Aesthetic Ground of Critical Theory

Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno are considered today to be the two most significant early theorists in founding critical theory. In their works and correspondence, both thinkers turn to art and the aesthetic as a vital way for understanding modern society and developing philosophical methods. This volume of original essays seeks to understand how they influenced each other and disagreed with each other on fundamental questions about art and the aesthetic. The books deals with a variety of key philosophical questions, such as:

How does art involve distinctive modes of experience? What is the political significance of modern art?What does aesthetic experience teach us about the limitations of conceptual thought?How is aesthetic experience implicated in the very medium of thought, language?
Ultimately the book presents a systematic argument for the foundational significance of the aesthetic in the development of the early critical theory movement.

Nathan Ross is associate professor of philosophy at Oklahoma City University. He is the author of On Mechanism in Hegel’s Social and Political Philosophy (2008) as well as a forthcoming book on aesthetic experience in classical German philosophy and critical theory.

Contributors:
Natalia Baeza, Post-doctoral Researcher in Philosophy, University of Florence; Georg Bertram, Professor of Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin; Rick Elmore, Visiting Assistant Professor, Appalachian State University; Tom Huhn, Professor of Philosophy, New York School of Visual Arts; Eduardo Mendieta, Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York at Stony Brook; Marcia Morgan, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies, Muhlenberg College; Alison Ross, Australian Research Council Future Fellow in Philosophy, Monash University; Andrea Sakoparnig, PhD candidate, Freie Universität Berlin; Surti Singh, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, American University Cairo; Stéphane Symons, Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; Joseph Weiss, Lecturer, DePaul University