Negativity, Transcendance, Utopia

The Artwork's Dialectic in the Aesthetic's Theory of Adorno

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between negativity and trascendence as it emerges in the aesthetic thought of Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, for which the potential of a work of art is the possibility contained within itself, and which coincides with its utopic dimension. It is precisely this utopic dimension that impedes a complete identification between a work of art and a piece of merchandise. From this point of you, this paper examines how, through the uninterruped relationship between essence and appearance, language and reality, thought and perception, the power of a work of art coincides with its capacity to show how things could be different from actual reality.