Philosophy of New Music

Patrick, your book review was very enlightening for me. I’ve been interested in the Frankfurt School for some time now and have barely touched Adorno. It was nice to find an extremely well-written overview of a few of his ideas, although I found a few of them to be vaguely-stated and I don’t agree with your conclusion: good ideas have a way of propogating to those who need them. Marx was an exceptional case of a writer who could express a complex idea directly to the audience he was aiming to help. But by using simpler language, as Marx did, I think theory itself would become simplified. Analysis has come a long way since Marx. Those popular writers like Thomas Freidman or Jared Diamond have taken direct or indirect cues from theorists and transmitted them (albeit in a muddled form) to a far wide audience. This was undoubtedly how Marx’s ideas themselves were propagated.

Adorno’s idea that ‘will to style’ conflicted with the authenticity of the work also seemed odd to me. Weren’t all the great authors of the time hyper-conscious of their style? Joyce took it to another level entirely, but what is Adorno to say about Hemingway or Henry James? Did their obsession with style hinder them? Isn’t it just a sign of the times, so to speak? or is Adorno criticising modernism in general?

Comment by Joe Kauzlarich from Seattle, WA — September 21, 2006 @ 3:22 pm