Adorno: A Biography

by Stefan Müller-Doohm, Rodney Livingstone (Translator)

'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correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th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.

Genres: Philosophy, Biography, Theory

1167 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Jarno Mehtiö · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kirja, joka harmittavasti jää usein turhan vaikeaselkoiseksi. Elämänkertaosuus tapahtumien valossa tulee käytyä läpi, mutta siihen oleellisesti liittyvät filosofiset ideat jäävät sellaisen käsittelyn asteelle, joka ei aukea niitä tuntemattomille eikä toisaalta varmasti tarjoa niitä tunteville uutta. Adornon jargonin vielä ollessa kyseessä jälkimmäisiä on varmasti vähemmän kuin ensin mainittuja.

Teoriat käydään läpi pääasiaksi lainaamalla kirjoituksista pätkiä, mutta irrallisina niistä on vaikea saada otetta. Esimerkiksi Frankfurtin koulukunta, kriittinen teoria tai Adornon esteettinen teoria eivät saa selkeää omaa teemakäsittelyään vaan niitä käsitellään ripoteltuna pitkin kirjaa. Kirjan perusteella ei osaisi vastata niitä koskeviin tenttikysymyksiä, ellei samalla tekisi muistiinpanoja ja kirjaisi ylös aina, kun teemoja sivutaan. Sanomattakin on selvää, että yhtäkään filosofian perusteoriaa tai käsitettä ei käydä läpi. Jos lukija ei tunne Kantin transsedentaalista idealismia, Weberin lumousta, atonaalisuuden ja 12-säveljärjestelmän merkitystä, lukeminen on raskasta.

Kauhulla odotan, millainen kirja on Habermasin elämänkerta kirjoittajalta. Senkin ajattelin lukea.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not quite sure why I became interested in Adorno, but I read this book deeply impressed with the man. Not only was he a philosopher but a musician and composer as well. He grew up as Jew in pre-Nazi Germany. He went back to Germany from the U.S. after the war to be a public intellectual.

Being a Marxist, his critique of society was economic based. Although, he was upper-middle class, and quite privileged, he wrote harshly of the bourgeoisie. He just as hard on television for its used to sell commodities, but he couldn't be interrupted during the broadcast of Daktari.

I found his view of the individual in contemporary capitalistic society inspiring. He saw the danger of humans becoming commodities clearly. It is difficult to live in this world wanting to escape it, but unable.

[Günter Wahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was raised in Frankfurt-Bockenheim in a wine trading business, I think his mother had him from a fence master from Corsica who went to France to fight for France in 1870 she was married in second marriage to the winedealer of considerable wealth, Wiesengrund.

We have a biography of 2003 here while Adorno himself died in ZÜRICH in 1968, his later writings were on music only, I have this in an addition to the complete works, the confrontation were beetween students who wanted practical initiatives towards Vietnam and Adorno who almost had ended writing like he had visited the opera mostly, he tried to write on modern music.