Theodor W. Adorno

by Gerard Delanty (Editor)

Overview

Theodor W.Adorno was one of the towering intellectuals of the twentieth century. His contributions cover such a myriad of fields, including the sociology of culture, social theory, the philosophy of music, ethics, art and aesthetics, film, ideology, the critique of modernity and musical composition, that it is difficult to assimilate the sheer range and profundity of his achievement. His celebrated friendship with Walter Benjamin has produced some of the most moving and insightful correspondence on the origins and objects of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

This unprecedented collection, devised and assembled by one of Europe's rising social theorists, distills the best from published assessments and responses to Adorno's oeuvre. The collection is divided into 4 volumes:

Volume 1: Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theory

Part 1: Negative Dialectics

Included here are contributions on the concept of totality in the writings of Adorno and Lukacs; Adorno and Bourgeois Philosophy; the relationship between Adorno and Kierkegaard; Adorno's Critique of Idealism; Adorno and Linguistics; Adono and Habermas.

Part 2: Ethics and Redemption

This is comprised of contributions on Adorno and Truth; Adorno's Inverse Theology; and Adorno and the Ineffable

Part 3: Critical Theory, Ideology Critique and Social Science

Included here are contributions on Adorno's relation to the Positivist Dispute; the Popper-Adorno Controversy; Adorno and Empirical Research; and Hermeneutics and Critical Theory.

Volume 2: Aesthetic Theory

Part 1: Art and Politics in 'Aesthetic Theory'

This includes material on the De-Aestheticization of Art; Adorno, Utopia and Mimesis; Adorno and autonomous art; Adorno and Dialectics; Adorno, Marxism and Art; Art and Criticism in Adorno's Aesthetics; Adorno's concept of the Avant-Garde.

Part 2: Philosophy of Music

This includes contributions on Adorno's music and social criticism; Adorno and nostalgia; Adorno, Heidegger and the meaning of music; Adorno and Wagner.

Part 3: On Jazz

The material included here addresses questions of Adorno and Popular Music; Adorno's encounter with jazz; Adorno, Jazz and Society; and the reasons for Adorno's apparent hatred of jazz.

Volume 3: Social Theory & The Critique of Modernity

Part 1: On 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment'

Included here are chapters on the dialectic of enlightenment and post-functionalist thought; dialectic of enlightenment as genealogy critique; the relationship between the dialectic of enlightenment, modernity and postmodernity; Adorno's critique of progress; Adorno and theories of subjectivity; and the dialectic of enlightenment and rationality.

Part 2: Anti-Semitism

This consists of material on Adorno and Horkheimer; and Adorno and Public Sphere

Part 3: Popular Culture and Capitalism

Included here are contributions on Adorno and Sport; Adorno's alleged left-wing elitism; Adorno's critique of astrology and the Occult; Benjamin and Adorno on Disney; Adorno, Totalitarianism and the Welfare State; and Adorno and Mass Society.

Volume 4: Cultural Theory and the Postmodern Challenge

Part 1: 'Damaged Life': Exile in America

This section includes Leo Lowenthal's insightful recollections of Adorno; Adorno and the primal history of subjectivity; Adorno and Los Angeles; Adorno's relation to American culture; and Adorno's exile in England.

Part 2: Film Theory

This section includes chapters on Adorno and the Culture Industry; Benjamin, Adorno and Contemporary Film Theory; Adorno, Aesthetics and the Social.

Part 3: Wellmer and Adorno

Included here are papers on Aesthetic, Psychic and Social Synthesis in Adorno and Wellmer; and New German Aesthetic Theory after Adorno.

Part 4: Jameson on Adorno

Included here are papers on Jameson, Adorno and the persistence of the Utopian; and a Marxism for Postmodernism

Part 5: Modernism and Postmodernism

This section contains papers on Adorno, Foucault and the Modern Intellectual; Adorno, Foucault and Two forms of the Critique of Modernity; Adorno and the Habermas-Lyotard Debate; Adorno, Postmodernism and Edward Said; Adorno, Heidegger and Postmodernism; Adorno and the Decline of the Modern Age; The literary process of modernism; Adorno, Tradition and the Postmodern

Part 5: The Feminist Response

Included here are contributions on Adorno and Judith Butler; Adorno, Art Theory and Feminist Practice; and Gender in the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer.

The collection comes with a superb Introduction to Adorno by Gerard Delanty which elucidates the main contributions of this penetrating and enduring thinker.

Comprehensive and consistently illuminating, the collection includes the thought on Adorno from some of the most distinguished commentators on social theory. Included here are selections from the writings of Susan Buck-Morss, Martin Jay, Agnes Heller; David Frisby; Johann Arnason; Richard Wolin; Andrew Bowie; Robert Hulnot-Kentor; Leo Lowenthal; Richard Rorty Axel Honneth; Albrecht Wellmer; and Jurgen Habermas.

The result is a peerless research resource allowing readers to delve into all aspects of Adorno's extraordinary accomplishments in social thought, philosophy and cultural criticism. It will be required reading for students of the Frankfurt School, Marxism, Critical Theory, Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics and Social Theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780761943648
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	05/25/2004
Series:	SAGE Masters in Modern Social Thought series
Edition description:	Four-Volume Set
Pages:	1664
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gerard Delanty is Reader in Sociology at the University of Liverpool

Table of Contents

VOLUME ONE: PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS AND CRITICAL THEORY
Introduction - Gerard Delanty
PART ONE: NEGATIVE DIALECTICS
The Concept of Totality in Lukacs and Adorno - Martin Jay
T W Adorno and the Dilemmas of Bourgeois Philosophy - Susan Buck-Morss
Adorno's Kierkegaardian Debt - David Sherman
Minding the World - Espen Hammer
Adorno's Critique of Idealism
Concepts and Intuitions - Stale Finke
Adorno after the Linguistic Turn
Adorno and Habermas on the Human Condition - Deborah Cook
PART TWO: ETHICS AND REDEMPTION
Correlations, Constellations and the Truth - David Kaufmann
‘Bilderverbot' Meets Body in Theodor W Adorno's Inverse Theology - Elizabeth A Pritchard
Adorno on the Ethical and the Ineffable - James Gordon Finlason
PART THREE: CRITICAL THEORY, IDEOLOGY CRITIQUE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
The Positivist Dispute as a Turning Point in German Post-War Theory - Agnes Heller
The Popper-Adorno Controversy - David Frisby
The Methodological Dispute in German Sociology
To Question Foundations - Leon Goldstein
Kultur and Culture - David E Morrison
The Case of Theodor W Adorno and Paul F Lazarsfeld
Objectivity and Insecurity - Ryan Drake
Adorno and Empirical Social Research
Farewell to Critical Theory? - Helmut Dubiel
Cultural Critique and Cultural Presuppositions - Johann Arnason
The Hermeneutical Undercurrent in Critical Theory
Hibernation - Irving Wohifarth
On the Tenth Anniversary of Adorno's Death
VOLUME TWO: AESTHETIC THEORY
PART ONE: ART AND POLITICS IN AESTHETIC THEORY
The De-Aestheticization of Art - Richard Wolin
On Adorno's Äesthetische Theorie
Utopia, Mimesis and Reconciliation - Richard Wolin
A Redemptive Critique of Adorno's [um]Aesthetic Theory
Autonomy of Art - Peter U Hohendahl
Looking back at Adorno's Äesthetische Theorie
The Social Significance of Automomous Art Adorno and B[um]urger - Lambert Zuidervaart
Historical Dialectics and the Autonomy of Art in Adorno's [um]Aesthetische Theorie - James M Harding
Adorno, Marxism and Art - Russell A Bernan
Critical Notes on Adorno's Sociology of Music and Art - Donald B Knuspit
Art and Criticism in Adorno's Aesthetics - Raymond Geuss
An Aesthetics of Negativity/An Aesthetics of Reception - Pauline Johnson
Jauss's Dispute with Adorno
Autonomy and Anti-Art - Stewart Martin
Adorno's Concept of Avant-Garde Art
PART TWO: PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC
An Introduction to Adorno's Music and Social Criticism - Ronald Weitzman
A Knowledge That Would Not Be Power - Calvin Thomas
Adorno, Nostalgia, and the Historicity of the Musical Subject
Adorno's Wagner - Gyorgy Markus
PART THREE: ON JAZZ
The Impossibility of Music: Adorno, Popular and Other Music - Robert Hullot-Kentor
Adorno and Jazz - Ulrich Schönherr
Reflections on a Failed Encounter
Adorno, Jazz and the Aesthetics of Popular Music - Theodore A Gracyk
Why Did Adorno Hate Jazz? - Robert W Witkin
Adorno on Jazz and Society - Joseph D Lewandowski
VOLUME THREE: SOCIAL THEORY AND THE CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY
PART ONE: ON THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Back to Adorno - Robert Hullot-Kentor
The Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Post-Functionalist Theory of Society - Johann P Arnason
Dialectic of Enlightenment as Genealogy Critique - Roger Foster
Between Modernity and Postmodernity - Christopher Rocco
Reading Dialectic of Enlightenment
The Oversimplification of Politics - Richard Rorty
The World Spirit on the Fins of a Rocket - Michael Löwy and Eleni Varikas
Adorno's Critique of Progress
The Dialectic of Enlightenment - Yvonne Sherrat
A Contemporary Reading
The Urgeschichte of Subjectivity Reconsidered - Joel Whitebook
The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society - Axel Honneth
The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism
The Enlightenment of Rationality - Hauke Brunkhorst
Remarks on Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment
The Death of the Sirens and the Origin of the Work of Art - Albrecht Wellmer
PART TWO: ANTI-SEMITISM
Adorno and Horkheimer - David Seymour
Enlightenment and Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism as Distorted Politics: Adorno on the Public Sphere - Brett R Wheller
PART THREE: POPULAR CULTURE AND CAPITALISM
Adorno on Sport - William Morgan
The Case of the Fractured Dialectic
Left-Wing Elitism, Adorno on Popular Culture - Bruce Baugh
Popular Occultism and Critical Social Theory - Cary J Nederman and James Guilding
Exploring Some Thems in Adorno's Critique of Astrology and the Occult
Of Mice and Ducks - Miriam Hansen
Benjamin and Adorno on Disney
Adorno on Late Capitalism - Deborah Cook
Totalitarianism and the Welfare State
Adorno on Mass Society - Deborah Cook
VOLUME FOUR: CULTURAL THEORY AND THE POSTMODERN CHALLENGE
PART ONE: ‘DAMAGED LIFE': EXILE AND AMERICA
Recollections of Theodor W Adorno - Leo Lowenthal
Theodor Adorno - J[um]urgen Habermas
The Primal History of Subjectivity - Self-Affirmation Gone Wild
Adorno's Uncle - Evelyn Wilcock
Dr Berhard Wingfield and the English Exile of Theodore W Adorno, 1934-8
Damage Control - Nico Israel
Adorno, Los Angeles, and the Dislocation of Culture
Adorno in America - Martin Jay
The Displaced Intellectual? Adorno's American Years Revisited - Peter U Hohendahl
PART TWO: FILM THEORY
Critical Theory and Film - Diane Waldman
Adorno and 'The Culture Industry' Revisited
The Aesthetic Experience of Modernity: Benjamin, Adorno, and the Contemporary Film Theory - Richard W Allen
Against Negation, For a Politics of Cultural Production - Georgina Born
Adorno, Aesthetics, the Social
PART THREE: WELLMER ON ADORNO
From Schoenberg to Odysseus - Joel Whitebook
Aesthetic, Psychic and Social Synthesis in Adorno and Wellmer
New German Aesthetic Theory after Adorno - Austin Harrington
Martin Seel's Art of Diremption
PART FOUR: JAMESON ON ADORNO
A Marxism for the Postmodern? Jameson's Adorno - Peter Osborne
Jameson's Adorno, or the Persistence of the Utopian - John Pizer
PART FIVE: MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM
The Last of the Modernists - Eduardo Delafuente
Adorno, Foucault and the Modern Intellectual
Foucault and Adorno - Axel Honneth
Two Forms of the Critique of Modernity
Interpretation and Domination - Shane Phelan
Adorno and the Habermas-Lyotard Debate
The Politics of Nonidentity - Adorno, Postmodernism - and Edward Said - Fred Dallmayr
Adorno, Heidegger and Postmodernism - Hauke Brunkhorst
Adorno and the Decline of the Modern Age - Peter B[um]urger
The Literary Process of Modernism: From Rousseau to Adorno - Hans Robert Jauss
Adorno, Tradition and the Postmodern - Ulrich Schönherr
PART SIX: THE FEMINIST RESPONSE
The Need in Thinking - Carie C Hull
Materiality in T W Adorno and Judith Butler
Adorno, Art Theory, and Feminist Practice - Amy Mullin
A Hidden Agenda - Heidi M Schlipphacke
Gender in Selected Writings by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer