Theodor W. Adorno was an intellectual giant of the twentieth century, whose work continues to shape contemporary thought.

Interpretations have primarily focused on him as a philosopher, founder and thinker of Frankfurt School critical theory. Yet Adorno's life and work spanned not only a period of huge political and social upheaval in Germany, but also formative years of exile in New York and Los Angeles. With such a tumultuous biography, how did Adorno understand his own intellectual life? Was there a more passionate central force behind the author otherwise known as a philosopher of negativity?

In this compelling and provocative re-interpretation of his life, Iris Dankemeyer argues for the importance of understanding Adorno's biography as shaped by music and musical experience. A skilled pianist who studied composition at the Second Viennese school, Adorno's obsession with music never wavered. Indeed, his posthumously published Aesthetic Theory, which attempts to undermine the fatal separation of eros and knowledge, offers a profound commitment to musical experience as a form of political thinking.

It is with an emphasis upon the erotic that Dankemeyer opens up previously overlooked aspects of Adorno's life and work. While commentary on his aesthetics and writings on jazz tends to focus on him as a critic of the culture industry, Dankemeyer identifies musical experience as the very foundation of Adorno's thought. By mobilizing the erotic and sensual dimensions of Adorno's thinking for the question of emancipation, Dankemeyer not only recontextualises his commitment to humanity and freedom, but also rewrites the intellectual history of the Frankfurt School.