There are two genres of philosophical writings, in my opinion: the approachable and the near-impossible. That said, I am at a stage of my reading where I only read non-fiction, focusing on art, history, and philosophy. It is a complete intellectual joy when these three themes are combined in a single book, and that is the case with two books I’ve just completed, Albert Camus’ Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, and Theodor Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. In the hierarchy of the approachable, reading this book by Camus is like listening to a brilliant friend who is speaking with animated passion late at night over several glasses of wine. On the other hand, last year The Wall Street Journal described Adorno as a “Marxist provocateur” with a writing style in German that “almost resists comprehension, let alone translation.” I spent just a few weeks reading the Camus and over half a year with the Adorno. At first, I didn’t know why I continued to read Aesthetic Theory because it was so difficult–near impossible–and then, slowly, but surely, the main ideas began to settle into my own dense mind, and the book became a source of incredible excitement, exposing limitless possibilities for how I will view art and history in the future.

The title of the Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death sounds dark and depressing, but this is not the case. Camus was lumped in with the Existentialist school of philosophy, a categorical description which he denied and was at odds with. These essays do expose an idea of a Godless world with no meaning, and then uplift the reader with the animated charge and mission of filling the world with purpose, freedom, and liberty to defeat nihilism, fascism, totalitarianism, and other forms of repressive society. Camus, a Nobel Prize winner in literature, died in a tragic auto accident in 1960 and I found myself wondering what he would have made of the societal changes that occurred in the sixties.

Among the finest of the essays by Camus in this collection were his descriptions of his colleagues and their work in the French Resistance during World War II and I especially enjoyed the section called “The Artist and His Time,” a collection of his thoughts on the place of the artist in society and the responsibilities facing those that create. These essays are enshrined with numerous inspirational quotes, such as “….there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it” and “To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.” I was less interested in his ideas on the controversies surrounding French Algeria (where he was born) and also found that the essay against the death penalty bordered on, excuse the pun, “overkill.” But, on the whole, the book is inspiring and always fascinating. It gives one great lessons on why we keep going in the face of the difficulties and cruelties of the world.

It was a great coincidence that in the week I read Camus’ attack on the idea of “art for art’s sake,” Adorno was railing against the same concept in Aesthetic Theory. Camus also discusses the notion that “every artist today is embarked on the contemporary galley slave,” which seemed to support the leftist leanings of Adorno, who decries the menace of “the culture machine” and what it does to the psyche of an individual in our society, leaving one blind and unable to appreciate the difficulties of true art (my interpretation and embellishment of his words). Adorno passed away in 1969 before finishing the editing of Aesthetic Theory and as much as I wondered how Camus would have reacted in 1968 to the Parisian upheavals, I am sure that Adorno would have simply died (again) if he witnessed the state of art today and took in the crushing and numbing power that the culture industry now wields.

It is nearly impossible to describe in a nutshell the nearly impossible Aesthetic Theory. The meaning slowly seeped into me over the months. It was interesting that as Adorno described the experience of interacting with a work of art, my imagination would mostly flow towards Renaissance paintings in thinking of his theories, but it soon became obvious to me that he himself was thinking mostly in terms of classical music. But that’s neither here nor there, since his theories are applicable to any art form. What I’ve taken away from Adorno’s book was the sense that aesthetic experience is beyond description. But, he gives clues to what leads to an endpoint where a “constellation” of the work of art itself—its historical place in time and society, the artist’s intention and the intention the work of art itself frees itself to express—mixes with the viewer’s own set of parameters that include personal experience and the viewer’s own moment in history. The number of layers, categories, universalisms, particularisms, and so on, that is unleashed often left my head literally spinning. But when I got it, when I truly saw what he was saying, it was completely and utterly exhilarating. A lot of what Adorno was writing of I’d been doing all along in museums, at classical concerts, and also when listening intently to the echoing guitars of The Rolling Stones and the exacting harmonies of The Beatles. The book crystallized this and gave me more to work with.

As hard as it was to read Adorno’s masterwork, a last bit of praise must be given to the translator of Aesthetic Theory. How Robert Hullot-Kentor took the notes and pieces left behind by Adorno at his death and then made it in any way accessible to the reader in English is a feat of Herculian stature.