Morton Schoolman
SUNY: University at Albany, Political Science, Faculty Member
- Morton Schoolman's teaching and research fields are modern political and social theory, including American political ... moreMorton Schoolman's teaching and research fields are modern political and social theory, including American political thought, with a particular interest within these fields in the relation between between politics, aesthetics, art and film. Recently he has completed a new book entitled A Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics, published by Duke University Press. In A Democratic Enlightenment he proposes aesthetic education through film as a way to redress the political violence inflicted on difference that society constructs as its racialized, gendered, Semitic, and sexualized Other. Drawing on Voltaire, Diderot, and Schiller, Schoolman reconstructs the genealogical history of what he calls the reconciliation image—a visual model of a democratic ideal of reconciliation he then theorizes through Whitman's prose and poetry, Adorno's aesthetic theory, and the artworks of Poussin and Lorrain, Monet, Manet, and Rodin. Analyzing The Help (2011) and Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Schoolman shows how film produces a more advanced image of reconciliation than those originally created by modernist artworks. Each film depicts violence toward racial and ethnic difference while also displaying a reconciliation image that aesthetically educates the public about how the violence of constructing difference as otherness can be overcome. Mounting a democratic enlightenment, the reconciliation image in film illuminates a possible politics for challenging the rise of nationalism's violence toward differences in all their diversity. Other publications include Reason and Horror: Critical Theory, Democracy, and Aesthetic Individuality, published by Routledge Press, and The Imaginary Witness: The Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse, published by Free Press.edit
Dialectic of Enlightenment as a Genealogy of Reason (chapter 3, Reason and Horror, Schoolman, M.) Excerpted from the "Introduction," pp. 10-11 of Reason and Horror: Critical Theory, Democracy, and Aesthetic Individuality (Routledge... more
Dialectic of Enlightenment as a Genealogy of Reason (chapter 3, Reason and Horror, Schoolman, M.)
Excerpted from the "Introduction," pp. 10-11 of Reason and Horror: Critical Theory, Democracy, and Aesthetic Individuality (Routledge 2001).
This file replaces the earlier upload, which readers wrote to say had been corrupted. I believe the problem is now solved. Thank you!
As I already have indicated in a preliminary way, by drawing out the structural similarities of Nietzsche’s genealogical method to Dialectic of Enlightenment in chapter 3, and the genealogical framework of Horkheimer and Adorno’s work is thrown into relief, it becomes evident that they offer us more than a metanarrative of reason’s destruction of difference. Approaching Dialectic of Enlightenment genealogically, we begin to see, allows us to account for a reader whom they believe has been interdicted by the history of enlightenment to the point of becoming an “imaginary witness,” the term they use in the “Notes and Drafts” to their text. Short of this genealogical account, Dialectic of Enlightenment cannot be critically redeemed, for if we were unable to discover a historical basis for a reader, far more than the new interpretive possibilities that a genealogical approach opens to us would be lost. Lost, as well, would be the possibility of discovering in our own historical period some evidence for the aesthetic form of individuality a genealogy of reason recovers. As I will show, approaching their work as a genealogy reveals that Horkheimer and Adorno carry out what Nietzsche in his own work had called a “translation” of “man back into nature,” a translation—or what we more recently understand to be a “deconstruction”—of modern subjectivity back into individuality. With this genealogical translation they are able to recall individuality’s original aesthetic properties before it evolved into a different form as a consequence of a struggle within thought between two qualitatively different types of thinking. Recovering their genealogical reconstruction of the concept of aesthetic individuality allows us to imagine our own relationship to difference as becoming free of violence and to inquire into the conditions under which this relationship might be developed, as I will do in part II of my argument, even if within the framework of Horkheimer and Adorno’s own work such a possibility is no more than Utopian.
Excerpted from the "Introduction," pp. 10-11 of Reason and Horror: Critical Theory, Democracy, and Aesthetic Individuality (Routledge 2001).
This file replaces the earlier upload, which readers wrote to say had been corrupted. I believe the problem is now solved. Thank you!
As I already have indicated in a preliminary way, by drawing out the structural similarities of Nietzsche’s genealogical method to Dialectic of Enlightenment in chapter 3, and the genealogical framework of Horkheimer and Adorno’s work is thrown into relief, it becomes evident that they offer us more than a metanarrative of reason’s destruction of difference. Approaching Dialectic of Enlightenment genealogically, we begin to see, allows us to account for a reader whom they believe has been interdicted by the history of enlightenment to the point of becoming an “imaginary witness,” the term they use in the “Notes and Drafts” to their text. Short of this genealogical account, Dialectic of Enlightenment cannot be critically redeemed, for if we were unable to discover a historical basis for a reader, far more than the new interpretive possibilities that a genealogical approach opens to us would be lost. Lost, as well, would be the possibility of discovering in our own historical period some evidence for the aesthetic form of individuality a genealogy of reason recovers. As I will show, approaching their work as a genealogy reveals that Horkheimer and Adorno carry out what Nietzsche in his own work had called a “translation” of “man back into nature,” a translation—or what we more recently understand to be a “deconstruction”—of modern subjectivity back into individuality. With this genealogical translation they are able to recall individuality’s original aesthetic properties before it evolved into a different form as a consequence of a struggle within thought between two qualitatively different types of thinking. Recovering their genealogical reconstruction of the concept of aesthetic individuality allows us to imagine our own relationship to difference as becoming free of violence and to inquire into the conditions under which this relationship might be developed, as I will do in part II of my argument, even if within the framework of Horkheimer and Adorno’s own work such a possibility is no more than Utopian.
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Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 39 (4), 7/7/22, 216-219, by John E. Seery, of Morton Schoolman, A Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics (Duke University Press, 2020), 318 pp.
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In this third chapter I launch a project I then complete in chapter 4 of A Democratic Enlightenment (Duke University Press, 2020). Analyzing Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, I attempt to flesh out how modern artworks, as Adorno theorizes their... more
In this third chapter I launch a project I then complete in chapter 4 of A Democratic Enlightenment (Duke University Press, 2020). Analyzing Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, I attempt to flesh out how modern artworks, as Adorno theorizes their aesthetic elements, produce images of reconciliation. For by understanding what it is about the modern artwork that enables it to produce the reconciliation image, we are better equipped to discover whether artworks and their new aesthetic forms since the modern period on which Adorno focuses likewise possess aesthetic elements productive of images of reconciliation, whose creation is owed to an entirely different form of reason than has been the driving force of history, an aesthetic rationality internal to the artwork itself. And we would be positioned to determine whether the reconciliation image appears in film, our most advanced visual art form today, and to what pedagogical and political ends.
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Duke University Press 2020 In A Democratic Enlightenment Morton Schoolman proposes aesthetic education through film as a way to redress the political violence inflicted on difference that society constructs as its racialized, gendered,... more
Duke University Press 2020 In A Democratic Enlightenment Morton Schoolman proposes aesthetic education through film as a way to redress the political violence inflicted on difference that society constructs as its racialized, gendered, Semitic, and sexualized other. Drawing on Voltaire, Diderot, and Schiller, Schoolman reconstructs the genealogical history of what he calls the reconciliation image-a visual model of a democratic ideal of reconciliation he then theorizes through Whitman's prose and poetry and Adorno's aesthetic theory. Analyzing The Help and Gentleman's Agreement, Schoolman shows how film produces a more advanced image of reconciliation than those originally created by modernist artworks. Each film depicts violence toward racial and ethnic difference while also displaying a reconciliation image that aesthetically educates the public about how the violence of constructing difference as otherness can be overcome. Mounting a democratic enlightenment, the reconciliation image in film illuminates a possible politics for challenging the rise of nationalism's violence toward differences in all their diversity.
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In A Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics, Morton Schoolman argues that a radically new type of enlightenment is emerging in our own dark democratic and most unlikely of political... more
In A Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics, Morton Schoolman argues that a radically new type of enlightenment is emerging in our own dark democratic and most unlikely of political times. He proposes aesthetic education through film as a way to redress the political violence inflicted on difference that society constructs as its racialized, gendered, Semitic, and sexualized Other. Drawing on Voltaire, Diderot, and Schiller, Schoolman reconstructs the genealogical history of what he calls “the reconciliation image”—a visual model of a democratic ideal of reconciliation he next theorizes through Whitman's prose and poetry, Adorno's aesthetic theory, artworks by Poussin, Lorrain, Monet, Manet, Rodin, and finally through film. A Democratic Enlightenment discovers Whitman writing verse to create visual images of reconciliation, reads Adorno against himself to formulate theoretical support for the reconciliation image in the cinema of a culture industry he rejected, and discovers a politics of aesthetics in a reconciliation image opposed to the politics of film narratives that give it birth. Analyzing The Help (2011) and Gentleman's Agreement (1947), he shows how film produces a more advanced image of reconciliation than those originally created by modernist artworks. Each film depicts violence toward racial and ethnic difference while also displaying a reconciliation image that aesthetically educates the public about how the violence of constructing difference as otherness can be overcome. Mounting a democratic enlightenment, the reconciliation image in film illuminates a possible politics for challenging the rise of nationalism's violence toward differences in all their diversity. This new type of enlightenment derives its democratic character from the universality of cinema, which extends beyond the borders of western democracies themselves, and from an ideal of reconciliation unequaled for including other core democratic values it also exceeds.
Research Interests: Democratic Education, Democratic Theory, Visual Culture, Enlightenment, Literary Theory, and 15 moreMedia and Democracy, Film, Moving images, Critical Theory and Difference, Adorno, Film Aesthetics, Visual Arts, Deleuze & Cinema, Friedrich Schiller, Miriam Hansen, Artists' Moving Image, Brian Massumi, Rodin, Whitman, Diderot, French Enlightenment, Aesthetics, and Politics and Aesthetics
In Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Nikolas Kompridis proposes a new model of critique for critical theory based on the unlikely alliance he constructs between Habermas and Heidegger while seeking to avoid... more
In Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Nikolas Kompridis proposes a new model of critique for critical theory based on the unlikely alliance he constructs between Habermas and Heidegger while seeking to avoid the philosophical shortcomings of both. Focusing on his accounts of 'receptivity', arguably the central concept in his new model of critique, I argue sympathetically that although his rejection of some and appropriation of certain features of Habermas' theory serve his philosophical aims, his allegiance to Heidegger's ontology would thwart his interest in receptivity as an alternative model of critique stressing the interpretation of meaning and learning over validity and rationality. Kompridis must be attentive to the conditions that enable or constrain receptivity, yet this is a theoretical move unavailable to him within his Heideggerian framework. To secure the work learning performs in his critical model Kompridis must relinquish ontology and cultivate an approach situating receptivity in the political and socially contingent contexts in which it is conditioned.
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In "The Pluralist Mind: Agonistic Respect and the Problem of Violence Toward Difference," Morton Schoolman traces the evolution of William Connolly's pluralist theory from his early to his recent work (as of 2008), mapping out its main... more
In "The Pluralist Mind: Agonistic Respect and the Problem of Violence Toward Difference," Morton Schoolman traces the evolution of William Connolly's pluralist theory from his early to his recent work (as of 2008), mapping out its main lines of argument, differentiating its theoretical strategies, explicating many of central concepts, and demonstrating how the strands of his new pluralism converge on what has become a central problem in contemporary political theory: how to eliminate violence toward difference in a democratic society.
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(This article is an early formulation of one of the central arguments of A Democratic Enlightenment, included here under recent publications.) Taking as its point of departure the contested claim that Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of... more
(This article is an early formulation of one of the central arguments of A Democratic Enlightenment, included here under recent publications.) Taking as its point of departure the contested claim that Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment conceptualizes a differentiated form of aesthetic reason, this essay explicates key properties of aesthetic rationality as it later was elaborated in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. With these properties in view, it next compares modern artworks and film and discovers that aesthetic reason has taken up residence in mass culture. Adorno’s confinement of
aesthetic reason to modern art, and his insistence with Horkheimer that modern
art and the rationality it entails are emasculated by mass culture, appear premature.
As the host for aesthetic rationality, mass culture secures the rational
content of modernity against the hegemony of instrumental reason. Through the
increasing universalization of mass culture aesthetic reason achieves universality,
placing us on the threshold of another enlightenment, a democratic and aesthetic enlightenment that would be the completion of modernity’s as yet unfinished project.
aesthetic reason to modern art, and his insistence with Horkheimer that modern
art and the rationality it entails are emasculated by mass culture, appear premature.
As the host for aesthetic rationality, mass culture secures the rational
content of modernity against the hegemony of instrumental reason. Through the
increasing universalization of mass culture aesthetic reason achieves universality,
placing us on the threshold of another enlightenment, a democratic and aesthetic enlightenment that would be the completion of modernity’s as yet unfinished project.
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ABSTRACT Reading Adorno against himself, I further develop his concept of aesthetic reason in Aesthetic Theory to formulate the image of reconciliation in modern art in a way enabling us to then find its aesthetic analog in film. If we... more
ABSTRACT Reading Adorno against himself, I further develop his concept of aesthetic reason in Aesthetic Theory to formulate the image of reconciliation in modern art in a way enabling us to then find its aesthetic analog in film. If we were able to find in film the same image of reconciliation Adorno found in art, as the new avatar of aesthetic reason film would perform the work of enlightenment Adorno held was produced only by the modern artwork. Circulating ubiquitously in film, the reconciliation image would achieve democratic enlightenment in two forms – by modeling one of the highest ideals of democratic life and by teaching it through the media of mass culture.
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Modern capitalism has succeeded in arresting qualitative change in the realm of labor, if only temporarily, with the result that freedom and self-realization seem to terminate within the limits of expression circumscribed by the present... more
Modern capitalism has succeeded in arresting qualitative change in the realm of labor, if only temporarily, with the result that freedom and self-realization seem to terminate within the limits of expression circumscribed by the present social organization of production. We appear to be confronted with what Norman O. Brown has labeled a “vacuum in the Marxist Utopia,” that actually reflects a crisis in Marx's ontology precipitated by the perpetuation of obsolete modes of production. Marcuse has attempted to fill this vacuum by substituting a Freudian concept of man. The Freudian ontology is intended to complement Marx's efforts to formulate a definition of non-alienated labor that is dependent on, but ontologically distinct—in the broad dimensions of freedom that it represents—from the particular historical manifestations of freedom evolving gradually through the self-creativity of labor in the productive process.
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Etude de la theorie esthetique developpee par Adorno dans le sens d'une reflexion discursive sur la raison identitaire qui indique les possibilites de l'individualite et de sa politique. Definissant l'art comme la... more
Etude de la theorie esthetique developpee par Adorno dans le sens d'une reflexion discursive sur la raison identitaire qui indique les possibilites de l'individualite et de sa politique. Definissant l'art comme la representation de la non-identite d'une nature inconnue, Adorno indique la voie d'une politique de l'obscurite, fondee sur le sujet libere de l'illusion d'une difference avec l'objet
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ABSTRACT Taking as its point of departure the contested claim that Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment conceptualizes a differentiated form of aesthetic reason, this essay explicates key properties of aesthetic... more
ABSTRACT Taking as its point of departure the contested claim that Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment conceptualizes a differentiated form of aesthetic reason, this essay explicates key properties of aesthetic rationality as it later was elaborated in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. With these properties in view, it next compares modern artworks and film and discovers that aesthetic reason has taken up residence in mass culture. Adorno's confinement of aesthetic reason to modern art, and his insistence with Horkheimer that modern art and the rationality it entails are emasculated by mass culture, appear premature. As the host for aesthetic rationality, mass culture secures the rational content of modernity against the hegemony of instrumental reason. Through the increasing universalization of mass culture aesthetic reason achieves universality, placing us on the threshold of another enlightenment, an aesthetic enlightenment that would be the completion of modernity's as yet unfinished project.
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ABSTRACT Habermas charges that by equating a deformed instrumental reason with reason itself in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno err twice. Not only do they fail to lead us to the path holding the greatest promise for... more
ABSTRACT Habermas charges that by equating a deformed instrumental reason with reason itself in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno err twice. Not only do they fail to lead us to the path holding the greatest promise for understanding reason in modernity, they destroy all rational grounds for normative justification. Leaving themselves without a claim to reason, they suffer the embarrassment of becoming implicated in an aporia undermining their critique of enlightenment. I contest Habermas's argument, first by showing that they identify a differentiated form of aesthetic reason, and then by fleshing it out conceptually and developing its significance. With the concept of aesthetic reason Horkheimer and Adorno justify their critique and establish the basis for an alternative idea of enlightenment. By so doing, they illuminate the theoretical path allowing us to consider how the rational content of modernity can be recovered, and they preserve Habermas's theme of modernity as an unfinished project.
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Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine Christiane Wagner in discussion with the author Morton Schoolman on A Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics (Durham and London: Duke... more
Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine Christiane Wagner in discussion with the author Morton Schoolman on A Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2020)
Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director: Christiane Wagner For more information about the board, please click on Editorial Team and Art Style Magazine's Scientific Committee Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine is an open... more
Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director: Christiane Wagner For more information about the board, please click on Editorial Team and Art Style Magazine's Scientific Committee Art Style | Art & Culture International Magazine is an open access, biannual, and peer-reviewed online magazine that aims to bundle cultural diversity. All values of cultures are shown in their varieties of art. Beyond the importance of the medium, form, and context in which art takes its characteristics, we also consider the significance of socio-cultural, historical, and market influence. Thus, there are different forms of visual expression and perception through the media and environment. The images relate to the cultural changes and their time-space significance—the spirit of the time. Hence, it is not only about the image itself and its description but rather its effects on culture, in which reciprocity is involved. For example, a variety of visual narratives—like movies, TV shows, videos, performances, m...
Le socialisme tel que décrit par Marx donnerait-il naissance à un « homo ludens » ou à un « homo faber » ? Cette question a fait l'objet d'une vigoureuse controverse entre les critiques de l'œuvre de Marx depuis plus d'une... more
Le socialisme tel que décrit par Marx donnerait-il naissance à un « homo ludens » ou à un « homo faber » ? Cette question a fait l'objet d'une vigoureuse controverse entre les critiques de l'œuvre de Marx depuis plus d'une décade, controverse qui portait principalement sur les premières œuvres de Marx dont l'absence de rigueur philosophique pouvait accréditer les interprétations les plus diverses. Une lecture attentive du Grundrisse de Marx, écrit dont on a peu fait cas jusqu'à tout récemment, permet de résoudre la controverse. Le présent article analyse le concept de travail chez Marx, tel qu'exposé dans le Grundrisse, et établit un rapport d'identité entre ce concept et la notion marcusienne de « loisir » (play). Il appert que Marx et Marcuse partagent la même opinion sur la nécessité de l'abolition du travail tel que nous l'avons connu jusqu'à présent, de même que sur les postulats ayant trait à la domination que l'homme est appelé ...
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Cite as: Schoolman, Morton. “A Discussion with Morton Schoolman on a Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics.” Interview by Christiane Wagner. Art Style, Art & Culture International... more
Cite as: Schoolman, Morton. “A Discussion with Morton Schoolman on a Democratic Enlightenment: The Reconciliation Image, Aesthetic Education, Possible Politics.” Interview by Christiane Wagner. Art Style, Art & Culture International Magazine, v. 8, no. 8.1, part 1 (September): 37-55. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.5448260
The primary purpose of this interview is to bring the reader closer to the subject of aesthetics and politics that is, the correspondence of art images with public life regarding the ideals of organization of a city, state, or nation. In this sense, considering the object of aesthetics, art is to think about the reception of art forms and their subjects in contemporaneity interacting with the metropolis’ everyday life and its democratic ideals. Thus, the meaning of the visual dynamics of society and democratic ideals would be social aesthetics, where the reflection on the arts is linked to political-cultural aspects. In that way, among the many forms in which art manifests itself, the experience and the effect of greater global perception have been seen in Schoolman’s work through the moving image and, consequently, film. Specifically, concerning politics, this interview focuses on the arts—in this case, cinema, and the effects of politicization, citizen awareness of their cultural diversity, and differences. At this point, Schoolman’s work becomes essential for democratic enlightenment. To discuss the essential values of democracy is also to understand the complexity of respect for difference. Therefore, the democratic ideal faces the central challenge of combating violence toward difference. In this way, Schoolman’s theory has been built upon the challenge of “overcoming identity’s construction of difference as otherness.” One of the ways to overcome this identity construction is through reconciliation images by way of aesthetic education designed to meet democratic enlightenment. Schoolman developed his theory of the reconciliation image through the moving image and the cinematographic image. Hence, this interview aims to better understand political and aesthetic values, specifically through cinema, to enlighten visual dynamics and democratic ideals.
The primary purpose of this interview is to bring the reader closer to the subject of aesthetics and politics that is, the correspondence of art images with public life regarding the ideals of organization of a city, state, or nation. In this sense, considering the object of aesthetics, art is to think about the reception of art forms and their subjects in contemporaneity interacting with the metropolis’ everyday life and its democratic ideals. Thus, the meaning of the visual dynamics of society and democratic ideals would be social aesthetics, where the reflection on the arts is linked to political-cultural aspects. In that way, among the many forms in which art manifests itself, the experience and the effect of greater global perception have been seen in Schoolman’s work through the moving image and, consequently, film. Specifically, concerning politics, this interview focuses on the arts—in this case, cinema, and the effects of politicization, citizen awareness of their cultural diversity, and differences. At this point, Schoolman’s work becomes essential for democratic enlightenment. To discuss the essential values of democracy is also to understand the complexity of respect for difference. Therefore, the democratic ideal faces the central challenge of combating violence toward difference. In this way, Schoolman’s theory has been built upon the challenge of “overcoming identity’s construction of difference as otherness.” One of the ways to overcome this identity construction is through reconciliation images by way of aesthetic education designed to meet democratic enlightenment. Schoolman developed his theory of the reconciliation image through the moving image and the cinematographic image. Hence, this interview aims to better understand political and aesthetic values, specifically through cinema, to enlighten visual dynamics and democratic ideals.
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... into being, distressing those who think that the list of basic rights is eternal. ... touch, smell, rhythm, words, caress, discipline, and music infiltrates cultural memory and presumptions ... a genealogy of gender practice,... more
... into being, distressing those who think that the list of basic rights is eternal. ... touch, smell, rhythm, words, caress, discipline, and music infiltrates cultural memory and presumptions ... a genealogy of gender practice, secularism, consump-tion practices, responsibility, morality, or the ...
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In Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Nikolas Kompridis proposes a new model of critique for critical theory based on the unlikely alliance he constructs between Habermas and Heidegger while seeking to avoid... more
In Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Nikolas Kompridis proposes a new model of critique for critical theory based on the unlikely alliance he constructs between Habermas and Heidegger while seeking to avoid the philosophical shortcomings of both. Focusing on his accounts of ‘receptivity’, arguably the central concept in his new model of critique, I argue sympathetically that although his rejection of some and appropriation of certain features of Habermas' theory serve his philosophical aims, his allegiance to Heidegger’s ontology would thwart his interest in receptivity as an alternative model of critique stressing the interpretation of meaning and learning over validity and rationality. Kompridis must be attentive to the conditions that enable or constrain receptivity, yet this is a theoretical move unavailable to him within his Heideggerian framework. To secure the work learning performs in his critical model Kompridis must relinquish ontology a...
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... of Reason and Horror, which improved its arguments considerably, and to Bill Connolly, Jane Bennett, Dick Flathman, Tom Dumm, Tracy Strong, Stephen ... I owe a special debt to Gary Gossen, Judith Johnson, Marilyn Masson, and John... more
... of Reason and Horror, which improved its arguments considerably, and to Bill Connolly, Jane Bennett, Dick Flathman, Tom Dumm, Tracy Strong, Stephen ... I owe a special debt to Gary Gossen, Judith Johnson, Marilyn Masson, and John Pipkin for considering my work in a study ...
ABSTRACT Taking as its point of departure the contested claim that Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment conceptualizes a differentiated form of aesthetic reason, this essay explicates key properties of aesthetic... more
ABSTRACT Taking as its point of departure the contested claim that Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment conceptualizes a differentiated form of aesthetic reason, this essay explicates key properties of aesthetic rationality as it later was elaborated in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. With these properties in view, it next compares modern artworks and film and discovers that aesthetic reason has taken up residence in mass culture. Adorno's confinement of aesthetic reason to modern art, and his insistence with Horkheimer that modern art and the rationality it entails are emasculated by mass culture, appear premature. As the host for aesthetic rationality, mass culture secures the rational content of modernity against the hegemony of instrumental reason. Through the increasing universalization of mass culture aesthetic reason achieves universality, placing us on the threshold of another enlightenment, an aesthetic enlightenment that would be the completion of modernity's as yet unfinished project.