Translated from the author's unpublished manuscript. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Aesthetic alienation may be described as the paradoxical relationship whereby art and truth have come to be divorced from one another while nonetheless remaining entwined. J. M. Bernstein not only finds the separation of art and truth problematic, but also contends that we continue to experience art as sensuous and particular, thus complicating and challenging the cultural self-understanding of modernity. Bernstein focuses on the work of four key philosophers—Kant, Heidegger, Derrida, and Adorno—and provides powerful new interpretations of their views. Bernstein (...) shows how each of the three post-Kantian aesthetics to construct a philosophical language that can criticize and displace the categorical assumption of modernity. He also examines in detail their responses to questions concerning the relations among art, philosophy, and politics in modern societies. (shrink)

This book addresses a central theme in social and political theory: what is the motivation behind the theory of ideology, and can such a theory be defended?

A reflection on everyday existence in the 'sphere of consumption of late Capitalism', this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece.

This book addresses a central theme in social and political theory: what is the motivation behind the theory of ideology, and can such a theory be defended?

A lively and lucid introduction to one of the great Marxist thinkers of the 20th century by the master cultural critic.

Brings together some of the most prominent and influential contemporary interpreters of Adorno's work in a wide-ranging collection of essays that explores Adorno's relation to themes and problems in postmodern thought.

Essays discuss critical theory, the nature of philosophy, logic, science, discovery, practical reason, and historical action.

The importance of the concept of subjectivity has been underestimated in the work of Theodor Adorno. In order to address this lacuna we make an interpretation of Adorno’s text Dialectic of Enlightenment, in the form of an ‘idealized’ narrative of enlightenment’s historical decline into its ‘self-conceived’ opposite, namely myth. Within this narrative we unravel the Freudian assumptions underlying Adorno’s work. We depict the form of subjectivity that Adorno regards as inextricably connected to enlightenment reason. We then analyse his argument for (...) the inevitable regression of this kind of subjectivity, and the resultant collapse of reason and enlightenment themselves. In so doing we demonstrate that, in Adorno’s view, the enlightenment concept of subjectivity is seriously flawed and entails an inevitable regression which, in the end, encompasses the very ‘death of the Subject’. (shrink)

(2000). ADORNO AND HORKHEIMER'S CONCEPT OF ‘ENLIGHTENMENT’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 521-544. doi: 10.1080/096087800442165.