Adorno : A Biography

by Stefan Muller-Doohm (Oldenburg University); Translated by: Rodney Livingstone

• ISBN13: 9780745631080
• ISBN10: 0745631088
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-11-01
• Publisher: Polity Pr

Summary

'Even the biographical individual is a social category', wrote Adorno. ls"It can only be defined in a living context together with others.rs" In this major new biography, Stefan Muuml;ller-Doohm turns this maxim back on Adorno himself and provides a rich and comprehensive account of the life and work of one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. This authoritative biography ranges across the whole of Adorno's life and career, from his childhood and student years to his years in emigration in the United States and his return to postwar Germany. At the same time, Muller-Doohm examines the full range of Adorno's writings on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, music theory and cultural criticism. Drawing on an array of sources from Adorno's personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as a whole. Muuml;ller-Doohm's clear prose succeeds in making accessible some of the most complex areas of Adorno's thought. This outstanding biography will be the standard work on Adorno for years to come.

Author Biography

Stefan Muller-Doohm isProfessor of Sociology at Oldenburg University, Germany.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	viii
List of Plates	ix
Preface	xii
Acknowledgements	xiv
Illustration Acknowledgements	xvi
Part I Origins: Family, Childhood and Youth: School and University in Frankfurt am Main
Family Inheritance: A Picture of Contrasts	3	(2)
Adorno's Corsican Grandfather: Jean Francois, alias Giovanni Francesco	5	(8)
Fencing master Calvelli-Adorno in the Frankfurt suburb of Bockenheim	8	(5)
Wiesengrund: The Jewish Heritage of his Father's Romantic Name	13	(12)
A generous father and two musical mothers	15	(10)
Between Oberrad and Amorbach	25	(27)
School experiences of a precocious youth	32	(5)
Arousing philosophical interests in the musical soul: Kracauer's influence on Adorno	37	(15)
Education sentimentale	52	(17)
First love and a number of affairs	55	(12)
Part II A Change of Scene: Between Frankfurt, Vienna and Berlin: A Profusion of Intellectual Interests
Commuting between Philosophy and Music	67	(2)
Against the Stream: The City of Frankfurt and its University	69	(13)
First meeting with Max Horkheimer in the seminar on gestalt psychology	74	(8)
A Man with Philosophical Qualities in the World of Viennese Music: The Danube Metropolis	82	(13)
Apprenticeship with his master and teacher	83	(12)
In Search of a Career	95	(15)
Between philosophy and music: no parting of the ways	100	(10)
Music Criticism and Compositional Practice	110	(9)
Theorizing the twelve-tone method: Adorno's debate with Krenek	115	(4)
Towards a Theory of Aesthetics	119	(13)
Rather more than a beginner's foray into philosophy	125	(7)
A Second Anomaly in Frankfurt: The Institute of Social Research	132	(41)
Two inaugural lectures	134	(11)
A Privatdozent in the shadow of Walter Benjamin	145	(5)
The Zeitschrift fur Sozialforschung and Adorno's ideological critique of music	150	(5)
In league with Horkheimer against a second school of sociology under the same roof	155	(4)
The opera project: The Treasure of Indian Joe	159	(10)
Part III Emigration Years: An Intellectual in a Foreign Land
A Twofold Exile: Intellectual Homelessness as Personal Fate	169	(4)
The `Coordination' of the National Socialist Nation and Adorno's Reluctant Emigration	173	(14)
Hibernating with dignity?	181	(6)
Between Academic and Authentic Concerns: From Philosophy Lecturer to Advanced Student in Oxford	187	(27)
Sticks and carrots	194	(4)
An abiding distaste: jazz as a tolerated excess	198	(5)
Setbacks . . .	203	(4)
. . . and personal losses	207	(7)
Writing Letters as an Aid to Philosophical Self-Clarification: Debates with Benjamin, Sohn-Rethel and Kracauer	214	(28)
A double relationship: Gretel and Max	226	(16)
Learning by Doing: Adorno's Path to Social Research	242	(31)
In the Institute of Social Research on Morningside Heights	255	(12)
Between two stools once again: a long road from New York to Los Angeles	267	(6)
Happiness in Misfortune: Adorno's Years in California	273	(55)
Messages in a bottle, or, How to create enlightenment about the Enlightenment	278	(10)
Merits of social research: studies in the authoritarian personality	288	(10)
Moral feelings in immoral times	298	(13)
The Privy Councillor: Adorno and Thomas Mann	311	(14)
Part IV Thinking the Unconditional and Enduring the Conditional
The Explosive Power of Saying No	325	(3)
Change of Scene: Surveying the Ruins	328	(38)
Playing an active role in postwar Germany?	336	(12)
Back to America: horoscope analysis and TV research	348	(5)
Letting the cat out of the bag: Kafka, Beckett, Holderlin	353	(13)
Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory: Adorno's Activities in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s	366	(46)
In the stream, but swimming against the tide	374	(6)
Speaking of the rope while in the country of the hangman	380	(7)
The crisis of the subject: self-preservation without a self	387	(5)
The purpose of life: understanding the language of music	392	(6)
Right living? Places, people, friendships	398	(14)
Eating Bread: A Theory Devoured by Thought	412	(36)
The dispute about positivism: Via discourse to the Frankfurt School	421	(9)
Against German stuffiness	430	(3)
The fat child	433	(8)
What kind of a society do we live in? Adorno's analysis of the present	441	(7)
With his Back to the Wall	448	(33)
Patricide deferred	457	(3)
The futility of defending a theory as practice	460	(5)
Moments of happiness, despite everything	465	(5)
The divided nature of art	470	(4)
Death	474	(7)
Epilogue: Thinking Against Oneself	481	(11)
Notes	492	(123)
References and Bibliography	615	(30)
Index	645