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
reality order neutrality
The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.
art reality becoming
Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.
dream reality differences
Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion.
lying believe reality
The lie has long since lost its honest function of misrepresenting reality. Nobody believes anybody, everyone is in the know. Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.
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.