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When Theodor W. Adorno returned to Germany from his American exile in 1949, he not only resumed his teaching and research at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the Institute for Social Research, but he also quickly established a reputation as a public intellectual. Adorno’s considerable influence on the debates of the post-war period was also due to his lectures given outside the context of the university in which he pointedly spoke about different societal...
When Theodor W. Adorno returned to Germany from his American exile in 1949, he not only resumed his teaching and research at the Goethe University Frankfurt and the Institute for Social Research, but he also quickly established a reputation as a public intellectual. Adorno’s considerable influence on the debates of the post-war period was also due to his lectures given outside the context of the university in which he pointedly spoke about different societal developments.
This volume contains 20 of these lectures given between 1949 and 1968. They deal with a wide range of topics: the addictive potential of Proust’s prose and the compositional technique of Richard Strauss, questions of urban construction and pedagogy, superstition and antisemitism, the authoritarian personality and new right-wing radicalism. The lectures gain their unique appeal from their free form: They don’t strive to be treatises but are understood as improvisations designed to encourage listeners to use their own mind. Or, as Adorno put it himself: »I leave this with you to ponder.«
»A preeminent thinker dedicated to public enlightenment […]. His lectures show Adorno as an exponent of a second, intellectual formation of Germany.« Stefan Müller-Doohm, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
»Adorno’s thinking in unreconciled contradictions is considered difficult. It presents itself as more topical than ever in an astonishingly nimble-footed way in his collected public lectures and speeches.« Jens-Christian Rabe, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»At this point it cannot be concealed that wistfulness beset the reviewer time and again: What a level of contemplation an intellectual without fear of the accusation of being elitist permitted himself!« Wolfgang Matz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»The first two decades of the Federal Republic are commonly described as grey and constrictive. But Adorno’s lectures that he gave indefatigably reveal the intellectual life there was. Even though it is but a selection that Michael Schwarz has collected here, it is of the highest standard – and at the same time, it is is, unlike Adorno’s written style, simple, lucid and readily comprehensible.« Bernhard Schulz, Der Tagesspiegel
»Time and again, Adorno presented the neo-Marxist concept of critical theory in an accessible way. […] His aim was to enlighten. With his media presence he kept upstaging all the other well-known thinkers of the time.« Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, taz. die tageszeitung
»It’s astonishing and sad at the same time how much almost all of it has retained its urgency until today. A treasure chest, therefore, that is going to provide thinkers with arguments and comfort for a long time to come.« der Freitag
»Adorno was a musical artist in so far that he reflected the tension between serious cognition and its formal representation vice versa in the two spheres he had grown fond of. As a musician, he remained the communicating philosopher and wasn‘t just an entertainer – and as a philosopher he processed the material into a dramatic portrayal entirely. It’s possibly from this particular form of improvisation that the joy, that also rubs off on the reader, stems from.« Wolfgang Bock, Glanz & Elend
»One needn’t be afraid of dry lectures. Sure, Adorno (1903-1969) always moves in considerable theoretical heights, but it is palpable that he tried, especially in his public lectures, to meet his respective audience, to appeal to its reason in a manner that is occasionally downright entertaining.« Bernd Berke, revierpassagen.de
»A preeminent thinker dedicated to public enlightenment […]. His lectures show Adorno as an exponent of a second, intellectual formation of Germany.« Stefan Müller-Doohm, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
»Adorno’s thinking in unreconciled contradictions is considered difficult. It presents itself as more topical than ever in an astonishingly nimble-footed way in his collected public lectures and speeches.« Jens-Christian Rabe, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»At this point it...
Theodor W. Adorno was born in 1903 in Frankfurt am Main and died in 1969. He was a leading German philosopher, and alongside his friends Siegfried Kracauer, Max Horkheimer, and Walter Benjamin, was a key representative of the »Frankfurt School«. The collected and posthumous works of Theodor W. Adorno have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Theodor W. Adorno was born in 1903 in Frankfurt am Main and died in 1969. He was a leading German philosopher, and alongside his...
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In March 1925, 21-year-old Dr. Theodor Wiesengrund moves to Vienna for a few months to continue his training in composition with Alban Berg. Berg introduces him to the Vienna string quartet and its 28-year-old lead violinist Rudolf Kolisch, one of the most important interpreters of the New Music of the Schönberg school. Adorno and Kolisch quickly become friends and begin an extensive...
In June 1923, Symphony No. 2 by composer Ernst Krenek – only twenty-two years of age at the time – was first performed as part of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein’s Musicians Festival in Kassel. In the audience sat a 19-year-old philosopher who had just started writing his dissertation, showed great interest in music and who experienced this performance as a shock: Theodor W....
In 1948 Theodor W. Adorno wrote a text on the authoritarian personality which remained unpublished until today and that is not so much a retrospective look at the barbarism of the Nazis but first...
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On 6 April 1967 Theodor W. Adorno gave a lecture at the University of Vienna as a guest of the Socialist Students of Austria, a lecture which, from today’s point of view, is not only of historical...
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»I really like him and we find that we have an awful lot to say to each other« Gershom Scholem wrote to Walter Benjamin in 1938. With »he« Scholem meant Theodor W. Adorno, the man whom...
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At the beginning of his career in the 1920s, Adorno sketched a plan to write a major work on the theory of musical reproduction, a task he returned to time and again throughout his career but...
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Beethoven is a classic study of the composer's music, written by one of the most important thinkers of our time. Throughout his life, Adorno wrote extensive...
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Created between 1940 and 1948 while Adorno was in exile in the United States, elements of a dialectic of the contemporary mind are developed by way of a concrete object in Philosophy of Modern...
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The »Aesthetic Theory« is Adorno’s last major work which was close to completion when he died. It is considered one of his main workds and was undoubtedly planned as such by Adorno: Aesthetic...
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This short masterwork in twentieth-century philosophy provides both a major reinterpretation of Hegel and insight into the evolution of Adorno's critical theory. The first study focuses on...
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»Theodor W. Adorno goes beyond conventional thematic analysis to gain a more complete understanding of Mahler’s music through his character, his social and philosophical background, and his moment...
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»A reflection on everyday existence in the ›sphere of consumption of late Capitalism‹, this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece.« (book description from...
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