TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

Adorno acknowledges that Kant‘s work had led German philosophy into a morass of
subjective formalism. Turning to phenomenology for answers, Adorno notices that it also
fails to overcome the subjectivistic bias when it assumes the Idealist/ rationalist ratio as
its starting point. Like neo-Kantianism, phenomenology posits the dualism of nature and
history, winding up in investigations of an essentially ontic structure of being that ignores
the historically situated constructions of any particular consciousness. In essence, Adorno
rejects as false the idea that being can be understood through an awareness of the
―historicity‖ of a subject. The difference between the historical subject and its
emplotment gives to that emplotment an unfair advantage within the autonomous ratio
that this kind of phenomenology unknowingly assumes and uses to draw distinctions.
Adorno rejects Heidegger‘s Idealism, for, like Kant, it begins with a disposition towards
an autonomous reason that has no other mode of expression than subjectively imposed
forms. The ratio assumes that ―Being,‖ as a kind of totality, is the only apt claim in which
the absolute subject can express its interests. In this it assumes the priority of the actual
over the possible in the formation of any subject‘s identity: ―ratio‖ maintains the
superiority of the category over its elements. Historicity, the way we categorize
phenomena, is an illusory solution to the problem of reconciling the dialectics of nature
and history:
In the tradition of subjectivistic idealism, historicity assumes their
division at the point where categorical thought excludes facticity.
Heidegger simply reduces history to nature by subsuming it under
historicity. Rather than the reduction of history to a natural fact,
Adorno urges, it is necessary to be able to grasp history itself as
nature and nature itself as history. This capacity would overcome
the subjectivistic predominance of thought over its object and
amount to an actual solution to the problem of relativism. (Hullot-
Kentor 244)
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