How Adorno Found His Philosophy on Vesuvius. In the 1920s, the Bay of Naples is populated by a multitude of illustrious guests. Among the revolutionaries, artists, and seekers of meaning are four intellectuals, each at a sensitive moment in their intellectual biography: Benjamin, Adorno, Kracauer, and Sohn-Rethel. The youngest among them, Theodor W. Adorno, transforms Naples in a most idiosyncratic way: he creates one of the most successful and consequential works in the history of modern philosophy.