Masoud Muhammad and Theodor Adorno on Art: A Comparative Study

Abstract

A comparative analysis of two great thinkers who are placed in different geographical, social, cultural, and intellectual contexts is a difficult task. Masoud Muhammad a Kurdish Philosopher and Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher, are belonging to two different cultural and intellectual traditions but it can be argued that the core of their philosophical views and analysis on art are thematically connected and astoundingly close. Muhammad and Adorno are doing the same thing, but at a different level, context, and different methods regarding art. They both lived during the dark times of totalitarian regimes: Nazism and Ba’athism in Germany and Iraq respectively. In this paper, I will propose to show that it is possible to establish similarities between the philosophical views of these two thinkers based on three presuppositions. First, both Masoud Muhammad and Adorno’s point of departure is the criticizing Marxist art theory. Second, for Muhammad art is a social fact, and not an imitation of society’s reality, since art is the self-expression of the artist; Also for Adorno art is a social fact and in the meantime, it is independent from society. Third, in Muhammad’s view, art is autonomous and free; therefore it would not be affiliated with any ideologies. In the same manner, Adorno argues that art is autonomous and critical to society. The forgoing illustrated that these three presuppositions set the tone for the theme and hypothesis of this paper. The main goal of this paper is to examine the similarities between Adorno and Muhammad's philosophical views concerning art.