Aesthetics as Critical Theory: Theodor W. Adorno’s Philosophy of Art
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31261/SSP.2022.20.05Keywords:
Theodor W. Adorno, aesthetics, Frankfurt School, aesthetic theory, critical theoryAbstract
In his article, Rafał Czekaj presents Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic theory as an example of critical theory in the sense given to this term by the Frankfurt School. Czekaj outlines the context of the development of Adorno’s philosophy of art, which consisted of the School representatives’ insights into and diagnoses of contemporary civilization and social structures. He also names those themes of Adorno’s philosophical work which determined the conclusions of his aesthetics, i.e., chiefly the idea of instrumental rationality presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment as well as the so-called identity thinking, both being mechanisms responsible for the oppressive state of reality.
References
Adorno Theodor W., 1920: Expressionismus und künstlerische Wahrhaftigkeit. „Die neue Schaubühne”, Nr. 2, s. 233–236.
Adorno Theodor W., 1983: Prism. Trans. from the German by Samuel and Shierry Weber. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Adorno Theodor W., 1986: Dialektyka negatywna. Przeł. [z niem.] i wstępem poprzedziła Krystyna Krzemieniowa, przy współpr. Sława Krzemienia-Ojaka. Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warszawa.
Adorno Theodor W., 1990: Sztuka i sztuki. Wybór esejów. Przeł. [z niem.] Krystyna Krzemień-Ojak. Wybrał i opatrzył wstępem Karol Sauerland. Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warszawa.
Adorno Theodor W., 1994: Teoria estetyczna. Przeł. [z niem.] Krystyna Krzemieniowa. Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa.
Brecht Bertolt, 1939: An die Nachgeborenen. https://www.lyrikline.org/de/gedichte/die-nachgeborenen-740 [dostęp: 6.01.2022].
Craib Ian, 1992: Modern Social Theory: From Parsons to Habermas. St. Martin’s Press, New York.
Czekaj Rafał, 2013: Krytyczna teoria sztuki Theodora W. Adorna. Universitas, Kraków.
Heller Agnes, 2002: The Frankfurt School. W: Rethinking the Frankfurt School: Alternative Legacies of Cultural Critique. Eds. Jeffrey T. Nealon, Caren Irr. State University of New York Press, New York, s. 207–221.
Horkheimer Max, 1987: Teoria krytyczna a tradycyjna. Tłum. [z niem.] Jerzy Łoziński. W: Szkoła frankfurcka. T. 2. Cz. 1. Wybór Jerzy Łoziński. Tłum. Jerzy Łoziński et al. Kolegium Otryckie, Warszawa, s. 137–172.
Horkheimer Max, Adorno Theodor W., 1994: Dialektyka oświecenia. Przeł. [z niem.] Małgorzata Łukasiewicz. Przekł. Przejrzał i posłowiem opatrzył Marek J. Siemek. Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN, Warszawa.
Kołakowski Leszek, 2001: Główne nurty marksizmu. Cz. 3: Rozkład. Zysk i S-ka, Poznań.
Morawski Stefan, 1992: Główne nurty estetyki XX wieku. Zarys syntetyczny. Wiedza o Kulturze, Wrocław.
Rasmussen David M., 1996: Critical Theory and Philosophy. W: The Handbook of Critical Theory. Ed. David M. Rasmussen. John Wiley & Sons, Oxford, s. 11–38.
Siemek Marek, 1994: Posłowie do wydania polskiego. W: Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialektyka oświecenia. Przeł. [z niem.] Małgorzata Łukasiewicz. Przekł. przejrzał i posłowiem opatrzył Marek J. Siemek. Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN, Warszawa, s. 283–298.
Siemek Marek, 2002: Rozum, wolność, intersubiektywność. Oficyna Naukowa, Warszawa.
Szahaj Andrzej, 2008: Teoria krytyczna szkoły frankfurckiej. Wprowadzenie. Wydawnictwa Akademickie i Profesjonalne, Warszawa.
Wawrzynowicz Andrzej, 2001: Hegel i Adorno – opozycja dwóch koncepcji myślenia dialektycznego i dwóch wykładni racjonalności. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Instytutu Filozofii UAM, Poznań.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
