"Critical Models combines into a single volume two of Adorno's most important postwar works — Interventions: Nine Critical Models (1963) and Catchwords: Critical Models II (1969). Written after his return to Germany in 1949, the articles, essays, and radio talks included in this volume speak to the pressing political, cultural, and philosophical concerns of the postwar era. The pieces in Critical Models reflect the intellectually provocative as well as the practical Adorno as he addresses such issues as the dangers of ideological conformity, the fragility of democracy, educational reform, the influence of television and radio, and the aftermath of fascism. This new edition includes an introduction by Lydia Goehr, a renowned scholar in philosophy, aesthetic theory, and musicology. Goehr illuminates Adorno's ideas as well as the intellectual, historical, and critical contexts that shaped his postwar thinking"

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) was a cultural philosopher, sociologist, literary critic, and historian of music who, along with Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Fromm, founded the Frankfurt School. Against Epistemology is one of his most important works. It inspired Habermas and Marcuse and continues to influence other eminent thinkers in philosophy and the social sciences today. Against Epistemology is in essence a long essay against Western metaphysics or, as Adorno put it, "the lordship of the subject." Traditional philosophy, he noted, leads in practice to fascism. In this book, he combines analytic philosophy, social theory, and cultural criticism to try to show how epistemology betrays experience, using Husserl's work as a concrete model.

"In autumn 1962 Theodor W. Adorno gave a lecture on fighting antisemitism to the German Coordinating Council of Societies for Christian-Jewish Cooperation, a lecture that remains as topical and urgent today as it was in the 1960s. After the Second World War, Germany was grappling with a reluctance to admit collective guilt for the horrors of the Holocaust and German society was witnessing the emergence of various forms of hidden or 'crypto' antisemitism. In his lecture Adorno demonstrated that antisemitism is a central and essential element of right-wing extremism and is identical in structure to racism. It is accompanied by an authoritarian mindset and a conformist anti-intellectualism. Moreover, a classic trick used by anti-Semites is to protest against taboos which prevent them from freely spreading their hate by classing them as a form of persecution, and to present themselves as victims of it. The only antidote to this poison is an unwavering loyalty to the truth in dealing with historical and political realities. Adorno advocates an anti-authoritarian programme to prevent antisemitic character development and advises taking firm action against outbreaks of antisemitic behaviour. His brilliant analysis of the sources and dangers of antisemitism is as relevant now as it was sixty years ago"--Publisher's description.