Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory

Abstract

This chapter examines Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, a theoretical discourse, or a collection of essays written over an extended period of time, on the relationship between authentic art and a critical theory of society. Adorno believed that the relationship between authentic art, truth and morality can lead to a form of praxis freed up from both the totalized and reified world. Addressing authentic arts’ truth potential, Adorno strives to understand and explain how a perspective on art can clarify how the world is and how we can conduct ourselves in it. His aesthetic critique, the chapter argues, is an allegorical and reconstructed view of politics (as theory) and the meaning of the political in a work (of art). For Adorno, critical theory, and praxis itself, should consider the relationship that exists between authentic art and the individual coming to terms with this relation. Adorno considered aesthetics and art in an historical context, arguing that to understand art and to seek the meaning of art is to answer the question of the authentic meaning of history.