By Peter Uwe Hohendahl
A dialogue of Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic concept is sure to seem considerably diverse at the present time than it should have regarded while the publication was once first released in 1970, or whilst it first seemed in English translation within the Eighties. within the Fleeting Promise of artwork, Peter Uwe Hohendahl reexamines Aesthetic idea in addition to Adorno’s different writings on aesthetics in mild of the unforeseen go back of the cultured to today’s cultural debates.
Is Adorno’s aesthetic conception nonetheless correct this present day? Hohendahl solutions this question with an emphatic certain. As he exhibits, a cautious interpreting of the paintings exposes diverse questions and arguments this day than it did long ago. through the years Adorno’s obstacle over the destiny of paintings in a past due capitalist society has met with every little thing from suspicion to indifference. partly this may be defined by means of relative unfamiliarity with the German dialectical culture in North the US. Today’s debate is healthier expert, extra multifaceted, and additional faraway from the rapid aftermath of the chilly warfare and of the shadow of postmodernism.
Adorno’s insistence at the radical autonomy of the art has a lot to provide modern discussions of paintings and the cultured looking for new responses to the pervasive results of a neoliberal paintings marketplace and tradition undefined. Focusing particularly on Adorno’s engagement with literary works, Hohendahl exhibits how extensively transformative Adorno’s principles were and the way completely they've got formed present discussions in aesthetics. one of the subject matters he considers are the function of artwork in modernism and postmodernism, the reality claims of works of art, the functionality of the grotesque in smooth artistic endeavors, the precarious price of the literary culture, and the mind-blowing value of realism for Adorno.
"The Fleeting Promise of paintings is excellent. Peter Uwe Hohendahl's scholarship is impeccable, and his prose is pellucid and stylish. Hohendahl has the philosophical acumen to make feel of Adorno’s notoriously tough interpretations of the philosophy of German Idealism, the severe talents to investigate and interpret Adorno’s arguments for his or her missed strengths and weaknesses, and the old experience to appear for—but now not reside on—relevant underexplored causes from the complicated and wealthy highbrow heritage of Adorno’s lifestyles and times."—Max Pensky, collage of Binghamton, writer of The Ends of harmony: Discourse concept in Ethics and Politics
"This masterful reassessment explores Adorno's status inside of philosophical aesthetics (especially Kant), his engagement with visible artwork (especially primitivist modernism), and his excessive, essayistic engagement with literature. Peter Uwe Hohendahl illuminates those divergent parts of Adorno’s pondering and explains why Adorno is essential for wondering paintings, literature, and aesthetics today."—Russell A. Berman, Walter A. Haas Professor within the Humanities, Stanford collage, writer of Fiction units You Free
"Long favourite on either side of the Atlantic as essentially the most incisive participants to the continued improvement of severe concept, Peter Uwe Hohendahl focuses his consciousness in those essays on Adorno's Aesthetic concept, whose abiding relevance he abundantly demonstrates. With the ambitious erudition, analytic acumen, and exemplary lucidity his readers have come to anticipate, Hohendahl not just illuminates Adorno’s bills to predecessors akin to Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud but additionally indicates the ability of his readings of artists like Goethe and Balzac. The Fleeting Promise of paintings is sure to be well-known as a long-lasting contribution to twenty-first-century aesthetics."—Martin Jay, college of California, Berkeley, writer of Essays from the sting