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

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subjectivity. As I mentioned at the end of our discussion, Adorno no sooner reaches this concept of subjectivity than he suggests that it too will turn out to be a failed and incomplete view of the subject. Yet, as always, this concept will not be simply discarded, but will be an important, though partial, way of understanding the subject philosophically. Moreover, it is a more refined view of the subject than the two views previously considered (the view of the idealistic transcendental subject and the view of the empirical individual). The position of the transcendental subject as society seems clearly to be an Aufhebung of the initial two positions. Neither position is discarded as a result of its derived insufficiencies; rather, the contradictions reached at every point serve to push reflection forward toward a refinement of its concept of subjectivity, culminating in a re-working of the concept with which we began (transcendental subjectivity). This concept preserves insights gained along the reflective path and provides a re- interpretation of the transcendental subject that claims to retain what was true in the previously considered conceptions. It is important, however, to keep in mind that, even if the concept of the transcendental subject as the social totality is a refinement of the first two views considered, the concept of the subject as the living, embodied individual is not rejected wholesale in favor of the transcendental social subject even at this stage of the dialectic. The empirical individual is, on the one hand, the real, concrete locus of self-hood and experience. But, on the other hand, its selfhood and the content of its experience has in the modern world become almost entirely colonized by a totalizing social structure that administers and organizes it in accordance with its own structure and requirements—a structure ultimately dictated by the market. While experience cannot be abstracted from 100
the concrete living individual, experience today is ever more beyond her control and cognitive reach. More and more aspects of our ordinary lives are determined by social and economic macro-structures that the individual does not understand and therefore obviously cannot self-consciously choose. The subject cannot be understood correctly if it is reduced either to society or to the idea of a truly individual locus of self- determination. Rather, the subject must be understood as the field of tension between the two extremes. The field of tension that characterizes subjectivity, with fully unmediated individuality in one extreme, and total social determination on the other, is according to Adorno a field of antagonism. And this antagonism is the ontological root of the “contradiction in the object.” We are now ready to turn to a detailed investigation of the “antagonism” at issue. This investigation is the topic of chapter 3. 101
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CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALEC
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CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALEC
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For my parents, Luz Marina and John
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4.3 Adorno’s resolution of the di
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FIGURES Figure 4.1: Inner contradic
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost,
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CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM OF DETERMINA
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in the present study, and which I t
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inadequate. In my view, O’Connor
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system, and Adorno rejects both the
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and instead examining only the assu
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In Hegel, there are three stages in
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dialectical movement in act. 16 Phi
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According to Hegel, the philosopher
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dialectic is driven forward from on
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observing consciousness has already
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consciousness to perform the operat
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and makes possible the successive a
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corresponds to the self-determining
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And yet, as I hope to have shown in
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claim; namely, that the Hegelian sy
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the system’s inability to express
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Hegel’s idea that history is in e
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irremediably caught in a situation
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defined in its essence by rationali
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zum Entsetzen verifiziert und auf d
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1.2.2 Hegelian dialectics as a form
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objectivity, but rather as an empha
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as thought, is a form of thought th
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conceptual element. It is thus ulti
Page 61 and 62: It is clear, however, that (2) is n
Page 63 and 64: ultimately blind to this problem. H
Page 65 and 66: Aber Denken darf auch nicht bei der
Page 67 and 68: The first contradiction is internal
Page 69 and 70: world, and the nature of the subjec
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Page 73 and 74: eflection. 62 The idea is that, ins
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Page 77 and 78: then, will be to take a suitable ex
Page 79 and 80: in it as providing a stable view of
Page 81 and 82: 2.2 The subject’s mediation of an
Page 83 and 84: It might be thought, then, that the
Page 85 and 86: the subject as, on the one hand, an
Page 87 and 88: of consciousness that are then said
Page 89 and 90: Note the radical nature of Adorno
Page 91 and 92: tasks of ideology: first, to mask t
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Page 95 and 96: empirical subject. The transcendent
Page 97 and 98: something external to the individua
Page 99 and 100: Even the individual who explicitly
Page 101 and 102: others, and even her own self-under
Page 103 and 104: is “contradictory” and “false
Page 105 and 106: Moreover, even modern critiques of
Page 107 and 108: Einzelmensch, so wie er zu agieren
Page 109 and 110: says that the “fixity and invaria
Page 111: the subject-object relation. I cons
Page 115 and 116: Clarifying Adorno’s notion of ant
Page 117 and 118: structure of modern society maximiz
Page 119 and 120: the following points to be relative
Page 121 and 122: accordance with its own autonomous
Page 123 and 124: orthodox Freudianism, Adorno takes
Page 125 and 126: In this situation, autonomous ego-c
Page 127 and 128: Civil Society Let us now turn to an
Page 129 and 130: den Mann zu bringen, das heißt in
Page 131 and 132: elations of production inherently l
Page 133 and 134: according to which any one individu
Page 135 and 136: The State Finally, we need to consi
Page 137 and 138: The forces of production have indee
Page 139 and 140: Gewalt, der von Repression, wie ein
Page 141 and 142: political and even its military pow
Page 143 and 144: economic activity for global capita
Page 145 and 146: that social freedom, or the freedom
Page 147 and 148: and nature has actually become a th
Page 149 and 150: epression and domination for their
Page 151 and 152: case, Hegel’s model would remain
Page 153 and 154: how the potential can be fulfilled
Page 155 and 156: antagonistic relation to internal n
Page 157 and 158: Adorno’s conception of the antago
Page 159 and 160: The question I pursue in this and t
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selbst waltende” [not merely the
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efusal to acknowledge social factor
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There is therefore a sort of social
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their own autonomously defined ends
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available to thought. By bringing t
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durch ihre einzelnen Momente hindur
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eality by the principle of exchange
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If a critical form of thought expos
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The following diagram illustrates t
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appearance and essence characterist
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Adorno’s famous statement that
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false or delusory. So, the idea tha
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it is also not merely ‘logically
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Hegel’s Science of Logic begins w
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In my view, the sublation [Aufhebun
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contingent historical development,
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further interpretation. This need f
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Marcuse’s builds his conception o
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essence gives way to a more develop
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(2) that there are tendencies alrea
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eality as a whole does not result i
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asking them to choose their prefere
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eality “in itself,” or essentia
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Since the contradiction between app
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appearance to essence. But the empi
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eflection to the study of social re
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nature, which constitutes social re
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objects, for the constitution of ob
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However, we do not yet know how the
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CHAPTER 5: A FREUDIAN INTERPRETATIO
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objects only to the extent that the
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it does not follow the rules of thi
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mechanism, namely paranoid projecti
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civilization and enlightenment has
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Adorno and Horkheimer see the Shoah
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thought has experienced a loss of e
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any objective appreciation and judg
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der Menschheit im Bann der technisc
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imagination exists that ‘reality
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esults in the radical creation of s
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of Adorno’s negative dialectics i
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that human beings on the average ca
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5.4.1 Development of civilization A
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The first stage of distance that Ad
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persuade it or “convince” it to
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much greater control over nature, b
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Threatening, wild nature is pushed
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stronger, and so became the exertio
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advanced capitalist societies is ne
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In his Vorlesung über Negative Dia
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Denken ineinsgesetzt, ohne dessen f
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instrumental reason. Stepping outsi
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een totally “civilized,” of all
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nature from the world; they repeat
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5.5 Conclusion This chapter has dev
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teleologically ordered structure th
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CHAPTER 6: THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHT
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6.1 The dialectic of enlightenment
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development of the modern period an
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necessitated by the very mechanism
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The interpretation of Dialektik der
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doing without society provides no a
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conception of historical developmen
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of the system and perhaps also taki
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alone, seemingly for its own sake.
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accordance with which social realit
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(3) Therefore, the result of regres
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from its beginnings in animism to h
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subsection (6.2.2), I briefly expla
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constraints to bring about the emer
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Just like the social-historical lev
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6.2.3 Adorno’s historical method:
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dans sa force et sa faiblesse, la s
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emplacements et de déplacements, d
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individual as ailing from a weak eg
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this point is worth emphasizing bec
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element is a necessary component of
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exchange). Moreover, I said that, f
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within, and constructs the world as
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would be the case if exchange was a
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But the relation of nature to socie
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neither can be understood as more f
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The ‘natural history’ of a phen
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Verschlingungen; darum sind ihr so
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given to the structural order of so
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principle of exchange’s primacy o
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contradiction between appearance an
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introduced in chapter 3: the elemen
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When we consider the relation betwe
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The main goal of this chapter and t
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each of the Concept (beyond the rea
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object leaves room for an idea of c
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context of the object’s origin is
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each element of Kant’s theory on
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precisely through the interpretatio
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problems of the text (or other obje
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Ängste auskennt, das ist auf der e
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The world of empirical experience,
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Adorno interprets Kant’s division
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interpretation as the dissolution o
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demonstrates that the contradiction
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ist—der Begriff des Widerspruchs
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a. The first component corresponds
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historical context. But this way of
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The concern with retrieving the non
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object, which necessarily exceeds i
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the problem seems to be inherent in
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However, this society is pathologic
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sufficiency the “Schein des Ansic
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The category of ‘inner nature’
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fragments and their rhetorical form
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TABLE 7.1 DISCURSIVE-CONCEPTUAL V.
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moreover, a critique that simply ig
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The two philosophical strands, or s
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experience of suffering or damage,
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CHAPTER 8: PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A
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adicalization of the materialist st
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Adorno’s words, nature is that wh
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One important point in Benjamin’s
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After the fall, “the judging word
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Importantly, however, language afte
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particular object is preserved in o
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that, “Was aber solche Namen als
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Die platonische Anamnesis steht die
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elements in the exemplary particula
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hat Geschichte nur noch als einen G
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Das Echte - jenes Ursprungssiegel i
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It is not my purpose here philosoph
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Adorno takes the idea of constellat
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The notion of onomatopoeia is strai
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Ausdruck kommt, in sehr entrückten
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evelation of this symbolic dimensio
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anders als in der Sprache nicht ged
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an aesthetic (artistic) ability to
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The constellation provides a field,
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constellation succeeds, and in the
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Again in agreement, Benjamin and Ad
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Adorno’s basic disagreement with
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immediately related to the economic
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[B]eide sind die auseinandergerisse
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illumination of the phenomenon that
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Adorno says that “Die Formel daß
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echen: Ihre eigene, die rücksichts
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which nature mediates social realit
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concept,” and chapter 8 gave a fi
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eality—that is, the structure of
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conceptual tensions in the object a
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conceptual oppositions that arise f
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object,” as well as in the “con
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element and in terms of its interpr
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The logical structure of paranoid p
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I do want to conclude with some ref
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If Adorno is right, this abstract l
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that they repress the non-conceptua
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Adorno in the
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---. Negative Dialectics. Translate
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---. “On Some Motifs in Baudelair
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---. “Neurosis and psychosis.”
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---. Capital, Vol. I. Translated by
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