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
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.
best
The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass.
animals auschwitz begins looks wherever
Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: theyre only animals.
thinking veils approach
A thinking that approaches it objects openly, rigorously ... is also free toward its objects in the sense that it refuses to have rules prescribed to it by organized knowledge. It ... rends the veil with which society conceals them, and perceives them anew.
truth whole
The whole is the false.
art doe facts
In sharp contrasts to traditional art, modern art does not hide the fact that it is something made and produced: on the contrary, it underscores the fact.
circles numbers keys
As a constellation, theoretical thought circles the concept it would like to unseal, hoping that it may fly open like the lock of a well-guarded safe-deposit box: in response, not to a single key or a single number, but to a combination of numbers
life cutting luxury
Rampant technolgy eliminates luxury, but not by declaring privilege a human right; rather, it does so by both raising the general standard of living and cutting off the possibility of fulfilment.
life jobs looks
Everybody must have projects all the time. The maximum must be extracted from leisure ... The whole of life must look like a job, and by this resemblance conceal what is not yet directly devoted to pecuniary gain.
life hate peculiar
To hate destructiveness, one must hate life as well: only death is an image of undistorted life ... organic life is an illness peculiar to our unlovely planet.
health opposites sick
And how comfortless is the thought that the sickness of the normal does not necessarily imply as its opposite the health of the sick, but that the latter usually only present, in a different way, the same disastrous pattern.