Hello and welcome to philosophy of art aesthetics and politics.

For this lecture we are talking

about the German philosopher Theodor Adorno and in particular his essay “On the Fetish
Character in Music and The Regression of Listening.” We're not going to be talking about the
contents of the essay in detail because I will leave that to those who will lead the discussion,
but I will touch upon several concepts in order to lay the background and in order for us to
understand the ideas behind the readings. This lecture will come in four parts, the first part is
about the Marxist concepts about Adorno uses, which doesn't really explain in detail. If you
read the essay you will notice that there are a lot of references to Marxist concepts and
references to Marxist ideas which Adorno didn't really spend time to explain. so in order for us
to have a good grasp of what he's trying to tell us here about aesthetics and politics, I think it's
fair enough that we would explain these Marxist concepts that he uses or used or he referred
to predominantly in this essay. so the first part is about the Marxist concepts that adorno used
and then the second part of the lecture is about the continuity between Bordeaux and adorno's
thoughts on taste and how it shifted in the 20th century so the discussion adorno is very much
connected to the discussion of words you and tastes from the previous lecture they're both
sociologists, they're both philosophers and they sort of had almost the same approach or the
same project and yeah different conclusion probably but they approach the problem from this
more or less similar starting point so there is a continuity between your work which will try to
draw on. also we will draw the stark contrast between their projects and their response to their
to the crisis of taste which we started discussing from last week and

From last week and then Thirdly we will also talk about what the space has to do with politics in
adorno what are the political stakes in his analysis of music how did he discuss stay store how
did he refer to days I if you ready I say it's actually in the first part of the essay he automatically
authorized it tells us what he thinks about this so we will also touch upon that topic for this
lecture and then Lastly we will talk about how we status is meant to play a reconciling or
unifying role in adornos account um so we will talk about the dimension of aesthetics and
politics in adorno's essay and we will see how different he's conclusion is from that bordu
because were Jews were has a strong tendency to be divisive but in adorna we will sense this
feeble hope for a better future to come after the Golden goal revolution OK so for him
aesthetics sort of has a Recon siling role or a unifying role rather than on divisive role as what
we have seen in Bordeaux and then if we still have time or we could probably talk about this in
the online forms and in the discussion later we will try to answer your question about the
relevance of reading adorno today to what degree is any of these discussion that we're going to
have relevant OK so we're going to try to make sense of the discussion by contemplating on the
relevance of reading adorno in the present so before I proceed to the first part of the lecture let
me just give you a brief background about adorno and his project as a philosopher it's not in
any way very detailed so we're just going to skim through his biography and try to situate his
project in the discussion of aesthetics and why he's probably irrelevant for us when it comes to
aesthetics and politics so we have had classical philosophers um like you we've had historian
historian in the in the person of getting Skinner and then we also discussed a sociologist from
last lecture bordu and then on Wednesday we are talking about a contemporary French
philosopher runs here and then after this discussion we're going back to Plato so if you notice
we are trying to cover a lot of fingers from different historical periods because as I mentioned in
the syllables what we're trying to do is we're trying to cast a wide net to capture several
dimensions of aesthetics and politics so from the previous lecture we were looking at aesthetics
from the specific angle of taste as a skill and we preceded to determine how taste is relevant
for politics when it comes to the question of social stratification of subjects and a lot of you
have had the impression that taste is divisive because that's generally what we get from from
board you and even from uhm although although you probably you know it did not really mean
to to say those things in that manner but we board you definitely he meant it in that way he
meant to tell us that taste is a tool for social stratification and it divides society according to the
things that they like and it tells us what each particular class likes in comparison to what you
know the lower classes like for example we can tell what the lower classes like in comparison to
what the those in the higher classes like and that would be through their taste so for this week
we're talking about theater or no um either adorno wasn't destined to be a philosopher he is he
started out not as a philosopher um he was one of a of a bourgeois family that dad was a
Jewish yeah Jewish and then his mom was Catholic who's winning Frankfurt Frankfurt so this is
German philosopher and he wasn't destined to be a philosopher because he was gifted from
music and he was destined to be a composer so we went to Vienna to study under the great
composer Alban Berg Berg was famous for developing Schaumburg 12 octave music if you have
this if you have a time maybe you can look it up and try to listen to it on YouTube it's sort of like
a deconstructed kind of classical music if you're familiar with the theremin um sounds like that
screechy right on OK um kind of music but still has the elements of classical music so adorno
was trained in this tradition and he was not just a mediocre student he was a gifted musician it
was also a gifted composer and he studied under you know a great teacher because he said he
came from a bourgeois family so using for example board use analysis adorno blocks the higher
class so he was exposed to higher types of you know fine art now adorno had a clear path to
becoming a leading composer because I suggest mentioned it was a gifted musician um but in
as much as he was a gifted musician he can also think about music I don't know any other
philosopher who the thought about music or who contemplated about music the way that
adorno did he specific training as a musician gave him a unique perspective about music and he
philosophised with this idea or revision knowledge of music so today he's an important
reference in the sociology of music Anne maybe you would ask me why is music relevant in
politics and aesthetics because you know it's not as explicit as images or us is not it's not as
explicit as visual representations and when we think of a statics the first English comes home
remind is oftentimes only painting and visual representation or also written discourses or
literature or propaganda materials for your goals so our understanding of aesthetics is mostly
or predominantly um can find the idea of the visual but here's the door now we're talking about
another kind of art another kind of medium of art which is not visual so here we are exploring
other dimension of aesthetics which is not visual and let's see what we can get from that you
know from that specific idea of a form of art which is not as explicit as a visual representation
um for adorno what happens to music how music is made how it is distributed how is it
consumed for adorno what happens to music is revealing of our time but then that is not
politics that's social theory that's sociology that's social criticism so distinctions are important
especially in your research be'cause sociology social criticism and social theory is about
identifying and recognizing patterns Social Research is not philosophy philosophy is when you
think about the patterns and think about them and puret rather than just laying them down an
you know presenting the data philosophy is thinking about the implications in theory and in
practice um thinking about the implications of the data that you gather from Social Research so
you have to go beyond the taxonomies you know beyond the surveys in order for your users to
be considered us as philosophy um again I'm not gonna do well on that on that topic I'm just
I'm just trying to establish why adorno philosophize through music and why it is relevant for
politics and aesthetics so for adorn again what happens to music is revealing of our time but
then that's not politics and that's not philosophy but that social theory and that sociology so
we're looking at politics here from a specific angle we're not looking at politics in relation to a
sovereign like for example in Velasquez is the last one in us or in relation to a commune like in
Camden skinners reading of lorenzetti's fresco we're not talking about politics as a form of
mobilization or the movement of people with thinking about politics and aesthetics in terms of
music or through the specific lens of adorno we are talking about politics as the critique and
hopefully the transformation of wrong social relations we're talking about politics of or within
social relation and this is a specific meaning of politics because this is politics as critical theory
or us a form of social inquiry and this specific project is is visible in adorno because obviously he
came from the Frankfurt school of critical theory wherein the main point of this school of
thought the main point of critical theory is to marry a miracle studies of society like political
economy psychology sociology with philosophy gay to do a form of contemporary society which
um which they think is better grounded than empirical positivist formal sociology so the
Frankfurt school of critical theory why did you marry empirical studies of society political
economy marks psychology Freud sociology veber A marry these empirical studies of society
with philosophy they do a form of a critique of contemporary society which they think is better
grounded than empirical positivist formal sociology they were thinking along the lines of what
most of philosophy students are probably thinking when they get tired of philosophy you know
that moment when you don't understand what you're doing and you can't really make sense of
while you're doing what you're doing because you're dealing with so much abstract ideas so
there's a moment in our journey as philosophy students were in we question what we're doing
and we question the significance of studying so much abstract ideas on we ask what's the use of
these ideas that we're studying and how we're going to apply them in society so the critical
theory of Frankfurt school is grounded on that on that motivation and the solution that they
found for philosophy OK coming from Marxist school too you know that famous idea about
philosophers I was said so much about the world the point is to change it again thesis 11 so it's
like the critical theory of the Frankfurt school is grounded on the idea that we cannot just be
philosophers from the ivory tower and if we want to be effective philosophers then we need to
think of we need to use philosophy in order to solve our our social our social problems and the
result of that kind of impetus or that kind of grounding is to come up with a way to fuse
together empirical studies and philosophy and the result is critical theory so why why would
they do that or why would they think of that kind of method philosophy plays a role in social
logical in Greece be'cause it clarifies and hopefully makes consistent the methods of the angry
and the conclusions which are outside of the social logical point of view the specific the specific
contribution of philosophy to the empirical studies of society's that they can question the
method philosophy can question the method of social logical in Greece and philosophy can help
can help sorry can help clarify the methods of social logical in Greece so in a way is sort of
depends the method of um empirical studies of society philosophy depends the method of the
empirical studies of society by providing a more stable theoretical ground for the methods or
for the methodology of these Social Research is now adorno was a Marxist in the classical sense
he incorporated political economy the view of history and their view of politics but to
philosophy but the emphasis is always in the philosophy of Marx he comes from the 1st
generation of the Frankfurt school where in one of the main themes of this first generation is to
push Marxist thought further so they talked about the criticism of he in particular adorno
discussed or talked about philosophize about the criticism of musical consumption as a
symptom of the barbarism of contemporary capitalism and the feeble anticipation of how
things can be better in some distant future so he pushed the ideas of Marx further he uses
Marxist concept apply this to his analysis of musical consumption and social logical analysis
'cause he was talking about musical consumption and by marrying sociology and philosophy he
comes home he comes up with a method of criticizing musical consumption and pushes or
comes up with the idea that contemporary music or musical consumption is a symptom of the
barbarism of contemporary capitalism so uses music or consumption as a criticism of an
temporary capitalism and at the same time he also proposes a way out of this um a way out of
this problem of capitalism through music as well so now let's talk about the concepts that come
from marks particularly important for the technical concepts which are relevant today it's it's
handy to have an understanding of this ideas because if your research or your interest is
particularly in 20th century European social philosophy then you can't really get away from
marks so let's start trying to understand these concepts or maybe you do have an
understanding of these concepts already so let's just enrich our understanding over going South
in adorno's essay the central concept is that of commodity fetishism and you will find
commodity fetishism from Section 4 chapter one volume one of Marxists desk capital a section
for chapter one volume one of Das kapital Marx talks about commodity fetishism so commodity
is a Marxist term and when we speak of commodity not everything in the world is a commodity
because commodity is a very specific kind of thing commodity for marks is something that has
both one use value until exchange value speak of commodity in Marxist concept or context
rather we're talking about something that has both use value and exchange value but what is
used value and what is exchange value so Marx distinguishes between the use value and
exchange value of the commodity he he tells us that use value is inextricably tide the physical
properties of the commodity that is the material users to which the object can actually be put
in particular use value fulfills a human need based on its physical properties so for example a
chair fulfills the need for our behind the rest on a table fulfills the use value of providing a
surface to put things on and to use for our activities append provides the use value For us to be
able to write K the use value is rooted in the object in the objects material constitution or the
material constitution of the object and there are those objects which has use value but which
are not commodified so for example in a polite society um the plants in the forest are not
commodities in a polite society air is also not a command commodity sunshine is also not a
commodity in a polite society human beings are not commodities so use value is um an object
or then object possesses a which pertains to his physical physical properties so what's exchange
value change value on the other hand doesn't work like use value in the exchange of goods on
the capital market exchange value dominates to commodities can be exchanged on the open
market because they are always being compared to a third term that functions as their
universal equivalent a function that is eventually taken over by money exchange value must
always be distinguished from use value because they change relation of commodities is
characterized precisely but its abstraction from their use value in the US capital money takes
the form of that equivalence however money in fact hides the real equivalent behind the
exchange what is that labor the more labor it takes to produce a product the greater its value
marks therefore concludes that as a changed values all commodities are merely definite
quantities of congealed labor time even in the face of their qualitative difference everything has
labor factor and that that remains bear quantitative value or exchange value what does this
have to do with fetishism they change value of a commodity is determined by the amount of
socially necessary labor time invested in the production of that particular object when you go to
a store for example you don't see all the human labor and the interaction between the
individual laborers that went into the production and distribution of that particular commodity
that you're seeing for example when you are buying a plant and you're looking at the blank
from the shell on the shelf you don't see the indigenous person or the lumad who climbed the
mountain to get those rare plants you don't see the Potter who shaped the shiny glistening pots
you don't see the person working on the soil OK all you see is the commodity the plant on the
shelf as a result of that you see the relative value of 1 commodity in relation to another not as
an expression of the human labor that went into producing those two things you see it as a
difference between the two commodities for example to see the iPhone next to a Huawei
phone you know that inherently the iPhone is more expensive than the war way phone so it's
not surprising when you find the prices reflect this exchange value so when you look at the
objects in a store you don't really see the story or the whole production process that went on
or that took place for that particular product TV on that shelf you're thinking or you're seeing
the product exchange value how much is this product you're thinking of how much money you
need to let go in exchange of owning that particular product you don't see the labor that took
place OK you don't see the whole production which happened to allow that product to be on
the shelf what does this have to do with fetishism what is a fetish a fetish is an object that we
take to have a kind of human power but it doesn't actually have for instance think about the
thumb of a St that we think possesses power and we pray to this relic thinking that it was as his
power and that it can intervene with our lives K we commodity fetishism is the same we take
objects to have a kind of power on their own when in fact the power that those objects have is
imbued in them by human social connections the object comes to take on a kind of a magical
human power because we don't see the truly human and social source of that power which is
concealed by the commodity form so for example when you parade your iPhone as a form of
social status you are not seeing the laborers who put together the different parts of the iPhone
you are not parading the social production behind the iPhone you're parading the exchange
value of difan the value of the money that you let go of to get the iPhone so um it's a kind of
fetishism because you're attributing a certain kind of value to to an object which it doesn't
really have be'cause um we are holding it in our hands for example and once it becomes part of
our possession it gets disconnected from from the whole production process on it sort of games
of particular status which we think makes us powerful or which gives that object a certain kind
of power to give us status a a commodity therefore is a mysterious thing this is marks marks in
the US capital Section 4 volume one said that a commodity is therefore a mysterious thing
simply be'cause in it the social character of men's labor appears to them as an objective
character stamped upon the product of that labor because the relation of the producers the
sum total of their own labor is presented to them so social relation existing not between
themselves but between the products of their labor this is the reason why the products of
Labor become commodities social things whose qualities are the same time perceptible and
imperceptible by the senses end of quote so the real truth of the differences between the
exchanged values of commodities do not lie in the nature of the commodities themselves
commodities are not inherently more or less valuable they are only made valuable in
relationship to the amount of human labor that was invested in producing them but we don't
see the human process that invested labor time in the production of these commodities when
we look at the shelf we see them next to each other and so it seems like if the difference it
seems as if the difference in value between the two commodities is a relationship between the
two commodities we project the social relations between humans unto objects in a way that
gives the object an apparent power and then apparently autonomy that we don't have any
control over so that it seems as if diamonds are simply at um in and of themselves more
valuable than cold whereas in reality the value of any 2 commodities is not determined by the
internal (31:30)