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

the subject-object relation. I consider this mediation in detail in chapters 5-6, and its
consequences for the dialectic in chapters 7-8.
2.3 Conclusion
In closing this chapter, I want to recap the two most important results that we
have attained from our close study of the dialectic of subject and object in section 3 of
“Zu Subjekt und Objekt.” The first has to do with the general structure of negative
dialectics. From our analysis of the dialectic, we were able to extrapolate what seems to
be a coherent structure of analysis. We saw that each step of the dialectic—the first
consisting in a consideration of the subject as transcendental subject and the second of the
subject as the empirical individual—followed a clear pattern: They each began by
deducing a theoretical contradiction in the conceptual position under consideration,
which contradiction revealed the “falsity” of the position in question; and they then
proceeded to an investigation of the ideological function of the position, which function
revealed the “truth” of the position. At this point we cannot generalize this structure to
the point of claiming that it yields a general account of the structure of negative
dialectics. Still, the discovery of this analytical structure in the dialectic is important and
we can take it as an initial account of the structure of negative dialectics, an account that
will be both confirmed and refined in chapters to come.
The second important result that we have gained from the investigations in this
chapter is an initial set of dialectically related views of the subject, culminating—for the
time being—in the idea that an adequate concept of the subject has to take into account
the concept of society as a totality that constitutes the transcendental structure of
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