Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903-1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, music theorist, and composer of Jewish descent, one of the leading figures of Critical Theory. From early on, Adorno published music reviews and essays, including in the Journal of Social Research. In 1938, with the help of Max Horkheimer, the director of the Institute for Social Research, he fled to the United States and worked with other representatives of the Frankfurt School – in New York and Los Angeles. There, in collaboration with Horkheimer, Adorno completed Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. After returning to Frankfurt, Germany, in 1949, he helped to re-establish the Institute for Social Research. Adorno participated in the 1968 student movement debates. His critique is based on teachings by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and the New Music of the Second Viennese School and the literature of the modernist avant-garde. Adorno’s main subjects are domination in modern society, authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and the near disappearance of the possibility to realize individual happiness. Adorno collaborated with Siegfried Krakauer, Walter Benjamin, Leo Löwenthal, Alban Berg, Thomas Mann, and others. Significant works include Negative Dialectics, Minima Moralia. Reflections from Damaged Life, Philosophy of New Music, The Authoritarian Personality, Notes on Literature, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic. Aesthetic Theory, published posthumously, is considered one of the most critical aesthetic monographs of the 20th century.