Critical theory and training

The book presents the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno's contributions on aesthetics as a formative experience. It analyses the transformation of the emancipating characteristics of reason into instrumental rationality, which has overshadowed the potentialities of thinking. In the process of cultural commodification, designated as the cultural industry, he notes a perverse extension of the rationalisation process. It investigates the contributions of aesthetic experience to training as a possibility of expanding the human/rational capacity to interpret elements of reality. In Adorno's thought, the aesthetic experience is presented as a counterpoint to the logic of instrumental reason and the cultural industry because it favors the formation of senses, sharpens critical thinking, benefits the admiration, the estrangement, helps to think reality in numerous ways. Thus, it contributes to human formation.