Theodor W. Adorno

Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft

Wer gewohnt ist, mit den Ohren zu denken, der mus am Klang des Wortes Kulturkritik sich argern nicht darum blos, weil es, wie das Automobil, aus Latein und Griechisch zusammengestuckt ist. Es erinnert an einen flagranten Widerspruch. Dem Kulturkritiker past die Kultur nicht, der einzig er das Unbehagen an ihr verdankt. Er redet, als vertrate er sei’s ungeschmalerte Natur, sei’s einen hoheren geschichtlichen Zustand und ist doch notwendig vom gleichen Wesen wie das, woruber er erhaben sich dunkt. Die von Hegel, zur Apologie von Bestehendem, immer wieder gescholtene Insuffizienz des Subjekts, das in seiner Zufalligkeit und Beschranktheit uber die Gewalt von Seiendem richte, wird unertraglich dort, wo das Subjekt selber bis in seine innerste Zusammensetzung hinein vermittelt ist durch den Begriff, dem es als unabhangiges und souveranes sich entgegensetzt. Aber die Unangemessenheit von Kulturkritik lauft dem Inhalt nach nicht sowohl auf Mangel an Respekt vor dem Kritisierten hinaus wie insgeheim auf dessen verblendet-hochmutige Anerkennung. Der Kulturkritiker kann kaum die Unterstellung vermeiden, er hatte die Kultur, welche dieser abgeht. Seine Eitelkeit kommt der ihren zu Hilfe: noch in der anklagenden Gebarde halt er die Idee von Kultur isoliert, unbefragt, dogmatisch fest. Er verschiebt den Angriff. Wo Verzweiflung und unmasiges Leiden ist, soll darin blos Geistiges, der Bewustseinszustand der Menschheit, der Verfall der Norm sich anzeigen. Indem die Kritik darauf insistiert, gerat sie in Versuchung, das Unsagbare zu vergessen, anstatt wie sehr auch ohnmachtig zu trachten, das es von den Menschen abgewandt werde.

Noten zur Literatur

Recueil de 33 essais litteraires, ecrits entre 1947 et 1967 et publies en 1958, 1961, 1965 et 1974 en 4 vol.

Erziehung nach Auschwitz

Die Forderung, das Auschwitz nicht noch einmal sei, ist die allererste an Erziehung. Sie geht so sehr jeglicher anderen voran, das ich weder glaube, sie begrunden zu mussen noch zu sollen. Ich kann nicht verstehen, das man mit ihr bis heute so wenig sich abgegeben hat. Sie zu begrunden hatte etwas Ungeheuerliches angesichts des Ungeheuerlichen, das sich zutrug. Das man aber die Forderung, und was sie an Fragen aufwirft, so wenig sich bewust macht, zeigt, das das Ungeheuerliche nicht in die Menschen eingedrungen ist, Symptom dessen, das die Moglichkeit der Wiederholung, was den Bewustseins- und Unbewustseinsstand der Menschen anlangt, fortbesteht. Jede Debatte uber Erziehungsideale ist nichtig und gleichgultig diesem einen gegenuber, das Auschwitz nicht sich wiederhole. Es war die Barbarei, gegen die alle Erziehung geht. Man spricht vom drohenden Ruckfall in die Barbarei. Aber er droht nicht, sondern Auschwitz war er; Barbarei besteht fort, solange die Bedingungen, die jenen Ruckfall zeitigten, wesentlich fortdauern. Das ist das ganze Grauen. Der gesellschaftliche Druck lastet weiter, trotz aller Unsichtbarkeit der Not heute.

Culture and Administration

Whoever speaks of culture speaks about administration as well, whether this is his intention or not. The combination of so many things lacking a common denominator—such as philosophy and religion, science and art, forms of conduct and mores—and Finally the inclusion of the objective spirit of an age in the single word “culture” betrays from the outset the administrative view, the task of which, looking down from on high, is to assemble, distribute, evaluate and organize. The word culture itself, in its specific use, is scarcely older than Kant and its beloved adversary, civilization, did not establish itself—at least in Germany—until the nineteenth century; it was then elevated to the level of a slogan by Spengler.

The Actuality of Philosophy

Whoever chooses philosophy as a profession today must first reject the illusion that earlier philosophical enterprises began with: that the power of thought is sufficient to grasp the totality of the real. No justifying reason could rediscover itself in a reality whose order and form suppresses every claim to reason; only polemically does reason present itself to the knower as total reality, while only in traces and ruins is it prepared to hope that it will ever come across correct and just reality. Philosophy which presents reality as such today only veils reality and eternalizes its present condition. Prior to every answer, such a function is already implicit in the question—that question which today is called radical and which is really the least radical of all: the question of being (Sein) itself, as expressly formulated by the new ontological blueprints, and as, despite all contraditions, fundamental to the idealist systems, now allegedly overcome.

How to Look at Television

DR. T. W. ADORNO, as Research Director during the past year of the Hacker Foundation of Beverly Hills, California, conducted the pilot study which is here published for the first time. Others involved in this study include Mrs. Bernice T. Eiduson, Dr. Merril B. Friend, and George Gerbner. Dr. Adorno has now returned to Germany where he has resumed his professorship in the Philosophy department at Frankfurt University and his position as co-director of the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt.

Lyric Poetry and Society

The announcement of a lecture on lyric poetry and society will make a good many of you uncomfortable. You will expect a sociological study of the sort which can take any subject it wants under consideration—just as fifty years ago we had psychologies, thirty years ago phenomenologies of every conceivable thing. You will fear that a discussion of conditions under which works of art have come into being, and their subsequent effects, must impertinently preempt the place belonging to the experience of those works as such; that sociological orderings and relatings will suppress all insight into the truth or falsity of the objects themselves.

The Idea of Natural History

Allow me to preface my remarks today by saying that I am not going to give a lecture in the usual sense of communicating results or presenting a systematic statement. Rather, what I have to say will remain on the level of an essay; it is no more than an attempt to take up and further develop the problems of the so-called Frankfurt discussion. I recognize that many uncomplimentary things have been said about this discussion, but I am equally aware that it approaches the problem correctly and that it would be wrong always to begin again at the beginning.

The Curves of the Needle

Talking machines and phonograph records seem to have suffered the same historical fate as that which once befell photographs: the transition from artisanal to industrial production transforms not only the technology of distribution but also that which is distributed. As the recordings become more perfect in terms of plasticity and volume, the subtlety of color and the authenticity of vocal sound declines as if the singer were being distanced more and more from the apparatus. The records, now fabricated out of a different mixture of materials, wear out faster than the old ones. The incidental noises, which have disappeared, nevertheless survive in the more shrill tone of the instruments and the singing. In a similar fashion, history drove out of photographs the shy relation to the speechless object that still reigned in daguerreotypes, replacing it with a photographic sovereignty borrowed from lifeless psychological painting to which, furthermore, it remains inferior. Artisanal compensations for the substantive loss of quality are at odds with the real economic situation. In their early phases, these technologies had the power to penetrate rationally the reigning artistic practice. The moment one attempts to improve these early technologies through an emphasis on concrete fidelity, the exactness one has ascribed to them is exposed as an illusion by the very technology itself. The positive tendency of consolidated technology to

On the Social Situation of Music

No matter where music is heard today, it sketches in the clearest possible lines the contradictions and flaws which cut through present-day society; at the same time, music is separated from this same society by the deepest of all flaws produced by this society itself. And yet, society is unable to absorb more of this music than its ruins and external remains. The role of music in the social process is exclusively that of a commodity; its value is that determined by the market. Music no longer serves direct needs nor benefits from direct application, but rather adjusts to the pressures of the exchange of abstract units.