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| Writings by Walter Benjamin on-line. |
Book information & reviews. |
Essays about Benjamin on-line. |
Critical Theory
& Frankfurt School. |
Benjamin-related links, & selected
alternative media sites. |
Critical Theory & the Frankfurt
School:
Critical Theory, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno,
& more...
- Theodor
W. Adorno Bibliography: A bibliography
of Adorno's work in English prepared by W. Barker for MPhil/
Humanities, Memorial University of Newfoundland. An excellent resource.
Books on the
history of the Frankfurt School...
Other Books by Martin Jay
Books & periodicals by members
of the Institute of Social Research:
- Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic
Theory. From the publisher's review: Newly translated,
edited, and with an introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor
Perhaps the most important aesthetics of the twentieth
century appears here newly translated, in English that is for the first
time faithful to the intricately demanding language of the original German.
The culmination of a lifetime of aesthetic investigation, Aesthetic Theory
is Adorno's major work, a defense of modernism that is paradoxical in its
defense of illusion. In it, Adorno takes up the problem of art in a day
when "it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes without
saying." In the course of his discussion, Adorno revisits such concepts
as the sublime, the ugly, and the beautiful, demonstrating that concepts
such as these are reservoirs of human experience. These experiences ultimately
underlie aesthetics, for in Adorno's formulation "art is the sedimented
history of human misery." Robert Hullot-Kentor's translation painstakingly,
yet fluently, reproduces the nuances and particularities of the original.
Long awaited and significant, Aesthetic Theory is the clarifying lens through
which the whole of Adorno's work is best viewed, providing a framework
within which his other major writings cohere. "Inserting the 'silver
rib of a foreign word' into an idea, Walter Benjamin argued in a passage
Adorno was fond of quoting, helps the idea to survive. Meant to undermine
the ideology of an entirely organic language, free of all alien intrusions,
this insight can be fruitfully extended to distinguished translations of
entire texts. In the case of Adorno's posthumous magnum opus, Aesthetic
Theory, Robert Hullot-Kentor's long-awaited new translation is pure sterling.
Rarely has so much thoughtfulness and sensitivity been marshaled to retranslate
a work that fully deserves a second chance." Martin Jay, University
of California, Berkeley.
- Dialectic
of Englishtment by Theodor W. Adorno & Max Horkheimer. From
the publisher's review: "This celebrated work is the
keystone of the thought of the Frankfurt School. It is a wide-ranging philosophical
and psychological critique of the Western categories of reason and nature,
from Homer to Nietzsche. "A classic of twentieth-century thought".
-- Times Literary Supplement. Beyond one's imagination, the consequences
of enlightenment and modernity were visualized by Adorno and Horkheimer
in a brilliant piece named "Dialectic of enlightenment". It is
a handy volume , rich in content and weaved with lengthy sentences. It
was an outcome of shock given by the Nazi forces. Nevertheless a thought
about direct results of extreme reasoning, radical socialization and discovery
of motives behind humanity's retrogression instead of progressive civilization.
The urge to reach the technological zenith started in that crucial period.
Demonstration of destruction of masses with atom bomb was yet to kick off.
But the terror started shaking the two intellectuals. Again and again they
questioned themselves. Conclusion was insight - social freedom is inseparable
from the enlightened thought. The need for enlightenment was to create
a civil society with rationalized idea grows in individuals and institutions.
Not just the rational consciousness. What was needed that time is to desperate
fear from fate. But with modern science , commerce and politics, it ends
in a fear of social deviation. ..."
- On
Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives From the publisher's review:
"An anthology of considerable quality.... On Max
Horkheimer is an anthology of more than historical interest. Horkheimer
was a thinker who asked, even when he failed adequately to answer, questions
concerning the intellectual credentials and moral status of a social theory
that aspires to be critical as well as interpretive. These are questions
that have lost none of their relevance.... Horkheimer remains a figure
to be reckoned with." -- David Levy, Times Higher Education Supplement.
Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), one of the founders of critical theory and
a sometime colleague of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin,
has become a subject of renewed attention and appreciation in Germany in
the last decade. This collection of essays by German and American scholars
will help familiarize English-speaking readers with the most important
results of this recent work and, in conjunction with a companion volume
of Horkheimer's essays, Between Philosophy and Social Science, should provide
a much fuller and deeper picture of his role in the history of modern social
theory. "
- Max Horkheimer, Between
Philosophy and Social Science : Selected Early Writings (Studies
in Contemporary German Social Thought) " Brings together
Horkheimer's essays from the 1930s, many translated for the first time,
and includes his inaugural address when he became director of the Frankfort
Institute for Social Research during its heyday. Often remembered as Theodor
Adorno's collaborator on the classic, Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer
is a significant figure in his own right in the field of critical theory."
Go on to next links page: Benjamin-related links, & selected alternative media sites....
