The ideas developed in this book are the product of many years of thought about not only Adorno, but also many related philosophers falling both within and without the “Continental” tradition. I would like to thank here the many people with whom I have shared discussions, mutual interests, and fruitful disagreements over these years, and from whom I have learned so much.
I am very grateful to Brian O’Connor and Peter Lamarque for their detailed and sympathetic criticism on ideas about art and philosophy that have found expression in print both here and elsewhere, and also for their continual advice and encouragement. Brian and Peter are not only preeminent in their field, but also genuinely warm men I am very pleased to know.
A great many of the ideas in this book were first discussed with James Clarke, and explored and sharpened through many exacting arguments, reading groups, and exegeses. I continue to be grateful for his insight.
I must also give special thanks to Fabian Freyenhagen. In our correspondence we have discussed a great number of ideas and papers, and Fabian’s detailed, incisive, and constructive criticism—even and especially on those areas where we do not agree—has always redounded to the benefit of my thought and work. Both Fabian and Brian read over a complete draft of this book, and what clarity it has is at least partially owed to them. I also thank Matthias Rothe for his very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this book.
I have also been very fortunate, more generally, to be able to discuss philosophy with my colleagues at York. The Department of Philosophy at the University of York has a strong tradition of detailed and clear engagement with the history of philosophy—a tradition in which I hope this book stands. I have benefited from discussing the history of philosophy with a great number of my colleagues in this vein, most especially Tom Baldwin, Mike Beaney (with whom I first read Husserl), and Tom Stoneham.
I am very grateful to Lydia Goehr for her support and encouragement for my submitting a proposal to Columbia University Press, and for her guidance and counsel throughout the process. I also thank Gregg Horowitz, Christine Dunbar, and Wendy Lochner, for all of their guidance and forbearance in the course of my preparing this book for publication.
Elements of
chapters 4 and
5 draw on, and significantly rework and expand on, parts of my earlier paper “Critique Through Autonomy: Of Monads and Mediation in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory,” in
Aesthetic and Artistic Autonomy, ed. Owen Hulatt (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 171–197.
Brendan Harrington is a deeply talented philosopher and truly great friend whom I am proud to know. The pleasure of discussing philosophy is nothing measured against, in friendship, the experience of understanding and being understood.
My parents, my sister, and my grandparents have all been integral to my life, in the love, upbringing, and values they have given me. I am very grateful to them, and am sure all our life together finds some reflection, however oblique, in this book. Finally, Lauren, my wife—to simply offer thanks seems too meager. I can only say that my life, let alone the things that occur in it, would lose its color, its savor, and its point without her.
At time of writing, our daughter is a few months from being born. She has been restless from the first time we saw her, like her parents. I hope she has her mother’s goodness. We are both looking forward to our first meeting, and I dedicate this book to her.