Excerpt

The standard empiricist criticism of Theodor W. Adorno is that he privileges theory over practice.¹ No episode in his life better encapsulates this problematic than his famously unsuccessful collaboration with the positivistic social scientist Paul Lazarsfeld on the Princeton Radio Research Project (1938–41). Prior to the publication of Current of Music, the collection of Adorno's writings and lectures from this period, it was possible to read this episode in terms of a caricatured dichotomy between Lazarsfeld's scientific empiricism and Adorno's empty speculation (and difficult personality). But now we no longer have to rely solely on the later recollections of Adorno,…