adorno’s philosophy bristles with terms that, shorn from any settled stipulative definition, present a challenge to the reader.2 Adorno’s difficult concept of “non-identity” is perhaps the most notorious, but it is “mimesis” that more than any other resists easy comprehension. Despite this, or because of it, mimesis has received sustained and enthusiastic attention. Jameson goes so far as it say that mimesis is for Adorno a “foundational concept, never defined nor argued but always alluded to, by name, as though it (...) had pre-existed all the texts.”3 While the talk of foundational concepts is perhaps a little strong, Adorno gives us cause to think mimesis is a central part of his philosophy, due to its infrequent.. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explain why, in Hegel's view, art's history brings it to the point at which it can no longer afford the highest satisfaction of our spiritual needs and so fulfill its own highest calling, and why, nevertheless, we moderns still need art and still need it to create beauty. I argue that Hegel advocates a modern art of beauty because he believes that what has to be given aesthetic expression in the modern world is (...) concrete human freedom and life (ratherthan the abstract, subjective freedom of Romantic irony) and that the aesthetic expression of such concrete human freedom entails beauty. (shrink)

This article focuses on the arguments that Arthur Danto has advanced for alleging that the developmental history of art is over. The author is skeptical of Danto's conclusion and maintains that Danto has failed to demonstrate that art history is necessarily closed. The author also contends that Danto's end-of-art thesis is better construed as a specimen of art criticism than as an example of the speculative philosophy of art history.

Theodor Adorno was one of the foremost radical thinkers of the Twentieth century. Critic of the Enlightenment, liberalism and modernity, he was the architect behind the famous Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and his work ranged over philosophy, social and cultural theory, art and music. In this lucid book, Espen Hammer critically considers and defends Adorno's most important contribution: his political thought and it contemporary relevance. Espen Hammer examines the background to Adorno's thought in the work of Kierkegaard, Marx, Weber (...) and Walter Benjamin and assesses Adorno's critique of Enlightenment and modernity in his famous work, Dialectic of Enlightenment. He then considers Adorno's critique of Kant and Hegel and considers Adorno's celebrated theory of negative dialectics. He defends Adorno's against Jurgen Habermas's criticism that Adorno's thought is irrational and subject-centred before considering how Adorno's theory of alterity is evident in the work of Derrida and Levinas. Adorno and the Political is an invigorating exploration of a key political thinker and is also a useful introduction to his thought as a whole. It will be of interest to those in philosophy, sociology and politics. (shrink)

The emergence of abstract art, first in the early part of the century with Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian, and then in the much more celebrated case of America in the fifties (Rothko, Pollock, and others) remains puzzling. Such a great shift in aesthetic standards and taste is not only unprecedented in its radicality. The fact that nonfigurative art, without identifiable content in any traditional sense, was produced, appreciated, and, finally, eagerly bought and, even, finally, triumphantly hung in the lobbies of (...) banks and insurance companies, provokes understandable questions about both social and cultural history, as well as about the history of art. The endlessly disputed category of modernism itself and its eventual fate seems at issue. (shrink)

This article focuses on the arguments that Arthur Danto has advanced for alleging that the developmental history of art is over. The author is skeptical of Danto's conclusion and maintains that Danto has failed to demonstrate that art history is necessarily closed. The author also contends that Danto's end-of-art thesis is better construed as a specimen of art criticism than as an example of the speculative philosophy of art history.

The aim of this article is to explain why, in Hegel's view, art's history brings it to the point at which it can no longer afford the highest satisfaction of our spiritual needs and so fulfill its own highest calling, and why, nevertheless, we moderns still need art and still need it to create beauty. I argue that Hegel advocates a modern art of beauty because he believes that what has to be given aesthetic expression in the modern world is (...) concrete human freedom and life and that the aesthetic expression of such concrete human freedom entails beauty. (shrink)

This book is a translation of a classic work of modern social and political thought. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel's last major published work, is an attempt to systematize ethical theory, natural right, the philosophy of law, political theory, and the sociology of the modern state into the framework of Hegel's philosophy of history. Hegel's work has been interpreted in radically different ways, influencing many political movements from far right to far left, and is widely perceived as central (...) to the communitarian tradition in modern ethical, social, and political thought. This edition includes extensive editorial material informing the reader of the historical background of Hegel's text, and explaining his allusions to Roman law and other sources, making use of lecture materials which have only recently become available. The new translation is literal, readable, and consistent, and will be informative and scholarly enough to serve the needs of students and specialists alike. (shrink)

This study examines how key figures in the German aesthetic tradition—Kant, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno—attempted to think through the powers and limits of art in post-Enlightenment modernity. The aesthetic speculations of these thinkers, Maharaj argues, provide the conceptual resources for a timely dialectical defense of “aesthetic agency”— art’s capacity to make available uniquely valuable modes of experience that escape the purview of Enlightenment scientific rationality. The book has two interrelated aims. First, it provides new interpretations of the aesthetic (...) philosophies of Kant, Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno by focusing on aspects of their thought that have been neglected or misunderstood in both Anglo-American and German scholarship. Second, it attempts to demonstrate that their subtle investigations into the nature and scope of aesthetic agency have far-reaching implications for contemporary discourse on the arts. (shrink)