Theodor Adorno

Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar.

Summary

Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (1903 - 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, pianist, musicologist, and composer.

His work was influential in the area of Anthropological Aspects and Etiologies of Aggression (see Psychological Aspects of Biodanza).

Ideas

• Constellation - In its simplest definition, the constellation is multinational form: the arrangement or configuration in which a variety of concepts, models, ideas or other materials takes shape. These arrangements are very delicate; the movement of each element changes the entire configuration. Note further that one constellation can impinge or influence another one, across periods of history as well as within the same temporal frame.
• The Micrology -
• Bane - The inescapable objective condition or existential enclosure of the capitalist world-system.
• Transience -
• Total System - World system based on the constant expansion of accumulation
• Culture Industry - argued that capitalism fed people with the products of a culture industry - the opposite of true art - to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic.

Culture Industry

• Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances,
• The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variations on the same theme,
• By exploring the mechanisms for the creation of mass culture, Adorno presented a framework which gave specific terms to what had been a more general concern.