Aesthetic Theory (Volume 88) by Theodor W. Adorno

Beyond this, however, the difficulty has sometimes been the comparative unfamiliarity of an English-speaking audience with a German philosophical tradition which is the very element in which Adorno's thought lives and moves. The only existing English translation of Adorno's major treatise, Aesthetic Theory, was recently withdrawn by its publishers because of its inaccuracy (although another attempt is to be published shortly). Īdorno's philosophical aesthetics has thus far been unevenly received in the English-speaking world.

It is precisely in its commitment to negativity that Beethoven’s late style becomes instructive to us in a time of crisis.By PETER UWE HOHENDAHL. In lending form to transience, the compositions of the late Beethoven, as seen through Adorno’s eyes, attain exemplary status for a dialectical rethinking of nature and history: While Beethoven’s compositions of the middle period let history retreat beyond the semblance of reconciled nature, his late style, in turn, makes explicit the historical nature of what has been “naturalised” by the semblance of the reconciled whole. I read Adorno’s interpretation of Beethoven’s late works as a contrasting response to a situation that is pervaded by the experience of finitude.

For Adorno, the recognition of the historical truth of the distinction between history and nature is the driving force of critique, the comportment of which Adorno regards as most clearly expressed in artworks, in particular, in music.

It is at this point that Adorno’s work, and, in particular, his thinking on aesthetics can make an important intervention. While the differences between those two approaches could hardly appear greater, they converge at their margins: both operate on the assumption that the Anthropocene signifies a nature-culture continuum. The popularisation of the term Anthropocene has been accompanied by the emergence of two seemingly opposed discourses: one response could be characterised in terms of a Promethean faith in science, and the other as a turn towards new materialism. This article develops a critique of the notion of the Anthropocene through the lens of Adorno’s reading of Beethoven’s late style.

Aesthetic Theory (Volume 88) by Theodor W. Adorno