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

Civil Society
Let us now turn to an analysis of the second institutional sphere of the modern
social order: civil society. First we need briefly to review Hegel’s conception of civil
society and its role in the social order. For Hegel, the sphere of civil society provides
individuals with an institutional space in which they meet each other as abstract equals or
universal “persons” 121 with egoistic private interests that they pursue as sellers or buyers,
and with legitimate claims to protection from the interference of others in their own
private sphere. 122 There are two important points to note about Hegel’s conception of
civil society: First, the sphere as a whole is characterized by relations of exchange
among agents in the “free market,” in which relations individuals meet each other as
equals. Second, in encountering each other as “abstract” and “equal” persons, individuals
develop a sense of universal equality and entitlements to negative “rights” that must be
protected by the state. Thus the primary social good that comes from the sphere of civil
society is that, on its basis, the ideas of equality and universal rights are developed.
Adorno’s criticism of civil society can be formulated in the claim that, because
civil society is subservient to the principle of exchange, it actually undermines both the
ideal of equality and the ideal of dignity that undergirds the concept of human rights.
Adorno’s analysis thus results in a negation of the two points above. Against the first
point, Adorno accepts Marx’s demonstration of the lack of equality characteristic of
121 For Hegel, the term “person” denotes the universality of the self as an abstract bearer of
negative rights. This is basically the liberal conception of the person.
122 The private sphere over which the individual is sovereign involves her “property” (Grundlinien
der Philosophie des Rechts, §44-46), which in turn includes her body (§47), her individual life (§48), and
her material possessions (§49).
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