Czytając Adorna...
Reading Adorno...

The Text on Aesthetic Theory

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this article is to answer the question ‘what is aesthetc theory?’ I try to perform the way of reasoning about this topic by Theodor Adorno. Such a challenge by definition must be spontaneous, and fully loaded with idiosyncratic volatilities and factors, while being fully aware that it is impossible to perform the mode of thinking of the great Frankfurt School figure. There is no way to repeat his negative dialectics skilled argumentation, one that undermines itself and therefore it is a seductive, probably the most proximate thinking about art. It is also incomprehensible comprehensibility that is usually the most attractive feature of art to us. Its unknowable truth. I begin with reminding the modern idea for aesthetics as a place of refuge from increasing rationalization of the world. Then I write about antinomy of art and paradox of theory – the sources and mechanisms of its cognitive emptiness. The next step is about philosophy of picture – its short history associated with Adorno’s concept of picture as a ‘field of forces’. In the end of searching for a way out from the antinomical trap I defend the thesis about aesthetic theory as a performance.

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