Between Adorno and Habermas: notes about the intellectual experience of Albrecht Wellmer

Abstract

Albrecht Wellmer is an author belonging to the second generation of the so-called Frankfurt School – or Critical Theory of Society. This article aims to show how the paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness, characteristic of the first generation, is overcome by the philosophy of language as proposed by Habermas, configuring in this way the epistemological movement to the second generation. On the basis of this transition of paradigm I try to show that one of the most important differences of Wellmer in relation to Habermas refers to the way in which he interprets Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, by ascribattributing to it the status of a theory of communication, since the aesthetic claim of the modern work of art also involves a truth claim, which supports the “situationist perspective of truth” advocated by Wellmer.