Summary |
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969)
was a first-generation member of the Frankfurt School For Social Research. As
was the case with his fellow 'Critical Theorists' Horkheimer and Marcuse et al,
his work was interdisciplinary and considerably Marxist. His task, as he saw
it, was to use philosophy, sociology and other tools to understand the evils of
the past and present, thereby helping to prepare the possibility – he thought
one could do little more than that – of a better future. Adorno’s largest
philosophical debts are to Kant, Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche. Adorno drew upon
those thinkers, and others including Freud and Walter Benjamin, in creating a
distinctive approach to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and
political philosophy. |