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

the following points to be relatively uncontroversial and to constitute the grounds on
which Hegel takes the modern social order to be necessary for, and a maximizer of,
freedom, and thus to be most rational:
1. Insofar as social freedom is dialectically “higher” and derived from personal and
moral freedom, social freedom is required for, and preserves, the two “lower”
forms of individual freedom. Call this condition the preservation of private
freedom.
2. Hegel characterizes the social order as a whole as ‘free’ in a way that goes beyond
the freedom of individuals. This is because he takes it that the social order as a
whole instantiates the quality of self-determination. This quality allegedly
characterizes the internal dynamics of each of the three main institutional spheres
of modern society and the relations between the spheres. Insofar as the spheres
are each characterized by self-determination, they can be said to be autonomous.
Specifically, this means that their inner logic is immanently developed rather than
imposed from without, and is oriented toward an end, or telos, internal to the
sphere. Call this condition internal autonomy.
3. Moreover, the autonomous logical structures of the separate institutional spheres
immanently coalesce into a harmoniously functioning unity that actualizes the
structure of “the Concept” 112 and is determined autonomously in accordance with
111 This last position is defended by Frederick Neuhouser in Foundations of Hegel’s Social
Theory: Actualizing Freedom (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2000).
112 See Hegel, G.W.F., Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, in Werke, Vol. 7 (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), §272, p. 432:
Die Verfassung ist vernünftig, insofern der Staat seine Wirksamkeit nach der Natur des Begriffs in
sich unterscheidet und bestimmt, und zwar so, daß jene dieser Gewalten selbst in sich die Totalität
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