‘Even the biographical individual is a social category’, wrote Adorno. ‘It can only be defined in a living context together with others.’ In this major new biography, Stefan Müller-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correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno’s contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th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.
Müller-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.
Table of Content
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
1 Adorno’s Corsican Grandfather: Jean François, alias Giovanni Francesco 5
• Fencing master Calvelli-Adorno in the Frankfurt suburb of Bockenheim 8
2 Wiesengrund: The Jewish Heritage of his Father’s Romantic Name 13
• A generous father and two musical mothers 15
3 Between Oberrad and Amorbach 25
• School experiences of a precocious youth 32
• Arousing philosophical interests in the musical soul: Kracauer’s influence on Adorno 37
4 Éducation sentimentale 52
• First love and a number of affairs 55
Part II A Change of Scene: Between Frankfurt, Vienna and Berlin: A Profusion of Intellectual Interests Commuting between Philosophy and Music 67
5 Against the Stream: The City of Frankfurt and its University 69
• First meeting with Max Horkheimer in the seminar on gestalt psychology 74
6 A Man with Philosophical Qualities in the World of Viennese Music: The Danube Metropolis 82
• Apprenticeship with his master and teacher 83
7 In Search of a Career 95
• Between philosophy and music: no parting of the ways 100
8 Music Criticism and Compositional Practice 110
• Theorizing the twelve-tone method: Adorno’s debate with Krenek 115
9 Towards a Theory of Aesthetics 119
• Rather more than a beginner’s foray into philosophy 125
10 A Second Anomaly in Frankfurt: The Institute of Social Research 132
• Two inaugural lectures 134
• A Privatdozent in the shadow of Walter Benjamin 145
• The Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung and Adorno’s ideological critique of music 150
• In league with Horkheimer against a second school of sociology under the same roof 155
• The opera project: The Treasure of Indian Joe 159
Part III Emigration Years: An Intellectual in a Foreign Land A Twofold Exile: Intellectual Homelessness as Personal Fate 169
11 The ‘Coordination’ of the National Socialist Nation and Adorno’s Reluctant Emigration 173
• Hibernating with dignity? 181
12 Between Academic and Authentic Concerns: From Philosophy Lecturer to Advanced Student in Oxford 187
• Sticks and carrots 194
• An abiding distaste: jazz as a tolerated excess 198
• Setbacks . . . 203
• . . . and personal losses 207
13 Writing Letters as an Aid to Philosophical Self-Clarification: Debates with Benjamin, Sohn-Rethel and Kracauer 214
• A double relationship: Gretel and Max 226
14 Learning by Doing: Adorno’s Path to Social Research 242
• In the Institute of Social Research on Morningside Heights 255
• Between two stools once again: a long road from New York to Los Angeles 267
15 Happiness in Misfortune: Adorno’s Years in California 273
• Messages in a bottle, or, How to create enlightenment about the Enlightenment 278
• Merits of social research: studies in the authoritarian personality 288
• Moral feelings in immoral times 298
• The Privy Councillor: Adorno and Thomas Mann 311
Part IV Thinking the Unconditional and Enduring the Conditional The Explosive Power of Saying No 325
16 Change of Scene: Surveying the Ruins 328
• Playing an active role in postwar Germany? 336
• Back to America: horoscope analysis and TV research 348
• Letting the cat out of the bag: Kafka, Beckett, Hölderlin 353
17 Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory: Adorno’s Activities in the Late 1950s and Early 1960s 366
• In the stream, but swimming against the tide 374
• Speaking of the rope while in the country of the hangman 380
• The crisis of the subject: self-preservation without a self 387
• The purpose of life: understanding the language of music 392
• Right living? Places, people, friendships 398
18 Eating Bread: A Theory Devoured by Thought 412
• The dispute about positivism: Via discourse to the Frankfurt School 421
• Against German stuffiness 430
• The fat child 433
• What kind of a society do we live in? Adorno’s analysis of the present 441
19 With his Back to the Wall 448
• Patricide deferred 457
• The futility of defending a theory as practice 460
• Moments of happiness, despite everything 465
• The divided nature of art 470
• Death 474
Epilogue: Thinking Against Oneself 481
Notes 492
References and Bibliography 615
Index 645
About the author
Stefan Müller-Doohm is Professor of Sociology at Oldenburg University, Germany.
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