The Challenge of Tradition emphasizes the tension between Theodor Adorno's critique of tradition as being incompatible with capitalist modernity and his understanding of the need for maintaining aesthetic and cultural connections with the past. Placing the concept of tradition in the larger context of late modernity, Peter Uwe Hohendahl argues that Adorno redeems tradition even as he critiques it.

Beginning his analysis with Adorno's 1966 essay, "On Tradition," Hohendahl examines Adorno's thinking on the value and hazards of recuperating cultural and philosophical traditions from reified histories. Even as Adorno questions tradition, the concept of tradition challenges Adorno – and his theory of culture and art. At a time when the idea of cultural heritage is undergoing fundamental rethinking, The Challenge of Tradition asks how Adorno's insights might enable a reconception of the idea of tradition but without the baggage of traditionalism.