Adorno could not specify criteria distinguishing resigned from oppositional art.

Evidence

Adorno tried to give a more or less transcendental justification for this demand for a living element, seeing it as a kind of condition of possibility for music. But this also failed to provide an answer to the question of what criteria were to be used to distinguish between an attitude of `that’s the way it is’ that was accepting of given conditions, and one that was implacably opposed to them. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2195

Categorization

• QUESTION: Adorno’s intractable problem — no criteria to tell ‘that’s the way it is’ resignation from implacable opposition — is worth chasing across his later aesthetic theory.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno admitted the critique’s standpoint versus criticized standpoint was theoretically unclear; Adorno rejected any identity of theory and practice — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 341; Adorno’s modernism was historicist, not prescriptive about art’s future — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 59

Broader Connections

• Adorno admitted the critique’s standpoint versus criticized standpoint was theoretically unclear #corroborates (0.90)
• Adorno rejected any identity of theory and practice #corroborates (0.78) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 341
• Adorno’s modernism was historicist, not prescriptive about art’s future #qualifies (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 59