people who've read Adorno

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
I know Dissensus is meant to be for discussion not for lazy exam cribbing, but if anyone could give me even the briefest summary of Adorno's views on the relationship between art and morality I would be very grateful. I do fully intend to read him one day, I just don't have time before Tuesday. Cheers.
 

D7_bohs

Well-known member
I'm not really sure Adorno thinks there is any relation between art and morality to be honest - what he does think is that art holds open the possibility of unalienated labour and therefore an image of a utopia, which, for Adorno, is the narrowest of pinpricks of light in the overwhelming bleakness of instrumentalised existence. This is as close as he gets to a version of Kant's aesthetic 'moral image ofthe world' Jay Bernstein may have something to say on the subject in his Ethics of Disenchantment; I'll check when i get home...

Adorno's Aesthetic Theory works as a sort of negative of Kant; whereas for Kant, the act of aesthetic judgment has as its subject, the judgment itself, with its moments of disinterest, purposiveness without purpose, universality and necessity, for Adorno, these moments migrate into the work itself, which stands as an exemplar of non- identity, of the primacy of the object, of that which escapes the clutches of instrumental reason (and therefore of capital).

Bernstein argues that there is an ethics to be read in Adorno, and certainly, one cannot read him without feeling a powerful moral force underneath; but its really difficult to actually state what that moral or ethical position might be; it's too easy to reduce Adorno to caricature, to the straw man of cult. studs. - he hated jazz (boo!) - or a few quotes 'no poetry after Auschwitz' and so on; his method certainly doesn't help...

I'll try and dig up a bit more later, if you like; how much and in how much detail do you need?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
well he did have loads to say about the public "official" art of advertising and cinema, etc., and how they function in service of power, brainwash people, etc...
 

Ned

Ruby Tuesday
Surely there must be some connection, because doesn't he condemn pop music on the basis that it contributes to the standardisation of human experience? And that's a moral flaw rather than an aesthetic one. So he does at least judge art on moral terms?

All I need is the basic ideas, would hate anyone to go to any serious effort given that I should really be doing this work myself...
 

D7_bohs

Well-known member
Ned said:
Surely there must be some connection, because doesn't he condemn pop music on the basis that it contributes to the standardisation of human experience? And that's a moral flaw rather than an aesthetic one. So he does at least judge art on moral terms?

All I need is the basic ideas, would hate anyone to go to any serious effort given that I should really be doing this work myself...

The short answer is that Adorno wouldn't think pop music was art - it's reified cultural production attempting to hitch a ride on the cultural weight of real music - art is precisely that which escapes the reifying effect of production and retains at least some of the qualities of unalienated - even pre- capitalist - production; by its uniqueness and unreproducibility among other things.

So while there may be a moral edge to his hostiity to pop culture, it has only a negative relation to his aesthetics proper; also, is to object to something because it contributes to the standardisation of human experience necessarily - or solely - a moral objection? Adorno would think it was a political objection.
 

Peak

Member
D7_bohs said:
is to object to something because it contributes to the standardisation of human experience necessarily - or solely - a moral objection? Adorno would think it was a political objection.

not read adorno recently enough, but what is the distinction yr making between the moral and the political here? is the 'standardisation / utopia' argument not a moral critique of capitalism, i.e. a precondition for politics (mass culture dimimishes human experience, thats why we need to get rid of its economic/political rationale). Or - thinking as I write, is the argument more the one that mass culture is the easy fix that makes the hard work of political change more difficult/unlikely? can't remember
 

owen

Well-known member
D7_bohs said:
The short answer is that Adorno wouldn't think pop music was art - it's reified cultural production
off topic slightly- this should be qualified somewhat. adorno had little problem with popcult at its more raw- he liked silent comedies and betty boop, frcrissake. the horror was for 'the midpoint between schoenberg and the hollywood film', for the middlebrow, basically
 

D7_bohs

Well-known member
owen said:
off topic slightly- this should be qualified somewhat. adorno had little problem with popcult at its more raw- he liked silent comedies and betty boop, frcrissake. the horror was for 'the midpoint between schoenberg and the hollywood film', for the middlebrow, basically
yeah, that's right actually - he also had a soft spot for the circus and the like as well
 
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