The Cambridge Companion to Adorno

The great German philosopher and aesthetic theorist Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903 1969) was one of the main philosophers of the first generation of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. An accomplished musician, Adorno first focused on the theory of culture and art. Later he turned to the problem of the self-defeating dialectic of modern reason and freedom. In this collection of essays, imbued with the most up-to-date research, a distinguished roster of Adorno specialists explore the full range of his contributions to philosophy, history, music theory, aesthetics and sociology. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Adorno currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Adorno.
Contents Introduction: thoughts beside themselves Tom Huhn; 1. Negative dialectic as fate: Adorno and Hegel J. M. Bernstein; 2. Weighty objects: on Adorno’s Kant-Freud interpretation Joel Whitebook; 3. Adorno, Marx, materialism Simon Jarvis; 4. Leaving home: on Adorno and Heidegger Samir Gandesha; 5. Is experience still in crisis? Reflections on a Frankfurt school lament Martin Jay; 6. Mephistopheles in Hollywood: Adorno, Mann and Schoenberg James Schmidt; 7. Right listening and a new type of human being Robert Hullot-Kentor; 8. Authenticity and failure in Adorno’s aesthetics of music Max Paddison; 9. Dissonant works and the listening public Lydia Goehr; 10. Adorno, Heidegger and the meaning of music Andrew Bowie; 11. The critical theory of society as reflexive sociology Stefan Müller-Doohm; 12. Genealogy and critique: two forms of ethical questioning of morality Christoph Menke; 13. Adorno’s negative moral philosophy Gerhard Schweppenhäuser; 14. Adorno’s social lyric, and literary criticism today: poetics, aesthetics, modernity Robert Kaufman; 15. Adorno’s Tom Sawyer opera Singspiel Rolf Tiedemann.