Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903-1969)

German philosopher, social theorist, and musicologist. Deeply influenced by the thought of Karl Marx, Adorno joined the influential Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt in 1931, becoming known as a member of the ‘Frankfurt School’ of sociologists. At the rise of fascism he fled first to Oxford (1935-38) and then to the USA, acquiring US citizenship, eventually returning to Frankfurt as professor of philosophy in 1949. With Max Horkheimer, the director of the Institute, he published the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), which argued that rationality had not been an emancipatory force, but that modern science was an instrument of dehumanization. He was also the main contributor to The Authoritarian Personality (1950), which analysed the psychological origins of fascism within a broadly Freudian framework.

As a young man, Adorno studied composition with Alban Berg, and he remained a great defender of the New Music of the Second Viennese School, which he saw as the ‘authentic voice’ of 20th-century music. He wrote prolifically on music, combining a practitioner's knowledge of compositional technique with his philosophical training, producing writings of forbidding intellectual complexity, but also of undoubted and profound insight. He is particularly known for his studies of individual composers, such as Philosophy of Modern Music (1948, on Schoenberg and Stravinsky), In Search of Wagner (1952), and Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy (1960).

Adorno was the main contributor to The Authoritarian Personality (1950), a psychoanalytical and social research project stemming partly from Erich Fromm's ideas, in which the F-scale (F standing for fascism) was constructed. His early writings show the influence of the Marxist thinking of Georg Lukācs and Ernst Bloch, as well as considerable interest in Sigmund Freud.

Adorno's Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life (1951) is a series of aphorisms in the style of Friedrich Nietzsche, many of which are concerned with the problems of exile. In Negative Dialects (1966) he is critical of all philosophers because they believed in some nonexistent absolute or ultimate entity that would explain everything else. This was dangerous, he argued, because it led to totalitarian and oppressive thinking that turned the individual into an object to be manipulated. Adorno also wrote extensively on the aesthetics and sociology of music and art, including Die Philosophie der neuen Musik/The Philosophy of Modern Music (1947).