Adorno's method is not exclusively 'from below', but emerges simultaneously from the 'from above' method. He himself returns to the old notion of the disinterestedness of art, not out of romantic nostalgia for abandoned aesthetic theories, but as a reaction against the raw spirit of the industrialized and commodified culture.

This partial return of Adorno to the doctrine 'art for art's sake' occurs following a critical consideration of old and new aesthetic data and presupposes a deep knowledge of the conditions under which they were created, when evaluating artistic forms with respect to their timeless dimension and their evolutionary trajectory.

This is the dialectical movement of Adorno's thought through the timeless cultural phenomena. Thus, a part of the old aesthetics is vindicated, namely that through which the high idea of disinterestedness and its autonomy was cultivated.

This vindication represents an expression of robust thought capable of perceiving artistic phenomena as both autonomous and social, without absolutizing one of the two dimensions of their existence.

Moreover, in Adorno's sociology, aesthetics holds a significant position as it serves as a tool for social analysis, in contrast to his philosophy of new music, where musical analysis is always followed by sociological considerations.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]