Dialectic of the Aesthetic in Adorno's Critique of Kierkegaard

The main purpose of this paper is to clarify the category of the aesthetic in context of Adorno's critique of the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard. Adorno's principal thesis is that Kierkegaard's famous doctrine of existence and his individualism contain an implicit ontology, despite the fact that he intends to overcome objective ontology of absolute idealism. However, this reversal is hidden from Kierkegaard, and can only be deciphered in the posthumous history of his work. Adorno's method is critique of ideology synthetised with Benjamin's rather esoteric theory of allegory. His intent is twofold: not only to expose the abstract character of Kierkegaard's doctrine of "objectless" inwardness, but to decipher an implicit historical truth of his philosophy, the social relations of bourgeois society. In the course of his argument, Adorno shows that Kierkegaard's philosophy comes closest to its truth not in the realm of religious experience and faith, as Kierkegaard himself believed, but in the sphere of melancholy and aesthetic semblance. The category of the aesthetic plays an important role in