Theodor W. Adorno (1903€“1969) was one of the twentieth century€s most important thinkers. In light of two pivotal developments€"the rise of fascism, which culminated in the Holocaust, and the standardization of popular culture as a commodity indispensable to contemporary capitalism€"Adorno sought to evaluate and synthesize the essential insights of Western philosophy by revisiting the ethical and sociological arguments of his predecessors: Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Marx. This book, first published in Germany in 1996, provides a succinct introduction to Adorno€s challenging and far-reaching thought. Gerhard Schweppenh¤user, a leading authority on the Frankfurt School of critical theory, explains Adorno€s epistemology, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and theory of culture.

After providing a brief overview of Adorno€s life, Schweppenh¤user turns to the theorist€s core philosophical concepts, including post-Kantian critique, determinate negation, and the primacy of the object, as well as his view of the Enlightenment as a code for world domination, his diagnosis of modern mass culture as a program of social control, and his understanding of modernist aesthetics as a challenge to conceive an alternative politics. Along the way, Schweppenh¤user illuminates the works widely considered Adorno€s most important achievements: Minima Moralia, Dialectic of Enlightenment (co-authored with Horkheimer), and Negative Dialectics. Adorno wrote much of the first two of these during his years in California (1938€“49), where he lived near Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, whom he assisted with the musical aesthetics at the center of Mann€s novel Doctor Faustus.