This article discusses aspects of the individual's constitution and the epistemological potential of art as critique of underlying objective conditions that prevent such formation. To this discussion, the contributions of Theodor Adorno are taken as basis, in particular with regard to the settings of a society where barbarism prevails on the conditions of cultural formation and a fair and free life. It is understood that the way that life has been rationalized keeps pushing men away from their rational and sensitive interests, because the more they are subdued to the dictates of self-preservation, the more they become susceptible to domination (second nature). As resistance, art, a social production that bears witness the potential of natural history, sets up as a non-affirmative rational procedure of the failure of culture. Her inherent logicity, in the tension between form and content, conserves men's ability to think beyond the objective and subjective shackles.
individual; culture; art; subjectivity; Theodor W. Adorno