Aesthetic Theory (Volume 88) (Theory and History of Literature)

Adorno's Aesthetic Theory is not the first book you want to grab if you neither have a solid foundation in the basics of the German philosophical tradition, nor have spent some time reading other, more simplistic texts on aesthetics. This book is paratactic — some paragraphs run for several pages. This is intentional; Adorno's hope is to force the reader to think in a radial fashion, returning, like a spiral, back to ideas already presented, but framed differently. This aggravates many. It is also a posthumous work, so it's quite unrefined. Inasmuch as it might be foolhardy to snip choice quotes out of their paratactic contexts, thereby squelching the experience Adorno is trying to force the reader into, it is also foolhardy to believe this represents Adorno at his best.Reading Hullot-Kentor's Translator's Introduction is a must. If you heed his suggestion and read the Draft Introduction first and then approach the beginning as he states, the text in general will make much more sense early on than if you try to start at the beginning and dive off the cliff into the chaos of words.Finally, for those who can surmount these caveats, I believe you will, about one-third of the way through, begin to appreciate the effort for not only its choice snippets, but the work as a whole.

This book feels like reading a great mind as his thoughts emerged on the page. It happens to be Adorno's last unfinished work, and almost seems pre-production in its thought process but has been faithfully translated from German as it was left...be warned you will come away as if you just penetrated a mind in mid thought and heard everything word for word. Read in small bits it begins to make sense as your subconscious mind rearanges his thoughts into an order that become relateable. Adorno gets to the Meat of what Art is and threatens to be, as much as elucidating what it becomes...ergo, from passionate hands to ears and eyes, to passionate hearts, so go the journey of the arts. Had it been more cogent I would have made it 5 stars. There is an oceanic depth to his discussion and points...dive deep with him and come away with sand and silt dripping from your hands gouged from the bottom of the dark abyss that is Art.

Adorno is not famous for his writing style. His prose is dense, and sometimes impenetrable for the English reader. Yet, I think Adorno's Aesthetic Theory is one of the greatest books of XX century philosophy along with Heidegger's "Being and Time", and Wittgenstein's Tractatus. I think there are three levels of reflection in this book. The first is that AT is a sociology of art. Adorno traces the social and economic conditions of how modern art becomes to being. Industrialization and modernization have a great impact on aesthetics because perception and reality are fundamentally altered. Adorno makes the case that the destruction of nature by industry propels modern art to find its reality elsewhere by becoming abstract. Art does not want to imitate nature since nature is already destroyed. It escapes to the realm of idea(l)s in order to critique the current state of being. Aesthetics is the second level of reflection. Aesthetics in modernism becomes an instrument of social critique. Before, in the time of Kant and the idealists, aesthetic was the study of beauty and artistic genius. Now, according to Adorno, it becomes the study of social disintegration in which the artist is just the "unfortunate" medium to express it. Yet, Adorno is not a complete pessimist. He sees in aesthetic reflection a tool for utopian transformation. This transformation constitutes the third level of reading AT -the philosophical or utopian. Modern art, because it critiques this world for the sake of a better one, is also philosophy. Since philosophy was the discipline that established how the real and ideal are separated, modern art also shows this gap, and treats beauty as a poor substitute for happiness. Beauty, once idealized by the elite, becomes a sign of art's powerlessness to transform the world. This impotence, still, is a sign of art's utopian power. This kind of paradoxical reasoning is typical of Adorno, and it is loaded with political significance. Art promises something that cannot be delivered, but who delivers then?

Extremely dense, and it probably shouldn't be your first Adorno, but if you know what you're getting into, this strikes me as a very nice edition. [I know some German but am not fluent, and would certainly not call myself an expert on Adorno, so take my evaluation for only what it's worth]

Happy with purchase.

I bought this in error and cannot return it. It is that that I am reviewing poorly.

I have an earlier edition of this book which I found difficult to read because of the much smaller type used in its printing. I find Bloomsbury publications much more readable in that sense, and that's even more important when one is taking on a work as dense and complex as this one. I also appreciate that the margin space is such that I can add some notes of my own.I have not yet finished the book, but every time I read more of it I come across mind-blowing observations on the philosophy of art and its place in human society. This is the last of Adorno's major works I have not finished, and it may well prove to be the most profound of them all.

I have has a long-term interest in Continental Philosophy. Adorno brought a dense understanding to 20C art and understanding him is a slow but rewarding process.

Arrived in excellent condition.

Günstig und gut