Adorno’s critique of Benjamin rests on three discrete philosophical objections

Evidence

Adorno’s criticism of Benjamin rested basically on three complexes of factors: (1) In important matters, Benjamin was too archaic for him, or too involved in myth, or not dialectically transcendent enough, or not thoroughly dialectical enough. (2) With regard to the demystification of art' as a special case of the dialectical self-dissolution of myth, Adorno accused Benjamin of underestimating, on the one hand, the technological rationality of autonomous art and thereby the destruction of its own aura; and, on the other, of underestimating the immanent irrationality of everyday art and the reflexive’ character of its audience, the masses, including the proletariat. (3) In addition, he considered it a fatal error that Benjamin could regard a series of facts as being unrelated to the philosophy of history, as being `collective subjective phenomena’ of some sort. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 231

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier Benjamin highlights on aura (Klages’s coinage) and on Benjamin reading the Paris Métro as mythic underworld. — connects to: Adorno’s criticisms of Benjamin’s Marxism reveal his own conception of Marxian critique — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 221; Benjamin rejected Adorno’s faith in the benevolence of autonomous art; Adorno faulted Benjamin for underestimating commodity-fetish power and dialectical mediations — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 869 (+6 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno’s criticisms of Benjamin’s Marxism reveal his own conception of Marxian critique — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 221; Benjamin rejected Adorno’s faith in the benevolence of autonomous art; Adorno faulted Benjamin for underestimating commodity-fetish power and dialectical mediations — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 869 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno faulted Benjamin for underestimating commodity-fetish power and dialectical mediations #exemplifies (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 869
• Adorno charged that Benjamin’s psychologization blocked a proper dialectic of the commodity fetish #exemplifies (0.94) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 231
• Adorno’s critique of Benjamin charged him with un-Marxist psychologizing #exemplifies (0.93) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 869
• Adorno judged Benjamin’s Marxism an unwitting productive misreading, not orthodoxy #complicates (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 297
• Benjamin rejected Adorno’s faith in the benevolence of autonomous art #complicates (0.72)