Peter Uwe Hohendahl is Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including Reappraisals: Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical Theory.

[The Fleeting Promise]registers the profound shift in perspectives between [Aesthetic Theory's] initial reception in the context of the left radicalism of 1968 and the present moment. It is a shift which not only invites a return to but also paradoxically entails a historicization of Adorno which reveals an underground history of Critical Theory that can no longer be understood simply in terms of its 'progressive' recovery in the 1960s as part of the student revolt against the silence after 1945 regarding the crimes of the Third Reich....The Fleeting Promise of Art is an invitation to reread Adorno. The challenge of defending Adorno today may not have become easier, but it has become more interesting.- Peter Uwe Hohendahl (Thesis Eleven)

• AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroductionPart I1. Human Freedom and the Autonomy of Art: The Legacy of Kant2. The Ephemeral and the Absolute: The Truth Content of Art3. Aesthetic Violence: The Concepts of the Ugly and PrimitivePart II4. Reality, Realism, and Representation5. A Precarious Balance: Rereading German ClassicismEpilogueNotesIndex

Peter Uwe Hohendahl is Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including Reappraisals: Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical Theory.

[The Fleeting Promise]registers the profound shift in perspectives between [Aesthetic Theory's] initial reception in the context of the left radicalism of 1968 and the present moment. It is a shift which not only invites a return to but also paradoxically entails a historicization of Adorno which reveals an underground history of Critical Theory that can no longer be understood simply in terms of its 'progressive' recovery in the 1960s as part of the student revolt against the silence after 1945 regarding the crimes of the Third Reich....The Fleeting Promise of Art is an invitation to reread Adorno. The challenge of defending Adorno today may not have become easier, but it has become more interesting.- Peter Uwe Hohendahl (Thesis Eleven)

• AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroductionPart I1. Human Freedom and the Autonomy of Art: The Legacy of Kant2. The Ephemeral and the Absolute: The Truth Content of Art3. Aesthetic Violence: The Concepts of the Ugly and PrimitivePart II4. Reality, Realism, and Representation5. A Precarious Balance: Rereading German ClassicismEpilogueNotesIndex

Peter Uwe Hohendahl is Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. He is the author of many books, including Reappraisals: Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical Theory.

[The Fleeting Promise]registers the profound shift in perspectives between [Aesthetic Theory's] initial reception in the context of the left radicalism of 1968 and the present moment. It is a shift which not only invites a return to but also paradoxically entails a historicization of Adorno which reveals an underground history of Critical Theory that can no longer be understood simply in terms of its 'progressive' recovery in the 1960s as part of the student revolt against the silence after 1945 regarding the crimes of the Third Reich....The Fleeting Promise of Art is an invitation to reread Adorno. The challenge of defending Adorno today may not have become easier, but it has become more interesting.- Peter Uwe Hohendahl (Thesis Eleven)

• AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroductionPart I1. Human Freedom and the Autonomy of Art: The Legacy of Kant2. The Ephemeral and the Absolute: The Truth Content of Art3. Aesthetic Violence: The Concepts of the Ugly and PrimitivePart II4. Reality, Realism, and Representation5. A Precarious Balance: Rereading German ClassicismEpilogueNotesIndex