Blackwell Reference Online

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Theodor W. Adorno began his intellectual career in Frankfurt and Vienna in the 1920s, continued his work in American exile during Germany's fascist era, and returned to West Germany after World War II to reconstitute with Max Horkheimer the Institute for Social Research, better known as the Frankfurt School. Adorno's writings span a broad range of disciplines, including philosophy and sociology, psychology and aesthetics, as well as literary and music criticism. While Adorno has often been cast as the most philosophical and least political of the Frankfurt School theorists, in his estimation the two are not mutually exclusive, as demonstrated by his central works: Dialectic of Enlightenment, co-authored with Max Horkheimer; Negative Dialectics; and Aesthetic Theory.Facing increased criticism from a student protest that his writings had in part inspired, Adorno stated as much in the late 1960s. On June 2, 1967, during a demonstration in Berlin against the Shah of Iran's visit, a police officer shot and killed Benno Ohnesorg, a student protestor. To many, the date marks the radicalization of the student movement in Germany. Afterwards, German Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activist Rudi Dutschke declared that the most important task facing members of the Frankfurt School was to describe a concrete Utopia towards which the student movement could agitate and organize. Further ... log in or subscribe to read full text