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
revenge independent home
Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independent intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge.
past kitsch helping
Kitsch evokes a future utopia looking back at a past that is selectively (mis)remembered, thereby helping to stabilize the present toward which kitsch is otherwise deeply anatagonistic.
lying kitsch facts
The positive element of kitsch lies in the fact that it sets free for a moment the glimmering realization that you have wasted your life.
art kitsch imitation
The power of works of art still continues to be secretly nourished by imitation... kitsch
joy kitsch shameless
In the end indignation over kitsch is anger at tis shameless revelling in the joy of imitation.
men desire filters
The usual reproach against the essay, that it is fragmentary and random, itself assumes the givenness of totality and suggests that man is in control of this totality. The desire of the essay, though, is not to filter the eternal out of the transitory; it wants, rather, to make the transitory eternal.
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.
art poetry way
Art as a whole is a riddle. Another way of putting this is to say that art expresses something while at the same time hiding it.
art broken creation
Death is imposed only on creatures, not their creations, and has therefore always appeared in art in a broken form: as allegory.
true-life
There is no true life within a false life.
fall eye self
The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all.
believe sacred usability
The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence.
country pain looks
In Anglo-Saxon countries the prostitutes look as if they purveyed, along with sin, the attendant pains of hell.