The tradition of Critical Theory divides over the idea of artistic truth. This essay proposes a new convergence between "Adornian" and "Habermasian" approaches. I describe artistic truth as internal to artworks, as Theodor Adorno claims, but differentiated into three dimensions ("authenticity," "significance," and "integrity") that recall Jürgen Habermas's theory of validity. I explore how these three dimensions of artistic truth correlate with communicative claims to validity. This essay derives from Chapter 6 in Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge UP, 2004).
