PHILOSOPHERS - THEODOR ADORNO

<BODY> <CENTER><FONT SIZE=5><B><FONT SIZE=6>THEODOR ADORNO</FONT><BR> (1903-1963)</B></FONT></CENTER><P> Philosopher and noted musicologist, Adorno was a major force in the development of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory which was important in the post-war German intellectual revival.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE>"Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete lives on because the moment to realize it was missed. The summary judgement that it had merely interpreted the world, that resignation in the face of reality had crippled it in itself, becomes a defeatism of reason after the attempt to change the world miscarried."<P> (Negative Dialectics)</BLOCKQUOTE> Adorno was born and educated in Frankfurt. After receiving his PhD from that university in 1924, he taught there for two years before emigrating to England to escape Nazi persecution. The breadth of his interests and talents was such that he made original contributions in a variety of fields including social psychology, <A HREF="../t03/g057.html" TARGET="_top">aesthetics</A> and literary criticism as well as philosophy and musicology. He even designed a questionnaire (the "F" scale) aimed at isolating and quantifying the latent traits of the fascist personality. After 1938, he worked in America, firstly as musical director of Princeton Radio Research Projects, then as co-director of the Research Project on Social Discrimination at the University of Berkeley, California. He returned to Frankfurt in 1949 where his detailed analyses of social and cultural phenomena made him the leading voice of the "Frankfurt School".<P> Adorno saw philosophy as serving an emancipatory purpose. Its major aim was to criticise ideology without proposing an alternative conceptual scheme in its place. His writing avoids abstract <A HREF="../t03/g032.html" TARGET="_top">metaphysical</A> speculation and concerns itself with history and culture. He is a stringent critic of the "culture industry", of popular forms of culture and mass media which engender standardised and passive satisfaction. Adorno stressed individualism and condemned authoritarianism and collective thinking. Initially an inspiration to the left, he ended his career rejected by the student movement whom he accused of exhibiting yet another form of socially manipulated behaviour. <BR clear=left><BR> <HR width=100%> <A HREF="http://www.creatorix.com.au"><IMG SRC="../creatorix.gif" WIDTH="85" HEIGHT="40" BORDER="0" ALT="Creatorix" align=right></A> </BODY>