View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Middlesex University Research Repository THE MEMORY AND EXPEC TATION OF AESTHETICS : A STUDY OF ADORNO‟S AESTHETIC THEORY A thesis submitted to Middlesex University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Alan McPherson BA., MA The School of Arts and Education Middlesex University October 2009 ABSTRACT Alan McPherson Title: The Memory and Expectation of Aesthetics: A Study of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory This study aims to clarify the underlying conceptual structure of Adorno‟s theoretical position with regard to both philosophy and art and to examine the expectation of philosophical aesthetics. I introduce Aesthetic Theory from a morphological point of view and claim that the form and structure of this unfinished text reveals a great deal about the book, as it exemplifies Adorno‟s theory of meaning. I claim that for Adorno dialectic is better thought of not in its Hegelian form but as a Kantian antinomy. This is because the dialectical oppositions he identifies cannot be resolved under the capitalist conditions of the administered world. I claim that philosophy understood as the construction of a form of totality, the constellation, provides the key to understanding Adorno‟s theory of meaning. This theory consists of three linked concepts: midpoint, constellation and parataxis. I further claim that for Adorno art and philosophy are structured in the same way. Adorno has in effect developed a conception of art that depends for its ultimate justification on the concept of rank as explicated by the completion of the work of art by philosophy. Art and theory are thus entwined in a mimetic relationship. I claim there is a temporal dichotomy at the centre of Adorno‟s conception of the work of art, that it is both transient and absolute. This antinomy is what makes the work of art a paradoxically absolute commodity precisely because Adorno‟s concept of the work of art is modelled on the commodity form. I claim that Adorno‟s conception of the artwork as an instant is clearly closely related, in a structural and conceptual sense, to his conception of how philosophy works. Truth for Adorno is always located in the present instant. My textual analysis leads me to claim that for Adorno a utopian element is involved in writing a negative dialectical text. Finally, I claim that a theory of the art form in all its different typologies is best suited to carry out detailed critique and theoretical reflection on contemporary art. Philosophical aesthetics can only supply an historical perspective. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I should like to thank The School of Arts of Middlesex University for the award of a bursary for part-time study for an MPhil/PhD in The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy. This award was made in the autumn of 2001 and taken up in the spring of 2002 on completion of my M.A. Without this financial support this project would not have been possible. Above all I should like to thank my Director of Studies, Professor Peter Osborne, for his wise supervision of this research project and for all his, encouragement, valuable advice and incisive critique. I should also like to thank my two second supervisors, Professor Alexander García Düttmann (to 2003) and Dr. Stewart Martin for their invaluable advice and critical commentaries on the project. C O N T E N T S PREFACE 1 CHAPTER ONE: REMEMBERING AESTHETICS 9 Section one: Aesthetics and Aesthetic Theory 9 Brief historical background to aesthetics 9 The reception of Aesthetic Theory 12 Introduction to Aesthetic Theory 14 Section two: Interdisciplinarity 23 Interdisciplinarity: art, aesthetics, philosophy 23 Art and culture 30 CHAPTER TWO: TOTALITIES 35 Section one: Capitalism as negative totality 37 Background to negative totality 37 Adorno‟s conception of capitalism and society 40 Adorno‟s rational-irrational dialectic of society 43 Antinomies and/or dialectics 45 The individual and society 47 Summary 50 Section two: Constellation 52 Midpoint 52 The constellation as formation 56 Parataxis 60 Section three: Monad 63 The background to Adorno‟s monads 63 Monads as spiritual beings 65 Monads as mirrors 67 Monads as dynamism 70 Summary 71 CHAPTER THREE: ADORNO‟S THEORY OF THE ARTWORK 74 Section one: The status of the artwork 74 Autonomous art and commodification 74 Success and coherence 77 Section two: Construction 85 Montage 85 Mimesis 90 Section three: Judgement 101 Interpretation, commentary and critique 101 Spirit and truth content 104 Art and philosophy 109 CHAPTER FOUR: TEMPORALITIES IN AESTHETIC THEORY 113 Section one: Historical time 117 Conceptual background to Adorno‟s idea of history 117 Adorno on history 123 Commodity, absolute, abstraction 125 Section two: The time of the artwork 128 Adorno‟s history of time in music: Bach to Mahler 130 Adorno‟s history of time in music: the twentieth century 135 Section three: The instant 143 Structured listening 143 The artwork comprehended in an instant 144 CHAPTER FIVE: EXPECTATIONS 148 Section one: Expectation 148 Brief history of expectation 148 Adorno and utopian expectation 151 The utopian moment of negative dialectics 154 Section two: Expectation in art – Heidegger and Adorno 156 The one-sided relationship 156 Great art 158 Truth in art 159 Epochal expectations 163 Section three: Antinomy and mimesis in the expectation of aesthetics 166 Expectation in Kant and Hegel 168 The „Draft Introduction‟ to Aesthetic Theory 169 The expectations of art and theory 172 BIBLIOGRAPHY 178 Notes to preface 195 Notes to chapter one 195 Notes to chapter two 198 Notes to chapter three 202 Notes to chapter four 206 Notes to chapter five 210 PREFAC E „In order to lay hold of the fleeting phenomenon, he [the philosopher] must first bind it in fetters of rule, tear its fair body to pieces by reducing it to concepts, and preserve its living spirit in a sorry skeleton of words‟.1 „…the philosopher is always implicated in the problems he poses,‟ 2 The second quotation above has a double significance for this study. First, Adorno always thought of himself as a musician. He was a skilled pianist but was also a composer. Early on in his life he was unsure whether he would become a composer or a philosopher. Second, for my own part as both a visual artist and student of philosophy I was attracted to Aesthetic Theory for two reasons. As a student of philosophy I have always been fascinated by texts that do not reveal their meaning on a first reading. As an artist I have always been engaged, as a reader, with aesthetics and art theory. I know from my own practice that there is an aspect to making art that is theoretical. This is because making is a form of thinking, just as writing is a form of thinking. The old saying that you only find out what you think by writing it down holds for painting too. In his essay Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel Adorno gives advice on reading Hegel. My methodology in what follows is to take Adorno‟s advice on how to understand Hegel and apply it to reading Adorno‟s Aesthetic Theory. The advice in question concerns the suggestion that reading for understanding, if done properly, if done immanently, will lead to a critique of what is to be understood. „Philosophy itself takes place within the permanent disjunction between the true and the false. Understanding takes place along with it and accordingly always becomes in effect, critique of what is to be understood when the process of understanding compels a different judgement than the one that is to be understood.‟3 Adorno has a second piece of advice about reading both Kant and Hegel that also applies to his own texts. It is generally accepted that almost any philosophical text if scrutinised minutely enough can be, in Heidegger‟s usage subjected to de-structuration. There is a danger, especially with Adorno, of taking quotations out of context and so giving them a false reading. Aesthetic Theory is eminently quotable and easily misconstrued. In his fourth lecture on Kant‟s Critique of Pure Reason Adorno stresses how important it is to keep in view the wider intentions of the writer of the text. It is necessary for thinking about Kant - and to a far greater degree about Hegel - that the process of thought should carry a double movement. On the one hand, it should immerse itself in the text, and keep as closely to it as possible; on the other hand, it should retain a degree of self-control, remove itself from immediate contact and look at the ideas from a certain distance. This is because very many of the difficulties in Kant and Hegel, but also in Fichte and Schelling, arise when you scrutinize the texts too closely and so fail to recognise their intentions, whereas these can be perceived much more clearly at a distance.4 The procedure for this investigation of Aesthetic Theory will be a close reading continually informed by a stepping back for a wider view. Aesthetic Theory is a book of and about philosophical aesthetics, and of and about art. The book has twin openings. The „Draft Introduction‟ asks whether aesthetics is still possible, whilst the opening section of the main text asks whether art is still possible. The two questions are connected because if there is no contemporary art then there will be no contemporary philosophical investigation of art, no aesthetics. It looks like a question about the end of art. However from Adorno‟s point of view it is equally a question about the end of philosophy.