Aesthetic Theory

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A&C Black, Dec 14, 2004 - Philosophy - 416 pages
Theodor Adorno (1903-69) was undoubtedly the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School, the influential group of German thinkers that fled to the US in the 1930s, including such thinkers as Herbert Marcuse and Max Horkheimer. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory. Aesthetic Theory is Adorno's posthumous magnum opus and the culmination of a lifetime's investigation. Analysing the sublime, the ugly and the beautiful, Adorno shows how such concepts frame and distil human experience and that it is human experience that ultimately underlies aesthetics. In Adorno's formulation ‘art is the sedimented history of human misery'. Edited by Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedeman Translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor.
 

Contents

Art Society Aesthetics
1
Situation
21
On the Categories of the Ugly the Beautiful and Technique
60
Natural Beauty
81
Apparition Spiritualization Intuitability
104
Semblance and Expression
133
Enigmaticalness Truth Content Metaphysics
157
Coherence and Meaning
180
SubjectObject
215
Toward a Theory of the Artwork
232
Universal and Particular
262
Society
295
Paralipomena
341
Theories on the Origin of Art
411
Editors Afterword
459
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) was a founder and arguably the foremost thinker of the Frankfurt School. He worked with Max Horkheimer at the New York Institute for Social Research and later taught at the University of Frankfurt until his death in 1969. His work has proved enormously influential in sociology, philosophy and cultural theory.

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