Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory: Aesthetic Display of the Empirical Reality

Öz

Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory illuminates the basic question of the aesthetic claim to truth. Adorno’s text presents key philosophical questions about the nature of aesthetics. Through grounding Adorno’s aesthetic theory in Hegelian logic, this article explicates why and how the veracity of a modern artwork dwells in its claim to the truth of its own untruth. What is the relation between aesthetic truth and the objective truth of empirical reality? Can aesthetic truth disclose the truth of empirical reality? By relating negatively to what Adorno calls the empirical reality, modern artworks not only become identical to their nonidentity, but also present that which they are nonidentical with as their formative ground. If the truth of an object is mediated, aesthetic truth must disclose the degree of objectivity found in empirical reality. Consequently, aesthetic truth becomes for-itself a mediated truth, and aesthetic truth comes to reveal the mediatedness of empirical reality.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Adorno
• Aesthetic Theory
• Aesthetic Negativity
• Mediation
• Aesthetic Identification
• Aesthetic Pleasure

Adorno’nun Estetik Kuramı: Ampirik Gerçekliğin Estetik Görünüşü

Öz

Theodor Adorno'nun Estetik Kuramı estetik gerçekliğin ne olduğunu incelerken estetiğin doğası hakkında temel felsefi sorular sorar. Bu makale, Adorno'nun estetik kuramını Hegel mantığına dayandırarak modern sanatın gerçekliğinin ne olduğunu araştırmaktadır. Estetik gerçeklik ile ampirik gerçeklik arasındaki ilişki nedir? Estetik hakikat, ampirik gerçekliğin hakikatini gösterebilir mi? Ampirik gerçeklik ile değilleme üzerinden ilişki kurarak modern sanat kendiyle özdeş olmayarak kendine özdeş olur, modern sanatın biçimlendirici temeli bu özdeş olmama durumudur. Sonuç olarak, estetik hakikat kendisi için dolayımlanmış bir hakikat haline gelir ve ampirik gerçekliğin dolayımsallığını ortaya çıkarır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Adorno
• Estetik Kuram
• Estetik Değilleme
• Dolayım
• Estetik Özdeşleşme
• Estetik Haz

Kaynakça

1. Adorno, T. (1997). Aesthetic Theory (trans. by R. Hullot-Kentor). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
2. Adorno, T. (2003). Negative Dialectics. New York: Continuum.
3. Friedman, G. (1981). The Political Philosophy of the Frankfurt School. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
4. Hegel, G. W. F. (1812/2010). The Science of Logic (trans. by G. Giovanni). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5. Jay, M. (1996). The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research 1923–1950. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
6. Menke, C. (1998). The Sovereignty of Art: Aesthetic Negativity in Adorno and Derrida (trans. by N. Solomon). Cambridge: The MIT Press.
7. Wellmer, A. (1991). The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and Postmodernism (trans. by D. Midgley). Cambridge: The MIT Press.
8. Wiggershaus, R. (1995). The Frankfurt School, Its History, Theories and Political Significance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.