Kant’s and Andersen’s Nightingale and Adorno’s Mimesis. An Essay on the 18th- and 19th-century Prehistory of Some Motifs in Aesthetic Theory

Abstract

The essay focuses on some aspects of Theodor W. Adorno’s Aestethic Theory viewed as a specific kind of reinterpretation of – as well as discussion with – the Kantian and romantic ideas of natural beauty. The article’s axis is the motif of the nightingale’s singing as a paradigm of natural beauty used by Kant’s in his Critic of the Power of Judgement and its reinterpretation in Hans Christian Andersen’s well-known fairy-tale, both addressed in the same paragraph of Adorno’s study. The reconstruction of Adorno’s concept of mimesis as an impulse towards the non-subjective, combining spontaneity with involuntariness, reactivity with creative and shaping character, and ultimately questioning the rational construction of the subject by dividing it from what is different, allows to show how and to what extent the early romantic vision of an artist participating in the spontaneity of nature could be preserved in Adorn’s aesthetic thought – the same time, however, denied by the indelible artifacticity – semblance character – of the work of art.