Adorno's turn to aesthetics has been criticized for appealing to aesthetics rather than politics for an emancipatory model. Adorno argued that modern art emphasizes difference and intimates a possible future based on non-instrumental rationality. It emphasizes difference in its refusal to subsume the particular under the universal, and it intimates an emancipatory future insofar as it "speaks a language of insubordination" in the face of the hegemony of enlightenment rationality.

In order to explore the emancipatory potential of modern art, Adorno turns to Kant, whose Critique of Judgment provides him with critical tools for exploring aesthetic rationality.The text states that:

What Adorno finds most appealing about Kant is that his aesthetics insists upon reflective judgment, which, as opposed to determinant judgment, does not give a universal under which a particular might fall. Instead, the universal arises out of the particulars, which proclaim the truth of universality of the bureaucratized world. Art, when it gets to this universal moment, tells the truth about society. The best works bring to light the hidden irrationality of a seemingly rational world.