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The Radical Character of Art and the Pedagogical and Political Value of the “Sublime” in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory



Author(s)

Alexandros Theodoridis

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DOI:10.17265/2159-5313/2016.01.001

The critical nature of artwork is owed, according to Adorno, to the fact that it opposes its assimilation by reason and that it does not yield to the imposition of its established principles. This character which Heidegger, too, through a paradoxical convergence with Adorno, and in opposition to Lukács, recognizes as its ontological component, permits the work of art to represent a force of resistance to dominance in general, in the prospect of the salvation of a humanized society. As such, it makes possible the radical rejection of political and, pertinent to it, pedagogical activity, when converted into primarily authoritiarian activity. Such a responsibility does art assume, according to Adorno, when it represents a spirituality, which is embodied in exemplary fashion both in the work of art itself, making the experience of the sublime possible, and in the aesthetic of the sublime, which is concentrated intensively on whatever remains unapproachable through concepts. In this way, we could say that the aesthetic of the sublime is converted into “first philosophy,” in the sense that it provides the rule for every theoretical approach. Concurring with this reading of Adorno, we consider how the sublime, as shown in the context of his aesthetic theory, is governed, furthermore, by a paideutic principle of exceptional significance, which we must necessarily activate through aesthetic education, so that western man may understand that he must uproot himself from the nihilistic social context in which he lives, rupturing the delusion of his omnipotence. In a world governed by a permanent crisis of democracy in public and private life, since the weakening of political imagination unites with the retreat from political ethos and an generalization of the unprecedented will for dominance, we consider this aesthetic theory to be exceptionally essential and useful to us both as pedagogical theory and as political theory, since it allows us to understand that the experience of the sublime through art is in opposition to this condition of destruction, and indeed represents the ideal of justice.

art, sublime, paideutic value, nihilism, opposition to destruction c Theory