Bildung e Halbbildung in Theodor W. Adorno

Abstract

This essay examines Bildung as the nucleus around which Theodor W. Adorno's theory develops. Adorno insists on the link between Bildung and culture, which is fruitful only when the latter is expressed in its inevitably contradictory character in relation to the status quo, not in its affirmative character. For this reason, Adorno's criticism of the culture industry is inextricably linked to the concept of Halbbildung. This is, so to speak, the subjective side of the culture industry: not immature, but perverse, deformed Bildung. The formation of the individual is no longer addressed to the criticism of the existing, but to its confirmation and ratification. Only education, such as education to the tension inherent in the cultural work, can resist the proliferation of individuals for whom what matters is not personal experience, but the ability to recognize, in a world reduced to a museum, the objects that are placed in front of them from time to time.