Reconstructing Aesthetic Theory: Between Habermas and Adorno

Dissertation, York University (Canada) (1991)
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Abstract

In this dissertation I develop a theoretical partnership between Adorno's aesthetic theory and Habermas's theory of communicative rationality. I argue against a model of art and aesthetic experience which I have designated the ecstatic model. This model sets off aesthetic experience in opposition to reason, functioning as reason's other. The ecstatic model belongs to one of the two distinct traditions of aesthetic theory, both of which have originated in Kant and Hegel, but which have developed in two entirely different directions. The most dominant tradition is represented by Nietzsche and Heidegger. It has produced the ecstatic model. Adorno represents a model of aesthetic experience I have designated the interactive model. Reconstructed from the perspective of Habermas's more capacious conception of communicative reason, Adorno's aesthetics becomes a viable alternative to the ecstatic model, by going beyond the limitations of an unnecessarily narrow conception of reason. ;The first chapters treats the shortcomings of the ecstatic model through an analysis of Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant, Lyotard and Rorty. The final chapter develops Adorno's concept of mimesis as a form of symbolically mediated interaction

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