CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

egins with a specific concept—here the concept of the subject as the concrete, empirical
subject—and then derives a theoretical contradiction within this concept, in the sense that
it shows the concept to be insufficient for adequately characterizing its object. The
concept is thus shown to be “contradictory” or “false.” The analysis then continues by
seeking an account of the concept’s ideological function within the socio-historical
context to which it belongs. The ideological analysis locates the concept within its
concrete context and thus yields a specific insight into that context: in this case, the
insight consist in the understanding of concrete individuality as thin or even empty, and
leads to a critical assessment of the ways in which the ideological discourse of atomistic
individuality so widespread in advanced capitalist societies is a mask for a deep lack of
individuality and for the lack of self-determination prevalent over the constitution and
development of modern selfhood.
At this point in the dialectic, we are led to go beyond the view of the subject as the
empirical subject and to a new concept that, surprisingly perhaps, brings us back to our
initial concept: that of the transcendental subject. The reason is that the empirical
subject’s constitution by the socio-economic totality follows a very similar pattern to its
constitution by the transcendental subject according to “Idealism.” Just as the
transcendental subject was supposed to determine the structure of the empirical subject
and the objects that it encounters in ordinary experience, the social totality structures the
empirical subject and its experience of the world. Thus, Adorno concludes,
In gewissem Sinn ist, was freilich der Idealismus am letzten zugestünde, das
transzendentale Subjekt wirklicher, nämlich für das reale Verhalten der Menschen
und die Gesellschaft, die daraus sich bildete, bestimmender als jene
psychologischen Individuen, von denen das transzendentale abstrahiert ward und
die in der Welt wenig zu sagen haben; die ihrerseits zu Änhängseln der sozialen
Maschinerie, am Ende zur Ideologie geworden sind. Der lebendige
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