Adorno versus Lyotard. Modern and Post-modern Aesthetics

It is well-known that Theodor W. Adorno developed his aesthetic theory on the basis of his profound knowledge of music. The importance of music for Jean-François Lyotard, however, is far less known; neither is Adorno`s influence on the French thinker. Despite the broad reception of his so-called "postmodern" thought, philosophers as well as musicologists have rarely mentioned the importance of his aesthetics for 20th and 21st century music. By comparing it with Adorno`s philosophy of music, this book aims at initiating an adequate reception of Lyotard`s oeuvre from a musicological standpoint. Thus it depicts the development from Lyotard`s "pagan" beginnings to his later concept of an "informal" art. As the first extensive comparison of both thinkers, it also intends to contribute to the exploration of Critical Theory`s reception in France. The first chapter describes the relationship between the critique of culture and the conception of art with both thinkers. As early texts by Lyotard in particular are explored for this purpose, it is initially the distance between them that stands out, even if considerable parallels in their views on art and society emerge already at this point of the study. For both are influenced by a Marxist view of social critique. Lyotard, however, is more radical than Adorno. At first his aim is to replace theory and critique by an "affirmative" and, at the same time, revolutionary practice. As far as music history is concerned, their approaches are different, too: Whereas Adorno takes the classical and the romantic repertory as his point of departure, Lyotard considers the avant-garde as a model. By comparing Lyotard`s critical writings on language with Adorno`s Negative Dialectics, the second chapter retraces the evolution from initial parallels to Lyotard`s direct continuation of Adorno`s thought by. Both criticise language`s tendency towards abstraction which, from their viewpoint, is not able to capture the sensual quality of the world. In order to do justice to the latter, Adorno conceives his method of contradiction. Lyotard, by contrast, develops his concept of the different, in order to recall what cannot be expressed in words. In direct continuation of Adorno he discusses the aftermath of Auschwitz for art and thinking and assigns an ethic function to art. Exploring the Kantian reception of both authors, the third chapter exposes Lyotard`s increasing convergence with Adorno. As a basis, both share with Walter Benjamin the idea of a crisis of perception in modernity and discuss its consequences for art. Both define the work of art merely from the listener`s viewpoint. Therefore, it is the category of the sublime which is at the centre of their interest. Due to the increasingly evident disenchantment of the capitalist, enlightened world as well as the progressive loss of transcendence, the sublime has undergone important changes that, in Lyotard`s point of view, indicate a deep crisis of the arts. The fourth chapter deals with two main topics which Lyotard explores in a continuation of Adorno: first, his deliberations concerning the liberation of the material. His thoughts on law and material continue Adorno`s reflections on the relationship between construction and expression in the process of the musical work`s formation and second, his exploration of art`s temporal dimensions. It is this topic that explains their interest in music, the art of time.