If 2019 was an “Adornian year” because of the 50th anniversary of the untimely death of Theodor W. Adorno in August 1969, also 2020 has been an “Adornian year” because of the 50th anniversary of the posthumous publication of Adorno’s great but unfinished masterpiece Aesthetic Theory, first published in 1970. Adorno’s intellectual legacy is still alive today and indeed important for the conceptual tools as it still provides to develop a critical, active and negative (instead than acritical, passive and affirmative) relationship with the real. In the vast and complex corpus of Adorno’s entire philosophical oeuvre, his aesthetic theory deserves an especially close and renewed attention today for the variety of intellectual provocations that are still richly offered to us in order to critically understand our age.
Samir Gandesha is Associate Professor in the Department of the Humanities and Director of the Institute for the Humanities at the Simon Fraser University of Vancouver.
Johan F. Hartle is Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts of Wien and Adjunct Professor at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou.
Stefano Marino is Associate Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna.