Archive of Theodor Adorno

An interview with director of the Institute for Social Research, Stephan Lessenich, about the tradition and future of a critical theory of society.

The subjugation of life to the process of production imposes as a humiliation on everyone something of the isolation and solitude that we are tempted to regard as resulting from our own superior choice.

The abundance of commodities indiscriminately consumed is becoming calamitous. It makes it impossible to find one's way, and just as in a gigantic department store one looks out for a guide, the population wedged between wares await their leader.

Truly terrifying are the sleepless nights when time seems to contract and run fruitlessly through our hands. But what is revealed in such contraction of the hours is the reverse of time fulfilled.

The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique.

Human beings are forgetting how to give gifts... Real gift-giving had its happiness in imagining the happiness of the receiver. It meant choosing, spending time, going out of one’s way, thinking of the other as a subject: the opposite of forgetfulness. Hardly anyone is still capable of this.

Theodor Adorno remains one of the key sources for understanding the desire for Fascism, notably in his groundbreaking work The Authoritarian Personality. In this article Max L. Feldman reads Adorno's writings on Fascism, alongside Disney's 1991 film The Beauty and the Beast, to analyse the contemporary resurgence of the far-right and the enduring relevance of Adorno's work.

A collection of aphorisms on music written by Theodor Adorno between 1927 and 1951.