Theodor Adorno: a teoria estética como projeto de emancipação

Abstract

The dissertation under the theme ¨Theodor Adorno: The Aesthetics Theory as a Project of Emancipation” has, as its main objective to identify and discuss, in Theodor Adorno´s Philosophy, the possibility of man´s emancipation starting from his Aesthetics Theory, which has Art as its foundation. This theory is lodged in the Adornian Philosophy as a new and efficacious proposal of cultural building up (bildung) of humanity, searching for a reconciliation between man and nature, the rehabilitation of the subjective spirit and overcoming of the construction crisis installed in the contemporary world as a consequence of Enlightnment´s regressive and totalitarian project. In order to arrive at the aesthetics theory as an emancipatory and formative project it was necessary to realize a reading of Adorno´s main texts utilized in this dissertation: Dialectics of Enlightnment (written together with his friend Max Horkheimer), Theory of Semiculture and Aesthetics Theory, as if they were written and organized under the Hegelian dialectic method. This method also served as a guide for the structuring of the chapters of this work under the following order of themes: the concept of Enlightnment, semiculture and the theory of aesthetics. In all other notions raised in the course of this dissertation (such as the division of work, auto - preservation, semiformation and the cultural industry), were exposed their respective regressive methods of leading man toward his emancipation and inserted in the course of the chapters as regressive formative processes of previous projects which served as basis for Adorno to compose his theory. This theory is a kind of a synthesis of Philosophy thought, and proposes the re-structuring of human thinking, of Philosophy and of the relationship subject/object, by means of a privileged cultural formation pattern (model), for endowing man with a knowledge through dialectics, therefore of a reflexive nature, without rupturing and imposition of philosophical hypothesis, not returning thus to the myth or to the totalitarian barbarity of the instrumental reasoning (rationality) derived from the Enlightnment.