Álvaro Arroyo

Research Project

Dialectics and negativity in Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic theory

The aim of the project is to critically explore the mediations between the two main poles of Theodor W. Adorno’s late thought: negative dialectics and aesthetic theory. The reciprocal determinations between the program of negative dialectics and the metaphysical and epistemological structure of aesthetic theory is a crucial aspect for the understanding of Adorno’s philosophy that has not yet been fully explained in the critical literature. Adorno’s dialectical critique of the idealist philosophies of Kant and Hegel is considered here as the intersection point between the conceptual elaboration of his renewed concept of dialectics and that of his aesthetic theory, and is therefore of major interest. On the other hand, it is argued that Adorno’s immanent analyses of modern art led to a concept of aesthetic negativity that was to be involved subsequently in a broader philosophical programme. From a methodological standpoint, this project seeks to proceed itself dialectically, avoiding any reduction of one of these moments to the other. This research is therefore intended to reconstruct the critique of idealist philosophies and bourgeois aesthetics developed by Adorno as well as to carefully examine the metaphysical commitments of his own aesthetic theory, in order to elaborate a conceptual model to properly address the link between negative dialectics and aesthetic negativity.