Adorno: A Biography'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correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th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. |
Contents
A Picture of Contrasts | 3 |
Jean Francois alias Giovanni Francesco | 5 |
The Jewish Heritage of his Fathers Romantic Name | 13 |
Between Oberrad and Amorbach | 25 |
Éducation sentimentale | 52 |
Commuting between Philosophy and Music | 67 |
The City of Frankfurt and its University | 69 |
The Danube Metropolis | 82 |
From Philosophy Lecturer to Advanced Student in Oxford | 187 |
Debates with Benjamin SohnRethel and Kracauer | 214 |
Adornos Path to Social Research | 242 |
Adornos Years in California | 273 |
The Explosive Power of Saying No | 325 |
Surveying the Ruins | 328 |
Adornos Activities in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s | 366 |
A Theory Devoured by Thought | 412 |
In Search of a Career | 95 |
Music Criticism and Compositional Practice | 110 |
Towards a Theory of Aesthetics | 119 |
The Institute of Social Research | 132 |
Intellectual Homelessness as Personal Fate | 169 |
The Coordination of the National Socialist Nation and Adornos Reluctant Emigration | 173 |
With his Back to the Wall | 448 |
Thinking Against Oneself | 481 |
Notes | 492 |
| 615 | |
| 645 | |
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Common terms and phrases
able academic Adorno and Horkheimer Adorno Archive Adorno to Horkheimer Adorno wrote aesthetic Alban Berg Amorbach anti-Semitism appeared attempt authoritarian become Benjamin and Adorno Berlin bourgeois Briefwechsel concept consciousness Critical Models critical theory critique culture despite developed Dialectic of Enlightenment discussion emigration Ernst essay experience expression fact Frankfurt am Main Frankfurter Adorno Blätter German Gretel Horkheimer's Husserl Ibid idea individual Institute of Social intellectual interpretation jazz Jewish Jews Jürgen Habermas Kierkegaard Krenek later Lazarsfeld lecture Leo Löwenthal letter living Marcuse Max Horkheimer Minima Moralia modern nature Nazi Negative Dialectics Notes to Literature objective opera philosophy political programme published question radio Rolf Tiedemann Schoenberg Scholem seminar Siegfried Kracauer Social Research society sociology Stadt Theodor Theodor W thinking Thomas Mann thought tion truth twelve-tone twelve-tone technique Universitätsbibliothek Vienna Walter Benjamin Wiesengrund Wolfgang writings Zeitung