Natural History and Aesthetic Truth in Aesthetic Theory

Bibliographic Data

ID7933434
AuthorsMax Pensky (0000-0002-3643-4295, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume48
Issue2
Pages23-41
Publication date2021-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew German Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-033X • E-ISSN: 1558-1462
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/0094033x-8989218
OpenAlexW3194107268
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

Theodor W. Adorno’s claim in Aesthetic Theory that artworks have a truth content, and that this truth content in turn depends on philosophical interpretation, is among the work’s most challenging and obscure claims. This article argues that “The Idea of Natural History,” Adorno’s lecture dating to 1932, offers important resources for interpreting the claim of art’s truth content. Reading the lecture’s core idea of transience, the article proposes that the form of philosophical interpretation Adorno develops there illuminates one way to clarify what Adorno means, in Aesthetic Theory, by the interpretation of art’s truth content. While far from definitive, this conclusion does support interpretations of art’s truth content that foreground art’s function as a critique of ideology, that is, of having a field of application that moves beyond the sphere of the aesthetic and toward the disclosure of conditions of social domination

Aesthetic theory · Aesthetics · Archaeology · Content (measure theory) · Epistemology · Field (mathematics) · Ideology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Natural (archaeology) · Politics · Reading (process) · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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