Notes 4/14

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969)

• Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947)

  • To explain the tendencies which turn cultural progress into its opposite

  • Rational thought has become increasingly irrational

  • The modern would is an ace of man-made disasters, stemming from “advances” in science and technology

  • modern society is organized in ways that enforce social and intellectual conformity

  • The culture industry

    • even pseudo-individual, “non-conformity” relies on commerce

    • art and culture is reduced to products and commodities

  • “Critical theory,” or critical philosophy, attempts to resist such intellectual conformity

    • It challenges the status quo to expose the irrational and self-contradictory elements of thought, incl. art and culture

  • Aesthetic theory (1970)

    • Dialectical method to understand art

      • To distinguish within artwork both what is true (advanced, progressive, valid) and what is false (ideological, like propaganda)

      • Artworks are complex objects, containing a variety of ideas and meanings, both true and false, and these can change over time.

      • It is the task of criticism to reveal these contrary elements

      • Showing pics of napoleon on horse,