Aesthetic pedagogy: Kierkegaard and Adorno on the communication of possibility

This dissertation focuses on Adorno's appropriative reading of Kierkegaard. Adorno interprets Kierkegaard's notion of the aesthetic as an active philosophical principal. He finds this principle to be at work throughout Kierkegaard's authorship as the means of the justification of the particular and concrete in defiance of their would be enslavement to the general and abstract. The aesthetic principle is that which requires Kierkegaard's readers to become active participants in the formation of the experienced meaning of his texts. Adorno's approach facilitates a reading of Kierkegaard that focuses on his pedagogical use of the communicative power of imagery. At the same time, the attention being drawn to the Kierkegaardian element of Adorno's philosophy provides a means for comprehending the experiential dimension of Adorno's writings. Both thinkers write with the goal of communicating awareness of the possibility of human freedom.