Art achieves objective revelation through subjective effort only at the cost of illusoriness

Evidence

As distinct from philosophy, art contained a hidden promise of happiness. It achieved what negative-dialectical philosophy was striving for: that something objective can be revealed by subjective effort'. But it could achieve this only at the cost of illusoriness. That was why every philosophy of art must at the same time be a critique of it. This was also true with regard to radical works of modern art, which preserved illusion willy-nilly by making breakdown their constitutive principle. But if works of art did not also provide a pre-conceptual fulfilment of what negative-dialectical philosophy was attempting to achieve through concepts, they at least stiffened its motivation by forcing it to reflect on the question of how they, being figures of what is existent, and incapable of summoning the non-existent into existence, could themselves become an overwhelming image of what is non-existentunless the non-existent were indeed also present in itself’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2742

Categorization

• DEFINE: Wiggershaus captures Adorno’s core distinction between art’s pre-conceptual fulfilment of negative-dialectical philosophy and that philosophy’s conceptual means — a reference-level definition of Adorno’s aesthetic theory.
• XREF: Connects to Negative Dialectics’ core method and to Adorno’s insistence that aesthetic theory must be critique; also echoes Benjamin’s artwork essay. — connects to: Art’s expression is the non-subjective trace within the subject — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2737; Art promises happiness only at the cost of illusoriness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2742; Objectivity in art requires building forms from the self rather than borrowing them — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 280 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Art redeems existence precisely by not striving to attain being #expands (0.85)