SOURCE: “Concerning the Central Idea of Adorno's Philosophy,” in The Semblance of Subjectivity: Essays in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory, edited by Tom Huhn and Lambert Zuidervaart, The MIT Press, 1997, pp. 147–75.

“I do not want to decide whether my theory is grounded in a particular understanding of humanity and human existence. I deny, however, that it is necessary to have recourse to such an understanding.” This lapidary statement occurs at the end of the Aktualität der Philosophie, the inaugural lecture with which Theodor W. Adorno began his academic career in 1931.¹ The lecture is important because it foreshadows many of the main ideas of his later philosophy. The statement itself reflects an orientation toward philosophy Adorno would maintain throughout his life.

Adorno's philosophical theses arise from certain fundamental assumptions, as do all meaningful propositions and especially those expressing pure theoretical insights. His intentional and emphatic refusal, however, to give an account of his premises is responsible for the form these assumptions take in the course of their theoretical development. Most assumptions that inform our everyday thinking and discussions about the world are so self-evident we pay no attention to them whatsoever. It is, however, theory's unique task to provide the most exhaustive and airtight account possible of just such tacit assumptions. Since its inception, philosophical theory has embraced an ethos urging the establishment of rational grounds. Adorno's startling statement, of which there are many others like it, does not deny that theories are constructed in this way. Instead, it calls into question our received ideas about theory in order to challenge their claims. For Adorno, the point is not to discover a different type of theory or to jettison theory tout court and replace it with a new, irrational mode of expression. Adorno remains firmly oriented toward an understanding of theory that “refuses to abandon philosophy.”² Only against the backdrop of this explicitly philosophical orientation does Adorno's refusal to account for first principles, in the traditional sense, have any meaning at all. Nothing else, however, pervades Adorno's philosophy so thoroughly as his unremitting refusal to meet theory's traditional demands.

In the inaugural lecture, Adorno goes on to appeal to the essay as the appropriate form for philosophical discourse.³ Later on, this approach, from which Adorno's mature theory will emerge, is formulated in various ways. For example, “critical theory” characterizes his entire undertaking. “Negative dialectic” describes the leading intention behind the polemics he wages against Hegel. An important catchphrase is the “dialectic of enlightenment.” Adorno's thought, however, finds its definitive expression in the title Aesthetic Theory. This posthumously published work has proven to be his true philosophical testament. As is well known, the title is equivocal. “Aesthetic theory” does not only mean that theoretical aesthetics is one subdivision of an extensive, theoretical edifice. More important, it means that the text's main concern is the process by which theory itself becomes aesthetic—the convergence of knowledge and art. “Aesthetics is not a form of applied philosophy, rather it is in itself philosophical.”⁴ What does this mean?

HISTORICAL DIAGNOSIS

The question I pursue here aims at discovering the reasons that, for Adorno, theory must give way to aesthetics. Even to raise this question is tantamount to dismissing out of hand both Adorno's refusal to reveal what his premises are and the verdict that the question itself is petty and lacks refinement. Such a purely stylistic concern, which makes it taboo to tamper with an argument's finely wrought unity, is usually a manifestation of sophistry and of little philosophical value. Adorno would have certainly fended off questions like the one I just raised by saying that there is no place within the structure of his work where they can gain a foothold. This objection is to be rejected. To maintain a stony silence when confronted with a call for the reasons that ground the type of theory Adorno advocates does not make the theory in any way more plausible.

Adorno, however, does give a thorough explanation of his motivation for encouraging silence. He argues historically. The demand to specify the foundations presupposed by theory is a relic of idealism's overestimation of philosophy's importance and continues to foster the illusion that thought contains an absolute beginning.

“Philosophy, however, that no longer presumes to be autonomous, that no longer believes reality to be grounded in the ratio, but time and again assumes the transgression of an autonomous, rational legislation by a Being that is not adequate to such legislation and cannot be rationally construed as a totality, will not pursue to the end the path leading back to rational premises but will come to a standstill wherever irreducible reality intrudes. … The intrusion of irreducible reality occurs concretely and historically, and this is why history keeps the movement of thought from returning to presuppositions.”⁵

To begin with, it is not at all convincing to denounce every theory's search for grounds as being tainted with idealistic presumption. Ever since the Socratic challenge of the logon didonai, it has been one of philosophy's most basic tenets to give an account of why we say what we say. In addition, rationalism's various systems have claimed to provide proof that their respective principles were absolute and could not be surpassed by any other. That was true for Spinoza and especially for Fichte and Schelling, who both, not by chance, returned to Spinoza. In contrast, Hegel, whom Adorno quotes with particular relish when it comes to idealistic hubris, showed much more caution than his contemporaries, who were always too quick to assert that they had surpassed each other in building unsurpassable systems. The absoluteness Hegel's philosophy in fact lays claim to did not arise out of historical myopia or the arbitrary positing of abstract principles. Rather, it was acquired on the basis of consistently confronting the one immutable idea of philosophy with the experience of the historically contingent forms the idea must assume if there is to be philosophy at all. All of this, however, does not directly concern us.⁶ What is at issue here is Adorno's reluctance to give an account of his own underlying philosophical premises.

Adorno's reference to an irreducible Being, which intrudes on philosophy through the backdoor of history, is either a surreptitious way of establishing grounds or nothing more than an empty incantation. The first alternative gives rise to difficulties that I will consider below. Understood as an example of the polemics Adorno continually wages against Heidegger, the second alternative is pointless to pursue. The surprising parallels between Adorno's early works and Heidegger's Seinsphilosophie, do, however, bear closer examination.⁷ From early on, Adorno never tired of pillorying the “new ontology” as the form par excellence of ahistorical hypostasis.⁸ With the publication of Being and Time (1927), which immediately received wide recognition, Adorno must have clearly sensed his unsettling philosophical proximity to Heidegger. The way Heidegger sometimes expresses his hope for a Being that will directly reveal itself at the end of traditional metaphysics' long history of decline, a Being that only makes itself known within the dimension of concrete existence, beyond the reach of philosophical insight, comes very close indeed to mirroring many of Adorno's theses. In order to undermine the outward impression that he might have shared similar insights with Heidegger, Adorno emphasized, in the strongest possible terms, the substantial differences between their two philosophical standpoints.

Adorno thus pursues throughout his Habilitationsschrift on Kierkegaard the ulterior motive of contesting existentialism's appropriation of this church father of the protest against Hegel's brand of idealism.⁹ Adorno also takes Heidegger to task for his dubious and, in terms of style, not exactly surefooted attempts to take refuge in poetic metaphor in order to avoid the atrophy that, according to Heidegger, had overtaken the expressive power of the language traditionally used by philosophers.¹⁰ Only later, however, did Adorno succeed in delivering the decisive blow that contributed to removing Heidegger from the center of public influence. As Heidegger's star began to fade during the period of Germany's restoration after the Second World War, Adorno's essay called The Jargon of Authenticity, intended as a pamphlet, certainly came at precisely the right moment. Since then, the laconic expression Sein has been taken out of circulation and replaced by the more complicated sounding das Nichtidentische. What is meant in both cases is that reality eludes or, in Adorno's words, is not absorbed by the philosophical concept. Only insofar as the concept recognizes reality can the dimension of truth really be disclosed to it. As Adorno writes, “[C]oncepts for their part are moments of the reality that requires their formation.”¹¹

Those who are not satisfied with bare, emphatic assertions can interpret the reference to historical experience, which forbids recourse to rational premises, as itself an unacknowledged premise for the type of theory Adorno has in mind. The grounding of theory must be carried out in a way which shows that precisely today, under the prevailing conditions of the here and now, and after society has reached its present level of historical development, it has become impossible to return to the old naive way of pursuing philosophy. Adorno's work resonates from many sides with similar formulations. But why should an account of the historical hour be sufficient to bid “traditional theory” a final farewell and to put in its place a form of theory whose sole function is “critique,” a theory “which holds that the core of truth is historical, rather than an unchanging constant to be set against the movement of history”?¹² The blanket answer to this question is mystification [Verblendungszusammenhang], that is, the profound and all-pervasive blindness to sociohistorical truth that sets in once society has fallen under the sway of ideology.

According to this thesis, in all societies in the grip of late capitalism, ideology has become so total and totalizing that there is no way to escape its influence. Even the simple act of stating what is falls prey to mystification, for it necessarily fails to add that everything that is should not have been in the first place. Thus, every statement made in the interests of serving truth must simultaneously recant the insight it was meant to express. Such a paradoxical use of language immediately exhausts theory's already-limited possibilities. All hope must now be directed toward another type of language, toward art. “The true is revealed to discursive knowledge, but for all that, not attained; the knowledge that is art has the true, but as something incommensurable.”¹³

DRIVE TOWARD TOTALITY

Before it is possible to understand how art can function as a substitute for theory in the context of the above considerations, we must discuss the difficulties implicit in Adorno's historical diagnosis that underlies the transition from theory to art. The controversy surrounding historical diagnosis has nothing at all to do with actual assessments of the current political situation or with occasional ad hoc attempts to improve it. Nor does it have anything to do with a strategy of moral intimidation that all too easily silences naive doubt, by holding up examples of cataclysmic historical events. Rather, what is problematic is the paralysis the diagnosis brings on itself by assuming that everything is exactly as it makes it out to be. The belief in the totalizing power of ideology to mystify all aspects of modern life, including our own individual powers of judgment, thoroughly deprives theory of the freedom to move within its own sphere of operation. Under the distorting lens of historical diagnosis, everything, without exception, appears reified. As a result, theory completely succumbs to the very same coercive ideology it was, in fact, enlisted to describe.

Trading in hypotheses, tedious to-and-fro argumentation, ponderous deliberations, proofs, objections, questions raised about other theories and about itself—all this drops away as soon as the diagnosis calls the universal spell by its proper name. Thereafter, it would be an example of systematic self-delusion if theory carried on as if nothing at all had happened. The moment at which historical truth is revealed simultaneously ushers in the moment at which historical truth slips forever beyond theory's grasp, a negative kairos. Because it now senses that all of its knowledge is unavoidably false, theory also realizes that truth by means of theory is no longer possible. With this insight, its concepts are subjected to an entirely heteronomous determination.

The paralysis that has overtaken theory now sets in on its object and affects the process by which theory determines what its appropriate field of inquiry should be. This, however, fundamentally contradicts the avowed intentions of critique and dialectic. The very same totality, with which theory has invested the bruta facta of ideology, consistently ties the hands of critique. Confronted with the opponent's superior strength, theory has only one viable recourse—to strike back with the most stringent, thoroughgoing form of negativity. Because, as theory itself has shown, there can no longer be any exceptions to the global rule of ideology, it is forced to denounce everything under the sun as being a product of ideology. The bogus ideal of totality, which theory in its newly won role of critique attributes to traditional systems, insidiously turns back on theory with the same intensity with which it afflicts everything else.

In order to preserve its critical edge over against a world dominated by the totalizing effects of ideology, theory must target the objects of its inquiries before it has direct knowledge of them. It must maintain a critical attitude toward these objects to ensure that it deals with them impartially and remains immune to whatever charms they may hold for it. Theory must keep itself at a safe distance from the flux of phenomena and reestablish this distance whenever they threaten to lead it astray. To sustain its opposition toward what is immediately given, theory is forced endlessly to redefine itself by successive acts of reflection. This means, however, that theory winds up being driven by an inner necessity to validate itself and thus replicates the dogmatic self-certainty displayed by the philosophical concept—the object of Adorno's unmitigated contempt.¹⁴

As much as Adorno would like to claim that the emergence of Critical Theory is historical and concrete, the truth of the matter lies elsewhere. In fact, it is based on sweeping, a priori assumptions. These assumptions, guiding the course of Adorno's earlier thinking, remain just as much in force later on. Adorno himself confirms this in a chance observation: “Actually, there is one ontology maintained throughout history, the ontology of despair. If, however, ontology is what is perennial, then thought experiences every historical period as the worst and, most of all, its own which it knows directly.”¹⁵ To be secure in the belief that from its very beginning the world has always been thoroughly degenerate makes every present historical moment appear in the most dismal light. Because historical diagnosis is guided by such foreknowledge, it necessarily cuts off all discussion.

As we have just seen, Critical Theory does, in fact, rest on a full-fledged theory of history that claims ontological status. If such a theoretical foundation did not exist, Adorno would not have proposed so vehemently that we renounce traditional theories in favor of one whose sole function is to unmask the workings of ideology. Of course, to avoid the penalty of transgressing all that Critical Theory stands for, the actual underlying ontology must remain out of the discussion. The validity of such a foundation, however, can be tested only when it is openly defended in discussion. This would allow for an undogmatic assessment of Critical Theory's soundness. Adorno, however, deliberately formulates all his arguments to preclude such a possibility. We thus have no other choice but to follow the clues implicit in his silence. This will lead us into the terrain of aesthetics.

Adorno bans discussion not out of a desire to surround his argument in an aura of mystery. On the contrary, the strategy of keeping silent acquires an overt and novel function within the architectonic that underpins a highly intricate thought progression. Adorno's position, that theory is no longer viable in a world dominated by ideology, must be construed as his attempt to demonstrate the necessity of the transition from philosophy to aesthetics. Yet in order to continue to give expression to theory's departure from its traditional function of establishing grounds, Adorno offers a special form of discourse. Instead of following Wittgenstein's famous maxim to keep silent on that about which there is nothing to say, Adorno transforms aesthetics into the one legitimate way to speak about the ban on speaking about theory per se.

DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT

It has been often observed that the Dialectic of Enlightenment holds the keys to understanding Adorno's Aesthetic Theory.¹⁶ The studies or “philosophical fragments” that constitute the Dialectic of Enlightenment were written while Horkheimer and Adorno lived in exile in the United States. The text is characterized by the authors' own political and existential concerns, translated into general philosophical terms. It occupies a central place in their thought because it does not, as is usually the case with their other work, subject external issues to critique but turns critique back on itself so that it becomes its own object: “the point is … that the Enlightenment must consider itself.”¹⁷ Against the backdrop of their historical experience of fascism, as well as Stalin's perversion of Marxist theory, they felt it had become imperative to embark on a critique of ideology, which, since Marx, had remained nothing more than a desideratum.

If the critique of ideology is not based on a “socially detached intelligentsia,” as Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge would have us believe, what then is the special form of objectivity the critics are so deeply rooted in that they are not blinded by the universal mystification caused by ideology?¹⁸ Or is the critique of ideology secretly just as prone to ideological appropriation as all those theories it relentlessly takes to task? Lukács was one of the first to be struck by the problem of how enlightenment becomes stymied once orthodoxy sets in. His remedy is to introduce Hegel's concept of reflection into Marx's concept of class consciousness. One should not underestimate the role Lukács's important book History and Class Consciousness played in inspiring the Frankfurt School. Nevertheless, Lukács's attempt to identify the one revolutionary class, the proletariat, as the sole bearer of historically correct consciousness could not, in the final analysis, prevent the decline in political relevance of a theory that had once been the source of so much hope.

The idea of a “dialectic of enlightenment” deals with the paradox that a dialectic plays with enlightenment instead of explicitly working in its interests. In contrast to Marx, whose dialectical method coincided with the possibility of real historical progress, Horkheimer and Adorno conceive the process of enlightenment itself as succumbing to a dialectical reversal into its opposite, a reversal that takes place behind the back of enlightened reflection.¹⁹ This, however, should not be confused with Hegel's critique of enlightenment, which was meant to overcome the biased nature of enlightened reflection in order to open the way for a truly speculative movement of ideas. Adorno and Horkheimer specifically intend that their dialectic of enlightenment should not culminate in absolute knowing. Indeed, for them, idealism's final configuration continually serves as an ominous reminder of how philosophy is brought to a standstill. How is it possible to make use of Hegel's dialectic and, at the same time, be dead set against its logical and historical consequences?

To prevent theory from being absorbed by idealist speculation, it is necessary to check the automatic, dialectical progression from reason's critique of enlightenment, as carried out in the realm of the understanding, to the autonomy that theory achieves in Hegel's system. This requires, in defiance of enlightened thinking, that a natural prerogative be granted to all those deep-seated prejudices and superstitions from which enlightenment promises to emancipate humankind. The privileged position these irrational beliefs have in our thinking, however, is obvious from the fact that, despite all its efforts, enlightenment always fails to dislodge them. All the exertion expended in good faith to raise this intractably irrational substance to the level of the concept comes to absolutely nothing. The more enlightenment is convinced of itself and the correctness of what it does, the more it risks being dominated by the same irrational principle it struggles to supplant. Thus, in the end, reason's omnipotence turns out to be just as irrational as nature's despotism, against which all the first cultural revolutions were fought. In this way, the dialectic of enlightenment is made to atone for the Fall that, before all recorded time, drove humankind out of paradise and into history.

In order to describe this hard-to-grasp dialectical reversal of enlightenment into its opposite, Adorno and Horkheimer introduce a concept of myth that, however much it may have been inspired by Judeo-Christian tradition, is at odds with all usual meanings of the word. We might consider Rousseau's ambivalence toward modernity in general and the Enlightenment in particular to help see how a projection back through history to an original state of nature is solely a consequence of the Enlightenment's having reached the zenith of its historical development and yet, at the same time, is the standard by which the Enlightenment measures reason's historical progress. Understood in this way, Rousseau's fictional reconstruction of the state of nature serves as a mirror in which the hopes of the Enlightenment are reflected from afar, and the sins, inherent in cultural progress, seem to be completely wiped away. Myth is not a word for a primordial state out of which human reason slowly and successfully evolved. On the contrary, reason is already present in the earliest myths; conversely, the mythical maintains its presence throughout the Enlightenment's entire historical development. The culmination of the Enlightenment in scientific knowledge is, in fact, a reversion to earliest times, which shows, contrary to the expectations of philosophers and other enlightened thinkers, that nothing at all has changed.

Precisely understood, the word “myth” maps out a dimension that is not affected by the dialectic of history, because it forms the basis of this dialectic.²⁰ This reveals the limits and futility of believing in open-ended historical progress; in whatever direction history may happen to push forward, it cannot escape this pregiven situation.²¹ Of course, corresponding to this understanding of history is a vaguely defined ideal of an eschatological reconciliation in which all differences are eliminated, all errors are avoided, and historical change is brought to an absolute standstill. Knowledge of this reconciliation lies beyond the finite capacity of our rational faculties and, therefore, also avoids being compromised by our ideological thinking. As mere mortals, however, we can experience such a reconciliation only in the limited way afforded to us by the pseudoreality created by art.²²

Philosophy has a concept available that, as a product of reason, marks out, in the most subtle way, reason's own limits—the concept of illusion. Although, in the first place, illusion is something other than the philosophical concept, nevertheless, it is illusion only because the concept recognizes it as such. Philosophy has always seen the true nature of art mirrored in the concept of illusion.²³ It is one of the terms in which the problem of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is articulated. To designate illusion as the locus where this problem can be adequately addressed means to obscure the line of division that separates art from philosophy.²⁴

THE DOGMA OF CONTRADICTION

Schelling's philosophy of art is the appropriate court of appeal for a type of philosophy whose most deep-seated intentions are to be transposed into the medium of art.²⁵ Schelling thought that the absolute indifference of subject and object could be brought to the level of intuition by means of art. Philosophy cannot achieve this identity without transcending itself and ceasing to be philosophy. The last point reached by reflection, where it abandons its own claims for the sake of absolute, seamless unity, simultaneously reveals the limits of discursive philosophy. In contrast to philosophy, art realizes this unity on its own accord and without distortion. In order, however, for art to succeed in this undertaking of speaking for philosophy, both sides of the relation between art and philosophy must be adequately determined.

The younger Schelling drew on the idea of an organon²⁶ to conceptualize the relationship in which philosophy establishes a close proximity to art. This allowed Schelling to use art as an antidote to philosophy's shortcomings without art's merely substituting for philosophy. On the one hand, this lets art remain autonomous and prevents the intentional and unintentional transformation of art into a philosophical hybrid that solely serves the interests of philosophical proof. Art must not be defined as an ancilla philosophiae; it is precisely art's autonomy that enables it to serve the function philosophy requires of it. On the other hand, the function art assumes on behalf of philosophy must lend itself to characterization so that art remains accessible to philosophy. Nothing is to be gained either by an intoxicated feeling of identity that blurs all distinctions between art and philosophy or by a neutral coexistence in which philosophy and art have nothing to say to each other. Considering the extreme nature of the opposing demands philosophy makes on art, the Aristotelian model of an organon is only, at best, a makeshift solution. Art is not, at any price, to be instrumentalized by philosophy, the way, for example, tools are subordinated to the ends they serve. Art is able to express philosophy's most difficult paradoxes only when it has parity with philosophy and, therefore, like philosophy, is not a means to an end but is an end in itself. This is the reason Schelling later abandoned the organon model and relied less heavily on the problematic relationship between philosophy and art.²⁷

Critical Theory's general program is informed by a tension whose extremes are characterized by Kant's doctrine of the Ding an sich and Hegel's absolute concept, whereas the arena in which these two extremes are battled out was prepared by Marx and the Young Hegelians. Adorno's aesthetics, which emerged from these conditions, is best understood, however, in connection with Schelling, a connection almost all interpreters of Adorno and modern aesthetics have failed to take into consideration. If, for once, this suggestion is taken to heart, then the question of defining the relation between philosophy and art can be posed more clearly than Adorno would have been willing to admit. Adorno himself always stressed that philosophy and art converge in knowledge. It will be more difficult, however, to understand what the terms of this convergence are.

To begin with, not all forms of art entail knowledge per se. As opposed to idealist naiveté, the critic of ideology makes a strict distinction between liberal or “enlightened” art and art that, as part of the “culture industry,” is complicit in furthering the general deception produced by ideology. This distinction does not automatically coincide with qualitative distinctions based on pure aesthetic categories. Rather, it presupposes a highly attuned awareness of prevailing historical conditions. The art critic's aesthetic sense becomes more finely honed through knowledge that is extraneous to aesthetic considerations, that is, philosophical and sociological insights into the factors determining the present state of society and possible prospects for the future. By emphasizing that artworks of true aesthetic import are also ones that boast a progressive outlook, Adorno forces aesthetic and political judgments to overlap. This echoes Walter Benjamin's tenuous attempt to understand the “artist as producer” in such a radical way that the mastery of the technical side of art production and “the correct political tendency” are predicated on each other.²⁸ Increase in technical skill and keeping in step with the course of history amount to the same thing—progressive art.²⁹

In referring, on the one hand, to the expertise involved in discerning art's purely formal aspects and, on the other, to the knowledge involved in evaluating its content according to the degree it furthers the cause of humanity, the term “progressive art” brings aesthetic and political concerns under one roof. Sometimes the language Adorno uses to reconcile the universal with the particular is reminiscent of classical poetics, for example, Goethe's concept of symbol.³⁰ At the same time, however, the critic must rein in the writer of poetic theory in order to prevent the deception from insinuating itself should it be forgotten that the reconciliation achieved by art is fictive, that it is not present in reality but lies forever in a distant, utopian future. Art must simultaneously present things in two different ways. On the one hand, it must present the concrete particular as something that is not eclipsed by abstract universality but exercises its own right in harmonizing with the universal; on the other hand, art must make manifest the irreality of such a reconciliation.³¹ The status of important artworks is established by the contradiction that takes shape between harmony and its disillusionment. What constitutes the historical meaning of works of art must find expression in their artificial construction.

Adorno's theory thus presupposes that the extra-aesthetic categories that form the basis of the critic's interpretations are directly embodied in the artworks themselves. Strictly speaking, then, art expresses only what someone who already has knowledge of historical processes can possibly understand. In fact, this remarkable type of art, with just such an interiorized awareness of its own historical position, is modern art. Complete rejection of the traditional canon, which we have come to expect of modern art, seems to provide the paradigm for Adorno's theory. Obviously, here, the contradiction has become real between art's immanent, self-contained harmony and the sudden shattering of this longed-for harmony. The critic's task is to bring out what is already embedded in the structure of art, and consequently the critic is reduced to a mere recipient to whom art provides whatever he or she might require. The critic's role would be completely redundant, were it not for the complication that not all of the art produced in the last hundred years can be counted as progressive, even when some works seem to look or sound “modern.” In the updated musée imaginaire, it is once again a question of separating the sheep from the goats. The critic's function, which seemed to have entirely merged with the structure of artworks, is given a new and apparently independent lease on life. The critic's task, however, is no longer to distinguish between good and bad art. Rather, the critic must now distinguish between progressive and reactionary art, a distinction that obviously is no longer based solely on aesthetic criteria.

In relation to modern art, the rehabilitation of the critic's function shows that in truth the formal laws supposedly governing modern art production are merely invoked to divert attention away from criteria introduced by critical aesthetics. Untutored perception alone can never disclose the meaning of art. In order to penetrate art's structure, it is necessary to have command over the history of philosophy and its categories. “To be sure, an immanent method of this type always presupposes, as its opposite pole, philosophical knowledge that transcends the object. The method cannot, as Hegel believed, rely on ‘simply looking-on.’”³² This is the difference between progressive art and all other forms of art production, which only seem to be comparable to it. Without such philosophical and historical categories, the controversy Adorno stages, for example, between Schönberg, the standard bearer of “true” modernity, and Stravinsky, the incarnation of “false” modernity, would be nothing more than an academic debate between two opposing schools of musical composition.³³ Philosophy thus adds what is not already contained in innocent artworks, indeed what can never be contained in them: the interpretation of their meaning as the negation of existing reality.

With this, the cornerstone of Adorno's aesthetic theory is in place. It will be obvious now why it is necessary to compare art and social reality from an external vantage point in order to discover the moment of contradiction in certain works—by no means art in general. If all art were to stand opposed to reality, then the distinction between art shot through with ideology and progressive art would be totally meaningless. By the same token, if the pseudoreality created by art represented the complete negation of existing reality, then art would lose its oppositional stance toward the external world and would forfeit its function as critique. In the guise of uncompromising protest, art would then be guilty of passing off its illusion of harmony for the real thing. Thus Adorno is perfectly consistent in rejecting all forms of “engaged” art;³⁴ only art that is entirely itself, and does not attempt to have an effect outside of itself, is able to confront reality's most dominant features with sufficient autonomy to allow the contradictions to force themselves on the spectator. The universal mystification of social reality and art's complete autonomy stand radically opposed to each other. But only from a third position, totally removed from ideology, which affects all aspects of everyday life and art production, can mystification be exposed in all its ramifications. This position can be assumed only by the critic.

I needed to pursue the analysis to this point in order to arrive at an approximate answer to the question raised above. In connection with the discussion concerning transformation of philosophy into aesthetics, the question was posed as to the possibility of determining both sides of the relationship between art and philosophy. A confused mirroring of philosophical concepts in artworks and vice versa will not yield the knowledge of social reality for whose sake art was introduced into the consideration in the first place. It turns out, however, that two corresponding, fundamental assumptions are presupposed that work in tandem to support the thesis that art and philosophy converge in knowledge. By insisting, on the one hand, on reality's completely ideological character and, on the other, on the complete autonomy of art production, philosophy and art are forced to act on each other in such a way as to make the truth of social reality totally transparent. Adorno's conclusions can be made to appear persuasive only if a strict separation is dogmatically presupposed between art and reality, both of which, with equal right, follow their own internal laws and remain directly opposed to each other.

The unique relationship art and philosophy share with regard to knowledge can only be established once it has already been accepted on good faith that art stands diametrically opposed to reality. According to this ungrounded dogma, art is the adversary of fetishized reality that, by carrying out its own form of negation, is capable of breaking ideology's spell. Thus, as if by an act of providence, art comes to the aid of philosophy as it struggles to break free from the dialectic of enlightenment. Only the critic's powers of interpretation, however, can make us aware of this feat of negation, accomplished in and by art.

MIMESIS AND WORKS OF ART

Things become more complicated when we turn to aesthetic experience. According to Adorno, to view paintings or to listen to symphonies does not automatically give us access to their truth content. If we want art to perform the additional service of ideology critique, then we must relinquish the classical idea that beauty imparts its truth unaided. All aesthetic experiences require theory in advance. “The demand of artworks to be understood by taking hold of their content [Gehalt] is tied to a specific experience of them. This, however, can only be completely fulfilled by a theory that reflects upon experience.”³⁵ If only theory is able to complete what is laid out in experience, then art's critical function of enlightenment depends, once again, on its undiminished autonomy. As we have seen, autonomy means in this case that art remains independent of philosophy and is not used for the purposes of supporting or validating philosophical insights. What art has to say will come to the fore against the backdrop of philosophy, so long as philosophy does not impose its interests on art.

By means of the oldest concept known to the philosophy of art, Adorno's aesthetic theory attempts to find a way out of this self-imposed impasse. Mimesis, which has certainly undergone a remarkable change in meaning and importance, was understood by the tradition as an imitative mode of representation, parasitic on an independently given and higher-order reality. Plato thought that mimesis was inimical to truth, because it produced likenesses “three removes” from reality,³⁶ and Aristotle classed mimesis among those most fundamental attributes that make humans “the most mimetic of all animals.”³⁷ For Adorno, mimesis is a virtue, because it resists being defined by reason, and because it is so firmly rooted in human behavior. He also places a high value on the necessarily derivative nature of all mimetic forms of representation, something that was anathema to the tradition. Philosophy's recourse to mimetic behavior is intended to repair the damage mimesis suffered at the hands of the philosophical concept. “There is no way for the concept to plead the case of mimesis, without losing itself in mimesis, which it itself supplanted, other than by incorporating something of mimesis in its own conduct. In this respect, the aesthetic moment is not accidental to philosophy, though for reasons quite different from the ones Schelling proposed.”³⁸

By way of mimesis, Spirit is restored to a quasi-prehistorical attitude toward the phenomenal world. Spirit adapts itself to experience as its other without offering any resistance and abandons its need to dominate the concrete. Blind imitation, which philosophy has held in contempt since the advances made in perfecting conceptual representation, is now seen as a corrective to what has become philosophy's idling machinery of empty categories. Philosophy comes into closer proximity to art, for which it had so little respect, the more theory's sovereignty is called into question. Mimesis in art acquires an altogether new meaning once theory's monopoly on appropriating reality has been challenged.

Adorno's new assessment of mimesis, as a corrective to theory, was fated to run against the grain of the traditional copy theory of art. Above all, Adorno objected to reviving axioms of traditional mimetic art theory in a neo-Marxist principle requiring that art produce mirror images of reality. Starting out from Marxist premises, Lukács, in his later writings, adhered to a thoroughly orthodox theory of art that called for faithful reproductions of a pregiven reality. Considering Adorno's understanding of the relation of art to reality, it is not surprising that he vehemently opposed such a misuse of mimesis, which substitutes images for knowledge and prefers concealment to disclosure. “The most fundamental weakness of Lukács's position may be that he … applies categories that refer to the relationship between consciousness and reality to art as though they simply meant the same thing here. Art exists within reality, has its function in it. … But nevertheless, as art, by its very concept it stands in an antithetical relationship to the status quo.”³⁹

Adorno's newly accentuated concept of mimesis can be defended against entrenched traditional views only by dint of ingenious argumentation. Understood as a basic form of assimilation, capable of overcoming the concept's rigidity, mimesis is not a remnant of another age that has come down to us intact so that the worn-out concept can revert to it at any time. It would be an illusion for philosophy to believe that mimesis can, with the touch of a magic wand, restore a more direct relation to reality. Without the help of well-reasoned explanations, the concept of mimesis has no meaning whatsoever. This becomes all too obvious in the dispute between Adorno and Lukács, in which bare assertions are traded back and forth and the continually cited crown witnesses, Adorno's Samuel Beckett and Lukács's Thomas Mann, are given permission to speak only when they can give testimony on behalf of the respective positions.⁴⁰ Seen in this way, Adorno's recourse to mimesis, as a form of “mimicry” of spirit, fails to persuade.

One last consequence remains to be considered. For the sake of the coherence of his own insights into modern art, Adorno cannot get around reinstating an unqualified work category in his aesthetic theory, even if the theory itself constantly maintains the opposite. Where else can the concrete and the universal be reconciled in a way that is far removed from all conceptual schematizations, if not within the autonomous sphere created by artworks? What else is to serve as a mirror for exposing “bad” reality, if not an objective example? What else can reflection cling to as it founders in the vortex created by the dialectic of enlightenment, if not a tangible product of mimetic behavior? In spite of whatever statements Adorno may have made to the contrary, it is beyond all doubt that the work category plays a central role in his undertaking. The theory as well as the actual writings on art criticism bear witness on every page that Adorno systematically presupposes the given fact of artworks.

Just as little can it be doubted, however, that modern art, the basis of Adorno's aesthetic theory, represents one continuous process, the demise of the work category.⁴¹ If the diverse forms of art production crudely classified as “modern” permit being reduced to one common denominator, then the main trend embodied by modern art is the steady subversion of the traditional work category. In the absence of the work category, modern art has resorted to a number of strategies, ranging from playful skepticism to ironic distortion and surrealistic shock, from the systematic destruction of unity and the radical reduction of planned construction to the increased, constitutive function assigned to chance; readymades, found objects, happenings, and performance pieces are the most obvious examples. Modern art denies the ontological status of a second reality that, although derivative, would be equal to the first. Ergon, as an independent bearer of meaning, has disappeared from art altogether. Where modern art does not aim to disappoint the traditionally passive spectator, who usually expects to find a full-fledged work, it often serves to inspire the spectator's imagination and active participation, at least to some degree. What used to be attributed to the creative process of actual art production has been transformed by modern art into a process that is automatically set in motion after the work has been completed.⁴² In this way, the entire notion of the autonomous artwork has been overtaken by aesthetic experience, which, according to Adorno, is always a “reciprocal” experience between the work of art and the spectator.

This understanding is not new. Nor, to be reminded of it, do we need to turn to Adorno, who, with considerable insight, describes how modern art eroded the central role the traditional work category formerly played in art production and aesthetic theory. All the same, it is worth mentioning two arguments that are often raised and profess to jeopardize this thesis. It is often said that the demise of the traditional work category, in fact, only makes room for new kinds of artworks. If this is true, then the entire modern art movement is by no means as revolutionary as it is made out to be. Modern art would represent only a further phase in a long series of style changes and historical shifts to be indifferently classified by the art historian. Above all, those analyses that are of vital importance to Adorno's aesthetic theory would prove to be invalid. For Adorno, what is truly innovative about modern art and specifically distinguishes it from art of all other periods is precisely its protest character; therefore, it should be interpreted in this way. If we subscribe to critical aesthetics, then we can hardly take seriously the argument just mentioned.⁴³

The second argument is based on the conviction that modern art simply makes explicit what is implicit to art in general. Fragility is art's true abiding essence, whereas substantiality is make-believe. This argument takes two forms. First, current ideas about art are simply projected back on the entire past, so that modern art is not seen as modern but merely as a new expression of what we understand art to have always been. To draw conclusions about the past on the basis of the present and to level all historical differences results in a distorted foreshortening of historical perspectives. Second, similar to Marx's famous dictum that the anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the ape, this argument often reverts to a teleological model that presupposes the most recent stage of art's historical development to be the culmination of art's entire history, and thus allows all the preliminary stages leading up to a completed process of historical development to be taken in at a glance. Apart from the dubious nature of the method involved in historical teleology—which even in Marx's case, despite his materialist examples, had strong roots in idealism—such a belief in progress, together with the claim of rendering ever more transparent the origins of the current historical moment, once again robs aesthetics of its potential as critique. As Adorno saw, rational capacity does not develop according to the dictates of an inner telos. Art that opposes the advance of rationality and, like Faust's return to the mothers,⁴⁴ reverts to fundamental, mimetic levels of human existence is the last place of refuge from where it is possible to expose the new and ever-deeper inroads deception continues to make into history.

To conclude, we cannot avoid synthesizing the following two irreconcilable sides of modern art. On the one hand, modern art undermines the traditional work category, and it is thanks to this that it acquires its protest character. On the other hand, modern art has no means of expression other than individual concrete works; aside from their autonomous structure, no place remains where they can carry out their mission of critique. Adorno resolutely engages both sides of this paradox. Theory cannot provide us with any solution. The paradox can be defused only by means of casuistry. On the basis of case-by-case analyses of literary texts and musical scores, the two sides of the paradox can be set off against each other, that is, modern art's need to destroy unity for the sake of preserving its critical function and its need to maintain unity for the sake of giving expression to its critical function.

Merely providing examples, however, can in no way substitute for establishing the grounds for a theory. As plausibly as Adorno may have sometimes demonstrated his general insights with regard to particular literary and musical works, he provides little in the way of evidence to ground the application of these insights. Every one of his interpretations hinges far too much on his hermeneutical starting point and rhetorical skill to serve as evidence for the conclusions he draws. If the same works are considered from a different perspective and with different intentions, then, to a certain extent, the resulting interpretations would also make sense. The ultimate ploy, which Adorno all too gladly uses to give his interpretations an authoritative tone, is to insinuate that all possible alternative interpretations are to be suspected of being ideologically biased or, worse still, philistine. This, however, only camouflages the shaky foundations on which his own interpretations are built. To shift the burden of fundamental aesthetic issues intentionally onto the shoulders of interpretation underhandedly obscures the difference between aesthetic theory and aesthetic experience.

AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE

The role aesthetic experience plays in Adorno's aesthetic theory is particularly puzzling. In fact, the tautological character of his analysis of how art affects us renders his theory incapable of shedding light on the structure of aesthetic experience; it presupposes a definite effect, which it then uses to account for its findings. The possibility of analysis slips away when theory is fashioned after an aesthetic paradigm, which should, in fact, form the object of analysis. Since art is at theory's beck and call to produce exactly the kind of knowledge theory wants, the outcome of actual encounters with concrete artworks is always determined in advance. Theory knows art has a critical effect, because it knows art's autonomy is the last bastion of resistance in a world blinded by ideology. Theory, therefore, also knows how to distinguish between truly avant-garde art that looks ahead and art that, despite its modern trappings, is reactionary.

Because art always reconfirms the structural insights theory brings to bear on the wealth of aesthetic phenomena, there is no longer, to put it bluntly, a need for individual aesthetic experience. The undeniable attraction of the concrete interpretations Adorno offers us in his numerous essays lies in his versatility and in the keenness for detail with which he makes aesthetic experience meet the conditions laid down by aesthetic theory, rather than in the freedom and range of understanding with which he is prepared to confront the unexpected in aesthetic experience.

Because it makes all actual experience superfluous, the absolute certainty that art is the source of a type of knowledge is the weakest aspect of Adorno's theory. This is why Adorno's aesthetic theory tends toward dogmatic self-validation,⁴⁵ shutting itself off in narcissistic reflection from doubt and from anything else that might disturb its conception of itself. If we use Adorno's theory as a guide to aesthetic experience, nothing out of the ordinary will ever happen to us; we will see, hear, feel nothing new, because the theory has already accounted for every possible reaction we might have. True aesthetic experience is predicated on the willingness to remain open to what is unexpected. An ironclad theory can never be a substitute for this openness, which allows art to provoke us into seeing the world in new, unchanneled ways.

The true antidote to traditional theory's dogmatic self-certainty, which Adorno's aesthetics was meant to provide, consists in giving precedence to the possibility of engaging art in a way not already thoroughly determined by theory. Aesthetic experience must be made the basis for aesthetic theory and not the other way around. The entrenched illusions generated by ideology can be dispelled only when there is freedom to confront the official face of reality with alternatives. This freedom is first and foremost acquired by an unfettered play of reflection, which can be set in motion only by genuine aesthetic experience. Let us consider this a bit more closely.

In contrast to our everyday experiences of the world as we find it, encounters with aesthetic phenomena are unique in that they do not require organization by the understanding; nor, strictly speaking, do artworks prescribe how these encounters will turn out. Aesthetic experience encourages consciousness to engage in a form of reflection that does not restrict it in any way. This highly unusual experience opens up for consciousness new and previously unrealized possibilities. The age-old solution to the problem of how to reawaken deadened forms of perception lies entirely in the possibility of being moved by art. The extreme nature of modern art production, however, makes openness and breadth of vision especially necessary to have such experiences.

I have deliberately introduced this description of aesthetic experience in order to bring Kant to mind. It is time to rediscover his analysis of how aesthetic phenomena affect consciousness, an analysis that Schelling and Hegel thought they had consigned to history.⁴⁶ Kant's insights into the structure of reflective judgment, applied to modern art, not only dispense with a fixed, traditional work canon but also make it imperative that we reconsider aesthetic experience, not in terms of confirming what we already think or know about the world but as the way art enhances our powers of perception and understanding. To account for the basis of aesthetic experience in terms of what Kant called our disinterested pleasure in objects allows us to define art without directly identifying it with knowledge. The true nature of art thus consists in its capacity to stimulate thought without restricting it and to bring reflection to a level of independence where it is no longer bound to concepts. Because it loosens reflection's ties to specifically determined cognitive functions, only the type of art that is capable of initiating the free play of reflection can do without the services of thought.

In contrast, art whose entire function is critique is in fact not conducive to critique, as Adorno would have it. Rather, just the opposite is true. Instead of freeing knowledge, it succeeds only in trammeling knowledge. Art that takes on meaning only in opposition to reality is the reverse side of art that merely copies reality. In both cases, consciousness is condemned to fixed, predetermined, almost mechanical reactions in its apprehension of art. Neither of these concepts of art is capable of bringing about the freedom of reflection necessary for true aesthetic experience.

DIALECTIC OF LIMITS OR PHILOSOPHY AND ART

Hegel's dialectical method, which Adorno unabashedly employs at strategically crucial moments, may help us understand why the latter places so little value on true aesthetic experience. Hegel's objection to Kant's concept of the Ding an sich, resurrected in Adorno's concept of the Nichtidentische, involves the dialectic of limits. Hegel's argument maintains that in order to define the limit of something, a position must already be assumed outside of that limit. Limits can never be drawn from only one side. To recognize a limit thus implies the possibility of overcoming it. Within the context of his debate with Hegel there is no way, other than blind obstinancy, that Adorno can circumvent the consequences this insight has on his own “negative dialectic.” Adorno must first explicitly complete the dialectic of limits in order then to sublate it again.⁴⁷Theory's transformation into aesthetics rests squarely on this step.

Insight into theoretical knowledge's limitations cannot lead to theory's consummation by transcending its limits. According to what I have identified as Adorno's a priori principle, which accounts for the convergence of art and philosophy in terms of their shared orientation toward knowledge, this insight into theory's limits would seem to fall within the purview of art. By locating the point of convergence in art, however, the mediation is cut short, which prevents the dialectic from culminating in an absolute system. If this mediation were to be completed, then theory would be able to draw its own limits, which would make art's limiting role superfluous. That theory's limits are determined by art, however, is by no means a self-evident truth. In fact, theory imposes its limits on itself and thus determines what its proper domain should be. Aesthetics, as the limit of theory, can be determined only by theory. This, however, sets the dialectic of limits in motion again.

This relationship can be understood as the inversion of the relationship in which Hegel ranks art with respect to philosophy. According to Hegel, art is historically prior to philosophy, but because art represents absolute Spirit only in its immediacy, art is subordinate to philosophy. Spirit's unmediated presence in art gives rise to a mediation by which Spirit comes into its own as philosophy. Philosophy, in spelling out what is spiritual in art, necessarily destroys art's autonomous sphere. To raise art to the level of the concept means to put an end to how aesthetic illusion creates its unrestricted effect, which depends on immediacy. Illusion recognized as illusion is robbed of its power and magic. The advent of the philosophy of art thus rings out the age of art.

Neither with respect to its content nor its form is art the highest and most absolute way for Spirit to bring its true interests to consciousness. The type of creation and works peculiar to art no longer fulfill our highest needs. … For this reason, in our age, the science of art is much more of a prerequisite than for those times in which art pure and simple really did offer complete satisfaction. Art invites us to consider things in a thinking way; not for the purpose of creating new works of art, but rather to know, in a scientific way, what art is.⁴⁸

In a certain sense, it can be said that Adorno's aesthetics reverses the process by which Hegel's philosophy destroys art's independent sphere. Although Adorno discovers in art philosophy's most fundamental interests, he does not subject art to a philosophical concept of truth, as Hegel does. To do so would deprive art of its power to impose limits on philosophy. In order to save art from sinking back to the level of one of Spirit's irrelevant, preliminary stages, Adorno would rather dispense with reflection. This would reveal, of course, that it was philosophy, in the first place, that had conferred the status of knowledge on art. Adorno thus conceals from himself that it is only by way of philosophical interpretation that art can be put on an equal footing with philosophy. The fact that he does not admit philosophy's constitutive role gives art the aura of independence. The truth of the matter, however, is that Adorno uses art as a deus ex machina, which he hauls in to save the day for philosophy. Perhaps, in spite of all its self-effacing gestures, it is Adorno's aesthetic theory that treats art with the most extreme condescension, the condescension of an anonymous sovereign power.

All these complications could have been avoided if Adorno had once and for all given up the dream that it is possible for philosophy to remain itself and at the same time be different from itself. The aestheticizing of theory impoverishes a theory of the aesthetic. Although Adorno professes to promote art's autonomy, he always has theory's interests at heart. In this way, aesthetics is rendered thoroughly heteronomous. The line of argumentation that begins with the insight into universal mystification and extends through the dogma that art and reality are diametrically opposed to each other, in the end, transforms art into an agent of critical theory's interests. Because these interests cannot be openly articulated, they are imputed to the artworks themselves, thus determining in advance how we will experience them. In this way, theory prevails in the very act of denying that it plays a constitutive role in aesthetics.

Notes

1. Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften (GS),vol. 1 (“Die Aktualität der Philosophie”), pp. 325-44, 343. See also the preface to Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik (ND) (1966), GS 6:9; trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1973), p. xix.

2. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente (DA) (1944/1947 and 1969), GS 3:10; trans. J. Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), p. x.

3. See also Theodor W. Adorno, “Der Essay als Form” (1958), in Noten zur Literatur, vol. 1, GS 11:9-33; trans. as “The Essay as Form,” Notes to Literature, vol. 1, trans. Shierry Weber Nichelsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 3-23.

4. Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie (AT) (1970), GS 7:140, trans. C. Lenhardt (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 134 (translation modified).

5. GS 1 (“Die Aktualität der Philosophie”), p. 343.

6. For a detailed account, see my essay “Problemgeschichte und systematischer Sinn der ‘Phänomenologie’ Hegels,” in Dialektik und Wissenschaft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973). This essay has been translated as “Hegel's Concept of Phenomenology” for a book on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, ed. Gary K. Browning (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997).

7. For an extensive treatment of the philosophical similarities, see Hermann Mörchen, Adorno und Heidegger. Untersuchung einer philosophischen Kommunikationsverweigerung (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981).

8. See GS 1 (“Die Idee der Naturgeschichte” [1932]), pp. 345-65.

9. Kierkegaard, Konstruktion des Ästhetischen (1933); GS 2; Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, trans. R. Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

10. Theodor W. Adorno, “Parataxis. Zur späten Lyrik Hölderlins” (1963/1964), in Noten zur Literatur, vol. 3, GS 11:447-91.

11. ND, GS 6:23; trans., p. 11.

12. DA, GS 3:9; trans., p. ix.

13. AT, GS 7:191; trans., p. 183 (translation modified).

14. These are sketches of analyses I have dealt with in more detail in my essay “What Is Critical Theory?” in R. Bubner, Essays in Hermeneutics and Critical Theory, trans. E. Matthews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), pp. 1-35.

15. Theodor W. Adorno, “Offener Brief an Rolf Hochhuth” (1967), in Noten zur Literatur, vol. 4, GS 11:591-98, 598.

16. For example, see T. Baumeister and J. Kulenkampff, “Geschichtsphilosophie und philosophische Asthetik,” in Neue Hefte für Philosophie, no. 5 (1973): pp. 74-104.

17. DA, GS 3:15; trans., p. xv.

18. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. L. Wirth and E. Shils (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948). See M. Horkheimer, “Ein neuer Ideologiebegriff?” (1930), in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1987), pp. 271ff.; “A New Concept of Ideology?” in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, trans. G. F. Hunter, M. S. Kramer, and J. Torpey (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 129-49. This essay is similar to Adorno's “Das Bewuβtsein der Wissenssoziologie” (1937, first published 1953), in Prismen. Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (1955), GS 10/1:31-46; “The Sociology of Knowledge and Its Consciousness,” in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 35-49.

19. In his essay on Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Adorno refers to this reversal as follows: “The irrationality of bourgeois society in its late phase rebels at letting itself be understood; those were the good old days, when a critique of the political economy of this society could be written that judged it in terms of its own ratio.” (“Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen” (1961), in Noten zur Literatur, vol. 2, GS 11:281-321, 284); “Trying to Understand Endgame,” Notes to Literature, vol. 1, p. 244.

20. See Adorno's essay “Zum Klassizismus von Goethes Iphigenie” (1967), in Noten zur Literatur, vol. 4 GS 11:495-514, 512ff.

21. “As far back as we can trace it, the history of thought has been a dialectic of enlightenment.” ND, GS 6:124; trans., p. 118.

22. Compare AT, GS 7:16, 67, 114; trans., pp. 78, 60, 108.

23. For example, consider Plato's Republic X.

24. DA, GS 3:36-37; trans., pp. 18-19. Cf. also T. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949) (Berlin, 1972), pp. 20ff., 189.

25. DA, GS 3:36-37; trans., pp. 18-19; AT, GS 7:120, 197, 511; trans., pp. 113-14, 189, 457; ND, GS 6:26-27; trans., p. 15.

26. Friedrich Schelling, System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800).

27. Friedrich Schelling, Philosophie der Kunst (1802/1804) (Darmstadt, 1959), pp. 8ff.; Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums (1803), lecture 14.

28. W. Benjamin, “Der Autor als Produzent,” in Versuche über Brecht (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968), pp. 96ff.; “The Author as Producer,” in Reflections, trans. E. Jephcott (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), pp. 220-38.

29. For example, T. W. Adorno, Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica (1967/1968), GS 10/1:289-453, 299ff.

30. Theodor W. Adorno, “Zum Klassizismus von Goethes Iphigenie,” in Noten zur Literatur, vol. 4, GS 11:502ff. (Cf. Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, no. 751.) For a pertinent observation about Adorno's essay, see Gerhard Kaiser, “Adornos Ästhetische Theorie,” in Antithesen (Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1973), pp. 309ff.

31. Citing “historico-philosophical reasons” and referring to his favorite example, Samuel Beckett, Adorno demonstrates the following “change in the a priori of drama: the fact that there is no longer any substantive, affirmative metaphysical meaning that could provide dramatic form with its law and its epiphany. That, however, disrupts the dramatic form down to its linguistic infrastructure. Drama cannot simply take negative meaning, or the absence of meaning, as its content without everything peculiar to it being affected to the point of turning into its opposite.” “Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen,” Noten zur Literatur, vol. 2, GS 11:282; “Trying to Understand Endgame,” in Notes to Literature, vol. 1, p. 242.

32. Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophie der neuen Musik, p. 31. Adorno's reference to Hegel is completely misleading. What Hegel describes as “simply looking on” [das reine Zusehen] refers specifically to the method appropriate to a “phenomenology of Spirit.” It does not apply to his philosophy in general, nor does phenomenological Zusehen mean that systematic premises are lacking. See Phänomenologie des Geistes, in Werke, vol. 3 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986), p. 77; Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 54. In this connection, see my essay “Hegel's Concept of Phenomenology.”

33. Such an innocuous observation, as F. Busoni made in his Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (1916; new ed., Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), does not at all come to grips with the problem: “Ephemeral qualities constitute what is ‘modern’ about a work of art; the immutable qualities save it from becoming ‘old-fashioned.’ For ‘modern times,’ just as much for ‘former times,’ there is good and bad, authentic and inauthentic. The absolutely modern does not exist. There is only what comes into existence earlier or later, what flourishes longer or fades away more rapidly. There have always been things which are modern and things which are old” (p. 8).

34. AT, GS 7:134; trans., p. 128. In his essay “Engagement” (1962), Adorno chooses to make Sartre and Brecht into opponents (Noten zur Literatur, vol. 3, GS 11:409-30).

35. AT, GS 7:185; also 189, 193ff., 391; trans., p. 179; also pp. 181-82, 186ff., 370-71 (translation modified).

36. Plato, Republic 595c ff.

37. Aristotle, Poetics 1448b.

38. ND, GS 6:26; trans., pp. 14-15 (translation modified). See also AT, GS 7:86ff., 180ff.; trans., pp. 79ff., 174ff.

39. Theodor W. Adorno, “Erpreβte Versöhnung” (1958), in Noten zur Literatur, vol. 2, GS 11:251-80, 260; “Extorted Reconciliation,” Notes to Literature, vol. 1, pp. 216-40, 224.

40. On the background and orientation of this debate about materialistic aesthetics, see my essay, “Über einige Bedingungen gegenwärtiger Ästhetik,” in R. Bubner, Ästhetische Erfahrung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989), pp. 23ff.

41. Ibid., esp. pp. 30ff.

42. For a good standard work on Rezeptionsästhetik, see Wolfgang Iser, Der implizite Leser. Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett (Munich: Fink, 1972); The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).

43. That holds for Peter Bürger, Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974). See my essay, “Moderne Ersatzfunktion des Ä;sthetischen,” in Ästhetische Erfahrung, pp. 76ff.

44. Johann W. v. Goethe, Faust. Der Tragödie zweiter Teil, 6216ff.

45. From an external standpoint, this consequence is particularly striking, as Marc Jimenez has shown in his insightful analysis in Theodor W. Adorno: Art, idéologie et théorie de l'art (Paris: Union générale d'éditions, 1973), pp. 270ff.

46. See, R. Bubner, Ästhetische Erfahrung, pp. 34ff.

47. Compare, ND, GS 6:9, 397ff; trans., pp. xix, 405ff; Philosophie der neuen Musik, pp. 20ff., 189.

48. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, ed. H. G. Hotho (1842), Werke 10.1:13ff., 16.