Philosopher

Theodor Adorno

German critical theorist — the culture industry and negative dialectics

Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt · Germany · d. 11 September 1903 (Frankfurt am Main) — 6 August 1969 (Visp, Switzerland)

Returned to Frankfurt in 1949 to rebuild the Institute for Social Research after years of American exile. Dialectic of Enlightenment, written with Max Horkheimer and published in 1947, argued that reason had turned into a machinery of domination. Minima Moralia (1951) made the same case in fragments. He died of a heart attack at Visp in Switzerland on 6 August 1969, leaving Aesthetic Theory unfinished.