is the penultimate draft of Adorno's major text on aesthetics, published in an edition prepared by Gretal Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann in the year following Adorno's death. Along with

and a projected book on ethics, Adorno intended

to “show what I have to throw into the scale” (Adorno 1997, p. 459).

is the final summary of a lifetime of philosophical and sociological reflection on the arts. Yet because it is only a penultimate draft and, as its editors note, it is not the work that Adorno himself would have sent to the printers (Adorno 1997, p. 459). This fact, along with a first translation that lent itself too readily to easy quotations, perhaps explains something of the work's popularity. In some respects it is a…

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Citation: Edgar, Andrew. "Ästhetische Theorie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 August 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6468, accessed 20 April 2024.]