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
culture west utopia
What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline.
men thinking progress
The objective tendency of the Enlightenment, to wipe out the power of images over man, is not matched by any subjective progress on the part of enlightened thinking towards freedom from images.
revenge stupidity wish
The thought that murders the wish that fathered it will be overtaken by the revenge of stupidity
important noble nouns
The important thing is not the planning of an Index Verborum Prohibitorum of current noble nouns, but rather the examination of their linguistic function.
past expression torment
The expression if history in things is no other than that of past torment.
political levels way
It is one of the basic tenets of fascist leadership to keep primary libidinal energy on an unconscious level so as to divert its manifestations in a way suitable to political ends.
jargon determined individual
What is or is not the jargon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individual words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content.
dream vegetables outcomes
In the nineteenth century the Germans painted their dream and the outcome was invariably vegetable. The French needed only to paint a vegetable and it was already a dream.
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.
memories past leftovers
Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.
character self childhood
Humanity had to inflict terrible injuries on itself before the self, the identical, purpose-directed, masculine character of human beings was created, and something of this process is repeated in every childhood.
dream long waking
The noiseless din that we have long known in dreams, booms at us in waking hours from newspaper headlines.
believe proust courtesy
It is Proust's courtesy to spare the reader the embarrassment of believing himself cleverer than the author.
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.