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Theodor Adorno
1903
- 1969
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 The
Disposition of the Subject : Reading Adorno's Dialectic of
Technology (Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology
& Existential Philosophy)
by Eric L. Krakauer
I ordered the Disposition of the Subject
because of the title's reference to technology and Adorno's
views on it, having already read Michael Zimmerman's Heidegger's
Confrontation with Modernity. I do research on the phenomenology
of technology, not as a philosopher but using philosophy as a
resource to get above the "obviousness" and
limitations of how many of the issues are discussed within
information systems and computing. The Disposition of the
Subject: etc. is a great book! If you are interested in a
critique of technology, and of modernism as expressed in
technology, from a very well read person who is also a clear and
exciting writer, try this. I congratulate the author. This is
his dissertation! -- Anonymous Review
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Abstracted from the Fifty
Key Contemporary Thinkers by John Lechte, Routledge, 1994.
Excerpt:
Adorno was born Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno in 1903. According to
Martin Jay he may have dropped the Wiesengrund when he joined the
Institute for Social Research in New York in 1938 because of its
sounding Jewish. Between 1918 and 1919, at the age of 15, Adorno studied
under Siegfried Kracauer. After completing his Gymnasium period, he
attended the University of Frankfurt where he studied philosophy,
sociology, psychology, and music. He received a doctorate in philosophy
in 1924. In 1925, Adomo went to Vienna to study composition under Alban
Berg, and at the same time he began to publish articles on music,
especially on the work of Schönberg. After becoming disillusioned with
the 'irrationalism' of the Vienna circle, he returned to Frankfurt in
1926 and began a Habilitationschrift on Kant and Freud, entitled 'The
concept of the unconscious in the transcendental theory of mind'. This
thesis was rejected, but in 1931, he completed another: Kierkegaard:
The Construction of the Aesthetic, which was published in 1933 on
the day of Hitler's rise to power. Once his thesis was accepted, Adorno
joined the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research after Max Horkheimer
became director. To escape from Nazism, the Institute moved to Zürich
in 1934, and Adorno moved to England.
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Essay by Stephen Bronner.
Excerpt:
He was perhaps the most dazzling of them all. His dialectical style,
his command of the dialectical aphorism, and his uncompromising assault
on banality and repression turned Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno into
perhaps the most alluring and surely the most complex representative of
critical theory when he died in 1969 at the age of 66. His range
seemingly knew no bounds. He was a musicologist who had studied with the
great Alban Berg, a composer in his own right, a philosopher with
expertise in the intricacies of phenomenology, a social theorist steeped
in the tradition of western Marxism, a sociologist engaged in
complicated empirical studies, a connoisseur of literature and poetry,
an anthropological thinker, and an aesthetician committed to the new and
the technically innovative. He incarnated the interdisciplinary
perspective of the "Frankfurt School," and made contributions
in all his fields of endeavor. He, above all, played a decisive role in
shifting the interest of Horkheimer and the Institute away from its
political and economic preoccupations of the 1930s. Adorno, in his own
way, transformed the meaning of critical theory. It was Adorno, after
all, who asked whether writing poetry was still possible after
Auschwitz. It was Adorno who railed against the "liquidation of the
subject." It was Adorno who claimed that the whole is false...
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Maintained by Evelyn Wilcock
Excerpt:
Adorno should be read, rather than read about.
When friends asked what they should read, it seemed that,
opened at random, Adorno can seem daunting, while some of his shorter,
more personal pieces are not translated into English. Even in Germany
some of his essays are on sale only as part of the complete works.
It is said that Adorno did not intend access to his
books to be easy. But
neither surely would he have preferred to remain unread. This page is a
pointer towards pieces which are available in English and to his books
which can either be bought or read in libraries.
The passages, all of which are copyright by the publishers and
are placed here only as publicity for the books, will be changed from
time to time...
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Excerpt:
In his book "The Jargon of Authenticity," Theodor Adorno
discusses what he considers to be a major fallacy with all of society:
the way we talk. It is his opinion and observance that we speak in such
a way as to bring others down while at the same time raising ourselves
up. "The jargon -- objectively speaking, a system -- uses
disorganization as its principle of organization, the breakdown of
language into words in themselves." The jargon is a tool used by
society in order to distinguish the few from the many, to distinguish
"my" class from "your" class.
Adorno uses Language the same way Benjamin used cities. He
demonstrates that language through "the jargon" is being
manipulated to further the cause of capitalism.
Adordo comes down on Existentialism, which is the notion that we create
our own worlds through our choices. We choose a thing and thus it
exists, it becomes real. Adorno felt this fell into the category of the subjective,
and therefore the unreliable. Adorno, like Horkhiemer, wanted a return
to objective
transcendent truth. This truth comes through a proper use of language.
Adorno seems to agree with historical
materialism in that he is calling for change, that necessarily comes
through revolution...
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Writings by Adorno
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