Committed and autonomous art in Theodor Adorno's thought

Abstract

In the essay Engagement, published in 1962, Theodor Adorno discusses the duality between committed and autonomous literature, noticing that at his time the controversy doesn't stand in the level of human survival and life in society, but presents itself as an intellectual speculation. This text recovers Adorno's main ideas concerning the subject and tries to reflect upon them. The German thinker shows the two poles of thoughts on the problem and says that the tension between them is now dissolved. He then talks about the confusions of the debate about commitment, and offers some reflections upon philosophy and art in Sartre's work, Bertolt Brecht's didacticism in art, as well as his treatment of fascism, the relation between politics and poetic tone, the problem of suffering related to the work of art, the contemporary experimentalism of Kafka and Becket, the cultural traditions in France and Germany, and the relations between politics and autonomous art.