider fra sig.Egentlighedens jargon udkom første gang på dansk i 2008 og genudgives nu i Hans Reitzels Forlags serie Klassikere.

First published in German as Philosophische Elemente einer Theorie Der Gesellschaft, 1964.

Originally published: Ontologie und Dialektik, 1960-61. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002.

Introduction to Sociology distills decades of distinguished work in sociology by one of this century's most influential thinkers in the areas of social theory, philosophy, aesthetics, and music.

Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "e;What we had set out to do,"e; the authors write in the Preface, "e;was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism."e;Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "e;Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology."e; This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book. This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.

This volume comprises Adorno's first lectures specifically dedicated to the subject of the dialectic, a concept which has been key to philosophical debate since classical times.

This study was written in English in the 1930s when Adorno, one of the 20th century's most influential thinkers, was living in the United States. It is a pioneering analysis of a member of what we now call the Radical Right-the now-forgotten Martin Luther Thomas, an American fascist-style demagogue who used the radio to appeal to and to manipulate his adherents.

* This is a re-issue of a classic book by one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. * While written as a critique of Husserl's phenomenology, this book is at the same time a much broader critique of philosophy and epistemology.

Adorno is one of this century's most influential thinkers in the areas of social theory, philosophy, aesthetics, and music. Throughout the essays in this book, all of which concern musical matters, he displays an astonishing range of cultural reference, demonstrating that music is invariably social, political, even ethical.

This volume comprises one of the key lecture courses leading up to the publication in 1966 of Adorno's major work, Negative Dialectics. These lectures focus on developing the concepts critical to the introductory section of that book. They show Adorno as an embattled philosopher defining his own methodology among the prevailing trends of the time.

The surviving correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. * This is the first time all of the surviving correspondence between Adorno and Benjamin has appeared in English. * Provides a key to the personalities and projects of these two major intellectual figures.

Kant is a pivotal thinker in Adornoa s intellectual world. Yet although he wrote monographs on Hegel, Husserl and Kierkegaard, the closest he came to an extended discussion of Kant are two lecture courses, one concentrating on the Critique of Pure Reason and the other on the Critique of Practical Reason.

This volume of lectures on aesthetics, given by Adorno in the winter semester of 1958/59, formed the foundation for his later text Aesthetic Theory, widely regarded as one of Adorno s greatest works.

Features the text in the great controversies over literature and art between thinkers who have become giants of 20th-century philosophy.

Presents a study of key musical works of the twentieth century. Here, the author brings a range of social and cultural questions to bear on the analysis of two composers he saw as polar opposites, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky.

"Dreams are as black as death. " -Theodor W. Adorno Adorno was fascinated by his dreams and wrote them down throughout his life. He envisaged publishing a collection of them although in the event no more than a few appeared in his lifetime.