Aesthetics

Theodor W. Adorno delivered these lectures during the winter semester of 1958 and 1959, and they laid the groundwork for his later Aesthetic Theory, a text often counted among his major achievements. Across the course, he works closely through Georg Lukács, develops a lengthy account of aesthetic experience, and engages with Plato, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Benjamin. He also turns to the newest experiments of John Cage, which shows how far his intellectual range extended.

Adorno never loses sight of the world around him. Throughout, the lectures reveal the artistic, intellectual and political debates that shaped everyday life in postwar Germany.

The volume is aimed at students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences, and at anyone following the development of critical theory.