Frasi di Theodor W. Adorno
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31 frasi che rivelano la saggezza profonda sull'amore, la libertà e l'arte

Scoprite la profonda saggezza di Theodor W. Adorno attraverso le sue stimolanti citazioni, che esplorano temi come la natura della libertà, il potere dell'amore e l'impatto dell'arte sulla società. Scoprite la sua prospettiva unica in 200 caratteri o meno.

Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno è stato un filosofo, sociologo, musicologo e musicista tedesco. Fu esponente della Scuola di Francoforte e criticò in modo radicale la società e il capitalismo avanzato. Oltre ai suoi scritti sociologici, Adorno trattò anche tematiche morali ed estetiche, nonché fece studi critici sulla filosofia di Hegel, Husserl e Heidegger. Oltre alla sua riflessione filosofica-sociologica, ebbe una carriera significativa come musicologo.

Studente all'Università di Francoforte, Adorno strinse amicizia con Max Horkheimer che lo introdusse all'Istituto di ricerche sociali di Francoforte sul Meno. A causa dell'avvento del nazismo fu costretto a emigrare dapprima a Oxford e successivamente negli Stati Uniti d'America. In America si dedicò ad attività sociologiche innovative come il Progetto di Ricerca Radiofonica e soprattutto all'indagine sulla personalità autoritaria.

Dopo il suo ritorno in Germania nei primi anni cinquanta, le sue lezioni all'Università di Francoforte ottennero sempre più partecipanti e la fama del seminario da lui tenuto con Max Horkheimer sulle tematiche hegeliane cresceva in Europa.

✵ 11. Settembre 1903 – 6. Agosto 1969   •   Altri nomi Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno photo
Theodor W. Adorno: 121   frasi 29   Mi piace

Theodor W. Adorno frasi celebri

“Le atrocità sollevano un'indignazione minore, quanto più le vittime sono dissimili dai normali lettori, quanto più sono "more", "sudice", dago. Questo fatto illumina le atrocità non meno che le reazioni degli spettatori. Forse lo schema sociale della percezione presso gli antisemiti è fatto in modo che essi non vedono gli ebrei come uomini. L'affermazione ricorrente che i selvaggi, i negri, i giapponesi, somigliano ad animali, o a scimmie, contiene già la chiave del pogrom. Della cui possibilità si decide nell'istante in cui l'occhio di un animale ferito a morte colpisce l'uomo. L'ostinazione con cui egli devia da sé quello sguardo – "non è che un animale"”

si ripete incessantemente nelle crudeltà commesse sugli uomini, in cui gli esecutori devono sempre di nuovo confermare a se stessi il "non è che un animale", a cui non riuscivano a credere neppure nel caso dell'animale. Nella società repressiva il concetto stesso dell'uomo è la parodia dell'uguaglianza di tutto ciò che è fatto ad immagine di Dio. Fa parte del meccanismo della "proiezione morbosa" che i detentori del potere avvertano come uomo solo la propria immagine, anziché riflettere l'umano proprio come il diverso. L'assassinio è quindi il tentativo di raddrizzare la follia di questa falsa percezione con una follia ancora maggiore: ciò che non è stato visto come uomo, eppure lo è, viene trasformato in cosa, perché non possa confutare, con un movimento, lo sguardo del pazzo. (n. 68, Gli uomini ti guardano)
Minima moralia
Origine: Riferimento al titolo del libro di Paul Eipper Le bestie ci guardano

Theodor W. Adorno Frasi e Citazioni

“Comunque agisca, l'intellettuale sbaglia.”

Minima moralia

Theodor W. Adorno: Frasi in inglese

“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.”

Theodor W. Adorno libro Minima Moralia

Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 18
Minima Moralia (1951)

“When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.”

As quoted in The Dialectical Imagination : A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research (1973) by M Jay, p. 279.

“Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.”

Der des Jargons Kundige braucht nicht zu sagen, was er denkt, nicht einmal recht es zu denken: das nimmt der Jargon ihm ab und entwertet den Gedanken.
Origine: Jargon der Eigentlichkeit [Jargon of Authenticity] (1964), p. 9

“Tenderness between people is nothing other than awareness of the possibility of relations without purpose.”

Theodor W. Adorno libro Minima Moralia

Zartheit zwischen Menschen ist nichts anderes als das Bewußtsein von der Möglichkeit zweckfreier Beziehungen.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 20
Minima Moralia (1951)

“The bourgeois … is tolerant. His love for people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be.”

Theodor W. Adorno libro Minima Moralia

Der Bürger aber ist tolerant. Seine Liebe zu den Leuten, wie sie sind, entspringt dem Haß gegen den richtigen Menschen.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 4
Minima Moralia (1951)

“Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case. Rigorous formulation demands unequivocal comprehension, conceptual effort, to which people are deliberately disencouraged, and imposes on them in advance of any content a suspension of all received opinions, and thus an isolation, that they violently resist. Only what they do not need first to understand, they consider understandable; only the word coined by commerce, and really alienated, touches them as familiar.”

Theodor W. Adorno libro Minima Moralia

Der vage Ausdruck erlaubt dem, der ihn vernimmt, das ungefähr sich vorzustellen, was ihm genehm ist und was er ohnehin meint. Der strenge erzwingt Eindeutigkeit der Auffassung, die Anstrengung des Begriffs, deren die Menschen bewußt entwöhnt werden, und mutet ihnen vor allem Inhalt Suspension der gängigen Urteile, damit ein sich Absondern zu, dem sie heftig widerstreben. Nur, was sie nicht erst zu verstehen brauchen, gilt ihnen für verständlich; nur das in Wahrheit Entfremdete, das vom Kommerz geprägte Wort berührt sie als vertraut.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 64
Minima Moralia (1951)

“The melancholy science from which I make this offering to my friend relates to a region that from time immemorial was regarded as the true field of philosophy, but which, since the latter’s conversion into method, has lapsed into intellectual neglect, sententious whimsy and finally oblivion: the teaching of the good life. What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own.”

Theodor W. Adorno libro Minima Moralia

Die traurige Wissenschaft, aus der ich meinem Freunde einiges darbiete, bezieht sich auf einen Bereich, der für undenkliche Zeiten als der eigentliche der Philosophie galt, seit deren Verwandlung in Methode aber der intellektuellen Nichtachtung, der sententiösen Willkür und am Ende der Vergessenheit verfiel: die Lehre vom richtigen Leben. Was einmal den Philosophen Leben hieß, ist zur Sphäre des Privaten und dann bloß noch des Konsums geworden, die als Anhang des materiellen Produktionsprozesses, ohne Autonomie und ohne eigene Substanz, mit geschleift wird.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), Dedication
Minima Moralia (1951)

“Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add up.”

On high culture and popular culture, in a letter http://www.scribd.com/doc/11510904/Adorno-Letters-to-Walter-Benjamin to Walter Benjamin (18 March 1936)

“The jargon of authenticity … is a trademark of societalized chosenness, … sub-language as superior language.”

Origine: Jargon der Eigentlichkeit [Jargon of Authenticity] (1964), pp. 5-6

“The center of intellectual self-discipline as such is in the process of decomposition. The taboos that constitute a man’s intellectual stature, often sedimented experiences and unarticulated insights, always operate against inner impulses that he has learned to condemn, but which are so strong that only an unquestioning and unquestioned authority can hold them in check. What is true of the instinctual life is no less of the intellectual: the painter or composer forbidding himself as trite this or that combination of colors or chords, the writer wincing at banal or pedantic verbal configurations, reacts so violently because layers of himself are drawn to them. Repudiation of the present cultural morass presupposes sufficient involvement in it to feel it itching in one’s finger-tips, so to speak, but at the same time the strength, drawn from this involvement, to dismiss it. This strength, though manifesting itself as individual resistance, is by no means of a merely individual nature. In the intellectual conscience possessed of it, the social movement is no less present than the moral super-ego. Such conscience grows out of a conception of the good society and its citizens. If this conception dims—and who could still trust blindly in it—the downward urge of the intellect loses its inhibitions and all the detritus dumped in the individual by barbarous culture—half-learning, slackness, heavy familiarity, coarseness—comes to light. Usually it is rationalized as humanity, desire to be understood by others, worldly-wise responsibility. But the sacrifice of intellectual self-discipline comes much too easily to him who makes it for us to believe his assurance that it is one.”

Theodor W. Adorno libro Minima Moralia

Das Zentrum der geistigen Selbstdisziplin als solcher ist in Zersetzung begriffen. Die Tabus, die den geistigen Rang eines Menschen ausmachen, oftmals sedimentierte Erfahrungen und unartikulierte Erkenntnisse, richten sich stets gegen eigene Regungen, die er verdammen lernte, die aber so stark sind, daß nur eine fraglose und unbefragte Instanz ihnen Einhalt gebieten kann. Was fürs Triebleben gilt, gilt fürs geistige nicht minder: der Maler und Komponist, der diese und jene Farbenzusammenstellung oder Akkordverbindung als kitschig sich untersagt, der Schriftsteller, dem sprachliche Konfigurationen als banal oder pedantisch auf die Nerven gehen, reagiert so heftig gegen sie, weil in ihm selber Schichten sind, die es dorthin lockt. Die Absage ans herrschende Unwesen der Kultur setzt voraus, daß man an diesem selber genug teilhat, um es gleichsam in den eigenen Fingern zucken zu fühlen, daß man aber zugleich aus dieser Teilhabe Kräfte zog, sie zu kündigen. Diese Kräfte, die als solche des individuellen Widerstands in Erscheinung treten, sind darum doch keineswegs selber bloß individueller Art. Das intellektuelle Gewissen, in dem sie sich zusammenfassen, hat ein gesellschaftliches Moment so gut wie das moralische Überich. Es bildet sich an einer Vorstellung von der richtigen Gesellschaft und deren Bürgern. Läßt einmal diese Vorstellung nach—und wer könnte noch blind vertrauend ihr sich überlassen—, so verliert der intellektuelle Drang nach unten seine Hemmung, und aller Unrat, den die barbarische Kultur im Individuum zurückgelassen hat, Halbbildung, sich Gehenlassen, plumpe Vertraulichkeit, Ungeschliffenheit, kommt zum Vorschein. Meist rationalisiert es sich auch noch als Humanität, als den Willen, anderen Menschen sich verständlich zu machen, als welterfahrene Verantwortlichkeit. Aber das Opfer der intellektuellen Selbstdisziplin fällt dem, der es auf sich nimmt, viel zu leicht, als daß man ihm glauben dürfte, daß es eines ist.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 8
Minima Moralia (1951)

“All the world's not a stage.”

Theodor W. Adorno libro Minima Moralia

E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 94
Minima Moralia (1951)

“Always with Beckett there is a technical reduction to the extreme. … But this reduction is really what the world makes out of us …that is the world has made out of us these stumps of men … these men who have actually lost their I, who are really the products of the world in which we live.”

Immer von Beckett ist eine technische Reduktion bis zum äußersten. … Aber diese Reduktion ist ja wirklich das was die Welt aus uns macht … das heißt die Welt aus uns gemacht diese Stümpfe von Menschen also diese Menschen die eigentlich ihr ich ihr verloren haben die sind wirklich die Produkte der Welt in der wir leben.
"Beckett and the Deformed Subject" (Lecture)

“In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than the glorification of the splendid system that makes them so.”

Theodor W. Adorno libro Minima Moralia

Die Glorifizierung der prächtigen underdogs läuft auf die des prächtigen Systems heraus, das sie dazu macht.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 7
Minima Moralia (1951)

“In general they are intoxicated by the fame of mass culture, a fame which the latter knows how to manipulate; they could just as well get together in clubs for worshipping film stars or for collecting autographs. What is important to them is the sense of belonging as such, identification, without paying particular attention to its content.”

Their applause, cued in by a light-signal, is transmitted directly on the popular radio programmes they are permitted to attend. They call themselves 'jitter-bugs', bugs which carry out reflex movements, performers of their own ecstasy. Merely to be carried away by anything at all, to have something of their own, compensates for their impoverished and barren existence. The gesture of adolescence, which raves for this or that on one day with the ever-present possibility of damning it as idiocy on the next, is now socialized.
Perennial fashion — Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith, ISBN 0094602204

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