Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno

550 Pages·2006·2.04 MB·English

by  Robert Hullot-Kentor

things beyond resemblance
COLUMBIA THEMES IN PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL CRITICISM, AND THE ARTS
COLUMBIA THEMES IN PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL CRITICISM, AND THE ARTS
Lydia Goehr and Gregg M. Horowitz, editors
Advisory Board
J. M. Bernstein Eileen Gillooly
Noël Carroll Thomas S. Grey
T. J. Clark Miriam Bratu Hansen
Arthur C. Danto Robert Hullot-Kentor
Martin Donougho Michael Kelly
David Frisby Richard Leppert
Boris Gasparov Janet Wolff
Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts presents monographs, essay
collections, and short books on philosophy and aesthetic theory. It aims to publish books that
show the ability of the arts to stimulate critical reflection on modern and contemporary social,
political, and cultural life. Art is not now, if it ever was, a realm of human activity independent of
the complex realities of social organization and change, political authority and antagonism,
cultural domination and resistance. The possibilities of critical thought embedded in the arts are
most fruitfully expressed when addressed to readers across the various fields of social and
humanistic inquiry. The idea of philosophy in the series’ title ought to be understood, therefore, to
embrace forms of discussion that begin where mere academic expertise exhausts itself, where
the rules of social, political, and cultural practice are both affirmed and challenged, and where new
thinking takes place. The series does not privilege any particular art, nor does it ask for the arts to
be mutually isolated. The series encourages writing from the many fields of thoughtful and critical
inquiry.
ROBERT HULLOT-KENTOR
Collected Essays
things beyond resemblance
on THEODOR W. ADORNO
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2006 Columbia University Press All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-51003-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hullot-Kentor, Robert.
Things beyond resemblance : collected essays on Theodor W. Adorno / Robert Hullot-Kentor.
p. cm.—(Columbia themes in philosophy, social criticism, and the arts) Includes
bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-231-13658-7 (alk. paper)
1. Adorno, Theodor W., 1903–1969. I. Title.
B3199.A34H85 2006
193—dc22
2006017599
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].
Pour Odile
Contents
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Origin Is the Goal
Back to Adorno
Things Beyond Resemblance
The Philosophy of Dissonance: Adorno and Schoenberg
Critique of the Organic: Kierkegaard and the Construction of the
Aesthetic
Second Salvage: Prolegomenon to a Reconstruction of Current of Music
Title Essay: Baroque Allegory and “The Essay as Form”
What Is Mechanical Reproduction?
Adorno Without Quotation
Popular Music and “The Aging of the New Music”
The Impossibility of Music
Apple Criticizes Tree of Knowledge: A Review of One Sentence
Right Listening and a New Type of Human Being
Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Recovery of the Public World
Suggested Reading: Jameson on Adorno
Introduction to T.W. Adorno’s “The Idea of Natural-History”
The Idea of Natural-History Theodor W. Adorno

Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
IT IS A PLEASURE to express my gratitude to Rolf Tiedemann, Tom Huhn,
Mowry Baden, Robert Kaufman, and Richard Leppert for their friendship
and for their help over the years with these many essays and to Martin
Jay as well, alias g.K and sine qua non.

The author also acknowledges the kind permission from the following
publishers to reprint, in some cases in revised form, “Things Beyond
Resemblance,” in Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of New Music
(Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 2006); “Second Salvage,” in
Cultural Critique 60 (2005): 134–169; “Right Listening and a New Type of
Human Being,” in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, no. 44 (2003):
191–198; “Adorno Without Quotation,” in RES: Anthropology and
Aesthetics, no. 45 (2004): 5–10; “Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Recovery of
the Public World,” as “Past Tense,” in The Recovery of the Public World,
ed. Charles Watts and Edward Byrne (Vancouver: Talon, 1999), pp. 365–
372; “The Philosophy of Dissonance: Adorno and Schoenberg,” in
Semblance of the Subject, ed. Thomas Huhn and Lambert Zuidervart
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 309–320; “Suggested Reading,” in
Telos 89 (1993): 167–177; “Apple Criticizes Tree of Knowledge,” as
“Beckett Up to Date,” Telos 92 (1993): 192; “The Impossibility of Music,”
in Telos 87 (1991): 97–117; Popular Music and Adorno’s “The Aging of
the New Music,” in Telos 77 (1989): 79–94; “Back to Adorno,” in Telos 81
(1989): 5–29; “Critique of the Organic,” in Theodor W. Adorno,
Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic (Minnesota: University of
Minnesota, 1989), pp. x–xxiii; “Introduction to ‘The Idea of Natural-
History,’” in Telos 57 (1985): 111–124; Theodor W. Adorno, “The Idea of
Natural-History,” trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor in Telos 57 (1985): 97–110;
“Title Essay,” in New German Critique 32 (1984): 141–150.