Description:
As illustrated in Goethe's famous novel of the same name, elective affinities are powerful relationships that crystallize under changing conditions. Lydia Goehr focuses on the history of elective affinities between philosophy and music from German classicism, romanticism, and idealism to the modernist aesthetic theory of Theodor W. Adorno and Arthur C. Danto. Aesthetic theory, she argues, depends on a dynamic philosophy of history centered on tendencies, yearnings, needs, and potentialities. With this in mind, she recasts the theses of Adorno and Danto regarding the death or end of philosophy, art, music, and human experience as arguments for continuation and survival. Elective Affinities tracks the migration of aesthetic and critical theory from Germany to the United States following the catastrophic period of the twentieth century marked by the Second World War.
Review Quotes: Elective Affinities is a great book. Lydia Goehr demonstrates that critical theory is not as dead or philosophically doctrinaire and petrified as many would like to believe. Instead, her study is a brilliant and persuasive intervention arguing for the significance of critical theory today, supplying the evidence that critical theory still plays a crucial role in the project of philosophy--Continental or not.--Willi Goetschel, professor of German and philosophy, University of Toronto