Theodor Adorno biography
Theodor Ludwig Vizengrund Adorno is a German social philosopher, a sociologist, the theoretician of art mainly of music and literature. One of the leading representatives of the Frankfurt School, the influential direction of neo-Marxism in German social philosophy- which has developed around the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research created in the year of I. Goethe University in Frankfurt.
The employee, and then the Locum -Water, together with Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt Institute. The theoretical activity of Theodore Adorno as a philosopher and sociologist takes place in the representative of the ideas of G. Hegel, K. Marx and Z. He began it as an avant -garde oriented musical critic, theorist and sociologist of music, in deepening the processes of “renovation” and “fetishization” in modern music and its perception by students.
Gradually switched to analysis from this angle of view and other areas of art, literature and philosophy, culture in general. One of the most important works of Adorno is the “Dialectics of Enlightenment”, written by him in collaboration with Max Horkheimer, is a programmatic presentation of the social philosophy of neo -Marxism and its peculiar philosophy of history, in the light of which the evolution of humanity appears as the history of the “failed civilization”: the aggravated “alienation” caused by the “bourgeois” of their lords, of their own contrasting themselves.
Consciously parody of G. Hegel, who considered the world history from the angle of the development of reason and freedom, Adorno interprets the history of the West as a pathological process of aggravating insanity of the mind, which has gone crazy due to the confrontation and the loss of individual freedom “fascizoid” capitalism and frankly inhuman fascism. In the spirit of these ideas, which developed on the basis of avant-garde-modernist aesthetic addictions, Adorno exposes socio-philosophical analysis the modern Western music “Philosophy of New Music”, which acts as a modeling of the process of total “alienation” of a person, that is, his “dividing”, “exhausting” in general, which occurs in the conditions of a “late capitalism.
" In the same-“cultural and critical”-the other musical and sociological works “prisms” are maintained by the spirit. Criticism of culture and society ”,; “Wials, music in a controlled world”, as well as literary and sociological “notes on literature”, vol. I-III,,, and aesthetic-sociological works, primarily published posthumously, “aesthetic theory”. In them, the concept of Adorno appears as a left -winged version of the elite concept of art.
The neo-Marxist-avant-garde method of “Criticism of Culture” is also applied Adorno in the analysis of modern Western philosophy and epistemology in the book “Studia about Husserl and Phenomenological Antinomies”, which proposes the sociological “Metakritic” of the theory of cognition, exposing the processes of “fetishization” at the deepest levels of modern theoretical knowledge. Especially sociological problems are presented in Adorno primarily in the collective work “Authoritarian Personality”, prepared under his leadership and with direct participation.
Moving in line with the idea of an “authoritarian personality” proposed by E. Fromm and specified by M. Horkheimer, Adorno, together with his employees, is trying to confirm it on the basis of a concrete sociological study. But although this work was widely known among Western sociologists, its general assessment from the point of view of both the concept, which is based on its basis, and the technique applied in it, was eventually rather negative.
For the years, Adorno has repeatedly acted with reports and articles devoted to criticism of the methodology of sociology in the spirit of the neo -Marxist “critical theory”; In the same spirit, his report “On the Logic of Social Sciences”, uttered at the Congress of West German Sociologists in the year, was also maintained. He offers an alternative to the methodology criticized by him in the book “Introduction to the Sociology of Music”.
Adorno proceeds from the assumption that any “systematic” theoretical construction based on the logical technique of bringing individualization to the general method of generalization, there is a repetition and, therefore, the “apologetics” of the real process of suppressing the unique individual “public totalness” in the late capitalist society. Approving, in contrast to Hegel, that the whole is “untouched”, Adorno criticizes the system-forming function of the theoretical concept, contrasting it as the “organ of truth” aesthetic expression.
The vulgar-sociological concepts of Adorno were borrowed in the e years with “new left” with “total” revealing criticism with the characteristic of them. Although Adorno himself supported this movement at his first stage, he subsequently dissociated him from him as from nihilistic and extremist. However, in left -winged Western sociology, the authority of Adorno remained high even after the condemnation of political extremism.
Bibliography Selected Works: Theodor W. Adorno: Kierkegaard. Theodor W.Adorno: Willi Reich Hrsg. Philosophische Fragmente. Adorno: Philosophie Der Neuen Musik. Levinson, R. Nevitt Sanford: The Authoritarian Personality. Adorno: Minima Moralia. Adorno: Prismen. Kulturkritik und GesellSchaft. Adorno: Zur Metakritik der Erkentnistheorie. Adorno: Dissonanzen. Musik in Der Verwalten Welt.
Adorno: Aspekte Der Hegelschen Philosophie. Adorno: Noten Zur Literatur I. Adorno: Klangfiguren. Musikalische Schriften I. Adorno: Mahler. Eine Musikalische Physiognomie. Adorno: Noten Zur Literatur II. Adorno: Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie. Adorno: Drei Studien Zu Hegel.
Adorno: Eingriffe. Neun Kritische Modelle. Adorno: Der Getreue Korrepetitor. Lehrschriften Zur Musikalischen Praxis. Adorno: Quasi Una Fantasia. Musikalische Schriften II. Adorno: Moments Musicaux. Adorno: Jargon Der Eigentlichkeit. Zur Deutschen Ideologie. Adorno: Negative Dialektik. Adorno: Ohne Leitbild. Parva aesthetica. Adorno: Berg. Adorno: Impromptus.
Adorno: Theodor W. Adorno: Stichworte. Kritische Modelle 2. Adorno: Noten Zur Literatur IV. Adorno: Der Schatz des Indianer-Joe. Singspiel Nach Mark Twain. Adorno: Beethoven. Philosophie Der Musik. Fragmente und Texte. Nachghelassene Schriften. Adorno Archiv. I, Band 1. Adorno: Probleme Der Moralphilosophie IV, Band Adorno: Metaphysik. Begriff und Probleme Adorno: Zur Lehre von Der Geschichte und von der freiheit - Adorno: Ontologie und Dialektik - IV, Band 7.
Fragment Zur Vorlesung - Adorno: Zu: ZU Einer Theorie Der Musikalischen Reproduktion. Aufzeichnungen, Ein Entwurf und Zwei Schemata. I, Band 2. Adorno: Traumprotokolle. Nachwort Von Jan Philipp Reemtsma. Adorno: Current of Music. Elements of a Radio Theory, Hrsg. Weekend information.