Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno was a German philosopher, sociologist, and musicologist who was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century in the fields of aesthetics, social theory, and cultural criticism. His works include Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), Minima Moralia (1951), Negative Dialectics (1966), and Aesthetic Theory (1970). Adorno was born in Frankfurt in 1903 to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother of Italian descent. He showed an early talent for music and studied composition with Bernhard Sekles and Eduard Jung. He also studied philosophy, sociology, and psychology at the University of Frankfurt, where he became acquainted with Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Siegfried Kracauer. He obtained his doctorate in 1924 with a dissertation on Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. In 1925, Adorno moved to Vienna to study music with Alban Berg, one of the pioneers of the twelve-tone technique. He also became involved in the circle of intellectuals around Karl Kraus, the satirist and critic of mass culture. In 1928, he returned to Frankfurt and joined the Institute for Social Research, which was later known as the Frankfurt School. There he collaborated with Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and others on developing a critical theory of society that combined Marxist analysis with psychoanalysis and philosophy. In 1933, after the Nazis came to power in Germany, Adorno fled to England and then to the United States. He taught at Oxford University, Columbia University, Princeton University, and the University of California at Los Angeles. He also continued his musical activities and wrote essays on composers such as Mahler, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern. He also maintained a close friendship and correspondence with Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. In 1944, Adorno co-authored with Horkheimer one of his most influential works, Dialectic of Enlightenment. The book was a critique of the Enlightenment's faith in reason and progress and its role in producing totalitarianism and mass culture. The book argued that reason had become a tool of domination and that enlightenment had turned into myth and ideology. The book also analyzed various forms of mass culture, such as film, radio, jazz, and astrology, as forms of manipulation and social control. In 1949, Adorno returned to Germany and became a professor at the University of Frankfurt. He resumed his work at the Institute for Social Research and became its director in 1958. He also published several books on philosophy, sociology, aesthetics, and musicology. Some of his major works from this period are Philosophy of New Music (1949), The Authoritarian Personality (1950), Minima Moralia (1951), Prisms (1955), Negative Dialectics (1966), and Aesthetic Theory (1970). Adorno was also involved in public debates and controversies on various topics such as fascism, antisemitism, education, art, literature, jazz, pop music, student movements, and politics. He was a vocal critic of both capitalism and communism and advocated for a democratic socialism that would preserve human dignity and autonomy. He was also a supporter of avant-garde art and music as forms of resistance against the culture industry. Adorno died unexpectedly of a heart attack on August 6, 1969 in Visp, Switzerland while on vacation. He was buried at the Frankfurt Main Cemetery. His legacy and influence are still felt today in many fields of humanities and social sciences. He is widely regarded as one of the most original and provocative thinkers of the 20th century.