Adorno: A Biography

ISBN-13: 9780745631097 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 648 str.

Stefan Muller-Doohm; Rodney Livingstone

Opis

'Even the biographical individual is a social category', wrote Adorno. 'It can only be defined in a living context together with others.' In this major new biography, Stefan Muller-Doohm turns this maxim back on Adorno himself and provides a rich and comprehensive account of the life and work of one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century.

This authoritative biography ranges across the whole of Adorno's life and career, from his childhood and student years to his years in emigration in the United States and his return to postwar Germany. At the same time, Muller-Doohm examines the full range of Adorno's writings on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, music theory and cultural criticism. Drawing on an array of sources from Adorno's personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as a whole.

Muller-Doohm's clear prose succeeds in making accessible some of the most complex areas of Adorno's thought. This outstanding biography will be the standard work on Adorno for years to come.

Recenzje

"Although Adorno died in 1969, we have had to wait more than thirty years for a biography ... Stefan Müller–Doohm s is the most detailed and probably the best. (It has been exceptionally well translated, too.)"
Times Literary Supplement

"Stands as a very informative account of Adorno s life, which has much to offer casual readers of Adorno and those with a thorough interest in his work [and] ties a narrative description of Adorno s life to a sensitive understanding of his thought, and of the consistency of his reflection across the different disciplinary boundaries that it traversed ... This book does all the things a biography should."
Times Higher Education Supplement

"Exhaustively researched and presented with exemplary balance, Müller–Doohm s re–creation of Adorno s ′damaged life′ is fully worthy of its demanding subject. No future student of one of the twentieth century s most influential thinkers will be able to ignore this remarkable achievement in intellectual biography."
Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

Spis treści

List of Figures viii

List of Plates ix

Preface xii

Acknowledgements xiv

Illustration Acknowledgements xvi

Part I Origins: Family, Childhood and Youth: School and University in Frankfurt am Main Family Inheritance: A Picture of Contrasts 3

1 Adorno s Corsican Grandfather: Jean François, alias Giovanni Francesco 5

Fencing master Calvelli–Adorno in the Frankfurt suburb of Bockenheim 8

2 Wiesengrund: The Jewish Heritage of his Father s Romantic Name 13

A generous father and two musical mothers 15

3 Between Oberrad and Amorbach 25

School experiences of a precocious youth 32

Arousing philosophical interests in the musical soul: Kracauer s influence on Adorno 37

4 Éducation sentimentale 52

First love and a number of affairs 55

Part II A Change of Scene: Between Frankfurt, Vienna and Berlin: A Profusion of Intellectual Interests Commuting between Philosophy and Music 67

5 Against the Stream: The City of Frankfurt and its University 69

First meeting with Max Horkheimer in the seminar on gestalt psychology 74

6 A Man with Philosophical Qualities in the World of Viennese Music: The Danube Metropolis 82

Apprenticeship with his master and teacher 83

7 In Search of a Career 95

Between philosophy and music: no parting of the ways 100

8 Music Criticism and Compositional Practice 110

Theorizing the twelve–tone method: Adorno s debate with Krenek 115

9 Towards a Theory of Aesthetics 119

Rather more than a beginner s foray into philosophy 125

10 A Second Anomaly in Frankfurt: The Institute of Social Research 132

Two inaugural lectures 134

A Privatdozent in the shadow of Walter Benjamin 145

The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung and Adorno s ideological critique of music 150

In league with Horkheimer against a second school of sociology under the same roof 155

The opera project: The Treasure of Indian Joe 159

Part III Emigration Years: An Intellectual in a Foreign Land A Twofold Exile: Intellectual Homelessness as Personal Fate 169

11 The Coordination of the National Socialist Nation and Adorno s Reluctant Emigration 173

Hibernating with dignity? 181

12 Between Academic and Authentic Concerns: From Philosophy Lecturer to Advanced Student in Oxford 187

Sticks and carrots 194

An abiding distaste: jazz as a tolerated excess 198

Setbacks . . . 203

. . . and personal losses 207

13 Writing Letters as an Aid to Philosophical Self–Clarification: Debates with Benjamin, Sohn–Rethel and Kracauer 214

A double relationship: Gretel and Max 226

14 Learning by Doing: Adorno s Path to Social Research 242

In the Institute of Social Research on Morningside Heights 255

Between two stools once again: a long road from New York to Los Angeles 267

15 Happiness in Misfortune: Adorno s Years in California 273

Messages in a bottle, or, How to create enlightenment about the Enlightenment 278

Merits of social research: studies in the authoritarian personality 288

Moral feelings in immoral times 298

The Privy Councillor: Adorno and Thomas Mann 311

Part IV Thinking the Unconditional and Enduring the Conditional The Explosive Power of Saying No 325

16 Change of Scene: Surveying the Ruins 328

Playing an active role in postwar Germany? 336

Back to America: horoscope analysis and TV research 348

Letting the cat out of the bag: Kafka, Beckett, Hölderlin 353

17 Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory: Adorno s Activities in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s 366

In the stream, but swimming against the tide 374

Speaking of the rope while in the country of the hangman 380

The crisis of the subject: self–preservation without a self 387

The purpose of life: understanding the language of music 392

Right living? Places, people, friendships 398

18 Eating Bread: A Theory Devoured by Thought 412

The dispute about positivism: Via discourse to the Frankfurt School 421

Against German stuffiness 430

The fat child 433

What kind of a society do we live in? Adorno s analysis of the present 441

19 With his Back to the Wall 448

Patricide deferred 457

The futility of defending a theory as practice 460

Moments of happiness, despite everything 465

The divided nature of art 470

Death 474

Epilogue: Thinking Against Oneself 481

Notes 492

References and Bibliography 615

Index 645

O autorze

Stefan Müller–Doohm isProfessor of Sociology at Oldenburg University, Germany.

Blurb

′Even the biographical individual is a social category′, wrote Adorno. It can only be defined in a living context together with others. In this major new biography, Stefan Müller–Doohm turns this maxim back on Adorno himself and provides a rich and comprehensive account of the life and work of one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century.

This authoritative biography ranges across the whole of Adorno′s life and career, from his childhood and student years to his years in emigration in the United States and his return to postwar Germany. At the same time, Muller–Doohm examines the full range of Adorno′s writings on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, music theory and cultural criticism. Drawing on an array of sources from Adorno′s personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published and unpublished writings, Muller–Doohm situates Adorno′s contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as a whole.

Müller–Doohm′s clear prose succeeds in making accessible some of the most complex areas of Adorno′s thought. This outstanding biography will be the standard work on Adorno for years to come.