Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
Theodor W. Adornowas a German philosopher, sociologist, and composer known for his critical theory of society...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth11 September 1903
CountryGermany
love-is ability similarity
Love is the ability to discover similarities in the dis-similar. The audience has a right not to be fooled - even if it insists on being fooled.
purpose boring form
The inadequacy of the purely purpose-oriented form is revealed for what it is-a monotonous, impoverished boring practicality.
integrating lost
He who integrates is lost.
needs prophet
There's not much need for prophets who are in synch with their society.
auschwitz
There can be no poetry after Auschwitz.
dream reality differences
Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion.
world enough
Of the world as it exists, it is not possible to be enough afraid.
objectivity suffering needs
The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject
dream long waking
The noiseless din that we have long known in dreams, booms at us in waking hours from newspaper headlines.
self evil culture
Newness only becomes mere evil in its totalitarian format, where all the tension between individual and society, that once gave rise to the category of the new, is dissipated. Today the appeal to newness, of no matter what kind, provided only that it is archaic enough, has become universal, the omnipresent medium of false mimesis. The decomposition of the subject is consummated in his self-abandonment to an ever-changing sameness.
historical might wealth
They [the critics] deal with Schoenberg's early works and all their wealth by classifying them, with the music-historical cliché, as late romantic post-Wagnerian. One might just as well dispose of Beethoven as a late-classicist post-Haydnerian.
way causes modern
On their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability.
revenge stupidity wish
The thought that murders the wish that fathered it will be overtaken by the revenge of stupidity
philosophy philosophical political
It is incumbent upon philosophy ... to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.