The Necessary Evil: Adorno's defense of Modernism

Due to his awareness of problems of Modernism, Adorno's plea for modernism is not a simple advocacy but a critical defense. And that makes his aesthetical theory has something to do with (postmodernism). This essay tries to disclose essential difference between his theory of modernism and that of postmodernism. While former adheres to modernism which is regarded as the necessary evil to achieve goodness of artistic truth, latter totally abandons modernism and its truth appeal. Adorno thought that contrast between pre-capitalist society and capitalist society does not lie in fact that capitalism destroys cultural autonomy. On contrary, however, autonomy of cultural form can only be acquired under condition of capitalism. When works of art can be exchanged as (commodities), they are disentangled from religious context and become autonomous. This point has often been neglected by Chinese scholars who tend to emphasize adorno's insistence on artistic autonomy and his opposition to capitalism and its cultural industry. Although Adorno abandons Lukacs' concept of historical subjectivity, he never gives up hypothesis of historical unity-the unity of continuity and discontinuity, and this hypothesis makes Adorno see historical import of modern art in truth which it disclosed. And it is very hypothesis that makes Adorno differ from many postmodernists, especially those of deconstructionists. Thus whole problem involves in Adorno's special conception of metaphysics which is different both from traditional conception of metaphysics and from postmodernist conception of the end of (metaphysics)-non-identical thinking or negative dialectics. In thinking about metaphysical foundation of Adorno's aesthetics, first question results from reliance on concept of truth as self-presentation of reality. It is maintaining of this idea that makes Adorno differentiate from post-structuralists who (totally) deny concept of truth and from Habermasian critics who confirm only discourse concept of truth.