O objetivo do texto é propor uma interpretação do conceito de sublime na Teoria estética de Theodor Adorno, partindo do confronto com leituras significativas de outros comentadores, de modo a fornecer uma concepção que associe o movimento de transcendência e alteridade da forma estética à dinâmica histórico-processual das obras. The objective of this paper is to propose an interpretation of the concept of sublime in the Aesthetic Theory of Theodor Adorno, starting with the confrontation with meaningful readings of other commentators, (...) in order to provide a conception that links the movement of transcendence and otherness of the aesthetic form to the process-historical dynamics of the works. (shrink)

The article takes critiques of the entanglement of law with violence as a point of departure for exploring the possibility of a ‘tertium of law’. It thereby seeks to overcome the dichotomous basic assumptions that see law as always oscillating between an apology for violence on the one hand, and a utopia of reason on the other. The text analyses the possibility of this ‘tertium’, a ‘legal force’ beyond legal violence and legal reason, in four steps, drawing on the work (...) of Jacques Derrida and authors of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, in particular on Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. It argues that in a first step law needs to be dissociated from the State. The violence of law, however, does not stem solely from law’s ties with State power. Law itself is violent even where it is not State law. The second step of legal critique thus needs to consist in the commemoration of legal violence, followed by a third that demands the transformation of violence to force. These three instances of critique are the precondition for a last and essential step according to which a critique of law must facilitate the transcendence of legal violence by taking law and its promise of justice at its word in order to turn this promise against law itself. (shrink)

Num parágrafo do seu artigo “Max Weber e Adorno, sobre o conceito de progresso: Contrastes da racionalização técnica na música e na pintura”, dedicado à interpenetração estética entre composições musicais e composições picturais, Luis Felipe de Salles Roselino refere-se ao conceito adorniano de pseudomorfose aplicado à pintura. Por ser um conceito-chave na teoria estética do filósofo frankfurtiano e contribuir para a elucidação das principais teses que, no presente artigo, são elencadas, creio que ele deve ser contrastado com o de “convergência” (...) (Konvergenz), tal como vem formulado no texto “Über einige Relationen zwischen Musik und Malerei” (1978), de Adorno. (shrink)

T. W. Adorno's philosophy of music aims to show that music is a source of important insights into the nature of modern society. This position leads, though, to a series of methodological difficulties, some of which can be alleviated by using resources from Heidegger's hermeneutics. The essay takes the key notion of `judgementless synthesis' from Adorno's unfinished book on Beethoven and connects it to Heidegger's account of pre-propositional under-standing and to Kant's notion of schematism. This connection is shown to have (...) consequences for how we conceive of both the meaning of music and meaning in more general terms, especially with regard to analytical philosophy. The essay argues that, despite its many important insights, Adorno's account of the meaning of music in modernity depends too much on his analogy between Hegel's claim to achieve the final philosophy and Beethoven's establishment of new forms of integration for musical material. (shrink)

Trata-se, no presente artigo, de tentar lançar uma nova luz sobre a relação entre música e linguagem a partir dos Escritos musicaisde Th. W. Adorno e, em especial, a partir do “Fragmentosobre música e linguagem”, que abre a coletânea Quasi una fantasia. Levando em conta a singularidade da compreensão adorniana acerca do desenvolvimento do moderno material musical, esperamos, ademais, levantar uma hipótese de interpretação aparentemente estranha à cautela crítica de Adorno frente à confluência impensada entre a música e outros regimes (...) artísticos – por ele denominada, na Filosofia da nova música, “pseudomorfose” -, contextualizando, com isso, o tom radical das apreciações condenatórias a esse respeito. Para tanto, iremos igualmente nos valer de suas considerações acerca do assim chamado impressionismo musical e, em particular, de uma canção de Debussy. (shrink)

Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn erzählt von seinem Freunde arose from a cooperation between Th. Mann and and Th.W.Adorno. Adorno was not only a tutor in issues of the history of music, the theory of music and the aesthetics of music: he was in a sense, too, co-author of the novel: he was a „spiritus movens“ of the novel, who wrote analysis of music attributed to fictious musicians in the novel, to Leverkühn, Kretzschmar, (...) and, of course, to Mefisto. We find a specific phenomenon of „fictious music“ in this novel. Adorno's task was to give a final version to Mann's notions and literary phantasies on music, to „compose“ and to depict non-existing compositions of a fictious composer Leverkühn. Adorno's „composition“ were devised in accordance to the real compositions of A.Schönberg and I. Stravinsky. Mann's/Adorno's fictious compositions are in the focus of many analysis of the novel and also the fucus of this study. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine how Adorno's aesthetic and musicological thinking was received in Czech and Slovak musicology in the decades between the 60s and the 80s. The focus is on the Czech and Slovak translation of some of Adorno’s musicological treatises and lectures – especially those concerning his views on the Second Vienna School and the musical poetics of its immediate successors – which were published in former Czechoslovakia. The study offers an interesting perspective on Adorno’s (...) relatively unknown lecture Form der neuen Musik and its related, although not identical, Czech version Formové princípy súčasnej hudby [Formal Principles of Contemporary Music] as well as on his discussion with some Slovak composers and musicologists published as Dnes je možné iba radikálne kritické myslenie [Today, Only Radical Critical Thinking is Possible]. The study also considers other scientific texts by Adorno in relation to the above-mentioned translations of his works. The analysis, reflection, and interpretation of Adorno’s works in former Czechoslovakia, as well as their contemporary reception, turn out to be sporadic in the examined period. The purpose of this research is to revive awareness of their significance and to give a new impulse to their reassessment within the current musicological and philosophical reflection. (shrink)

This essay investigates some issues of the Twentieth Century French philosopher and musicologist Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Musical Aesthetics and Philosophy of Music, particularly referring to his original interpretation of the French musical Impressionism, with emphasis to some composers such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré. Specifically, the paper pays attention to the aesthetical and musical criticism of the author towards Debussy’s music. Which are the features and the characteristics of the Jankélévitch’s philosophical musicology? How much the purely theoretical and (...) ontological theories and ideas of the philosopher act on his view of Debussy’s work, of Impressionism and of music in general as an art and a human experience? Which is - consequently - the original and eccentric approach used by Jankélévitch in his musical writings and which are the final ideas expressed on debussysme? As a result of this study, it will appear a surprisingly nihilistic view of the life and of the reality, a totally unique, unusual, innovative and imaginative interpretation of Claude Debussy’s compositions, where music and sound become a ′′magical′′ phenomenon through which giving a deeply philosophical interpretation of the world and of the human life. (shrink)

In the1960s, texts by the prominent German philosopher and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno were translated into the Czech and Slovak language. This was only possible due to the more relaxed social and political atmosphere of those years. The translated essays were published in professionally-oriented periodicals. This paper is aimed to map and evaluate the reception of Adorno’s translated works in Czechoslovakia. Although these texts embraced above all Adorno’s work in the sociology of philosophy, aesthetics of literature and musicology, this paper (...) is mainly focused on Adorno’s musicological texts. Albeit mostly regarded as an original and extremely versatile author in Czechoslovakia, Adorno was also criticised on the background of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. In order to evaluate the reception of Adorno’s ideas in the Czech and Slovak environment, it is methodologically necessary to adopt a broader aesthetic-philosophical perspective that enables us to account for Adorno’s endorsement of the Marxist philosophy pursued at Frankfurt School of Philosophy. (shrink)

Thomas Mann's novel Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn erzählt von seinem Freunde is one of the most known literary works of the 20th century. The creation of this novel was closely tied with an encounter of Thomas Mann with a philosopher and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno in their american exile during the World War II. Thomas Mann's novel represents literary fiction of Adorno's theory of music and musical aesthetics, as found in the study Philosophie der neuen (...) Musik. (shrink)