Theodor W. Adorno

Theodor W. Adorno
(April 1964)
Born	(1903-09-11)September 11, 1903 Frankfurt am Main, Hesse-Nassau, Prussia, Germany
Died	August 6, 1969(1969-08-06) (aged 65) Visp, Visp, Valais, Switzerland
Residence	Germany
Nationality	German
Other names	Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Critical theory Western Marxism
Main interests	Social theory Sociology Psychoanalysis Aesthetics Epistemology Musicology Mass media
Notable ideas	Criticism of "actionism" Criticism of the "culture industry" Paradox of aesthetics Maturity (Mündigkeit) Negative dialectics
Influences Immanuel Kant G. W. F. Hegel Søren Kierkegaard Friedrich Nietzsche Edmund Husserl Karl Marx Sigmund Freud Georg Lukács Ernst Bloch Max Weber Georg Simmel Max Horkheimer Hans Cornelius Walter Benjamin Arnold Schoenberg Alban Berg Charles Baudelaire Marcel Proust Franz Kafka Oswald Spengler Siegfried Kracauer Thomas Mann
Influenced Jürgen Habermas Herbert Marcuse Max Horkheimer Fredric Jameson Raymond Geuss

Theodor W. Adorno (/əˈdɔːrnoʊ/;German: [aˈdɔʀno]; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, and composer known for his critical theory of society.

He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has come to be associated with thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, for whom the work of Freud, Marx, and Hegel were essential to a critique of modern society. He is widely regarded as one of the 20th century's foremost thinkers on aesthetics and philosophy, as well as one of its preeminent essayists. As a critic of both fascism and what he called the culture industry, his writings—such as Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), Minima Moralia (1951) and Negative Dialectics (1966)—strongly influenced the European New Left.

Amidst the vogue enjoyed by existentialism and positivism in early 20th-century Europe, Adorno advanced a dialectical conception of natural history that critiqued the twin temptations of ontology and empiricism through studies of Kierkegaard and Husserl. As a classically trained pianist whose sympathies with the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg resulted in his studying composition with Alban Berg of the Second Viennese School, Adorno's commitment to avant-garde music formed the backdrop of his subsequent writings and led to his collaboration with Thomas Mann on the latter's novel Doctor Faustus, while the two men lived in California as exiles during the Second World War. Working for the newly relocated Institute for Social Research, Adorno collaborated on influential studies of authoritarianism, antisemitism and propaganda that would later serve as models for sociological studies the Institute carried out in post-war Germany.