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

case that the principle that governs the inner dynamics of the institutional spheres, though
not autonomously determined by the spheres themselves, nonetheless expresses the
rationality of the social order as a whole. The principle of exchange could for instance be
conceived after the model of the “invisible hand,” as a self-regulating principle that
society imposes on each of the institutional spheres so that the sum of their activities
serves the rational interest of the social order as a whole, even if this rational interest
requires the undermining of private freedom and of particular institutions. In this model,
the principle of exchange could still be the rationally self-determined principle of society,
for the model would at least satisfy Hegel’s condition of the autonomy of the whole,
which requires that the separate institutions of the modern social order coalesce into a
harmoniously functioning unity that actualizes the structure of rationality. The key
question is whether the principle of exchange can be conceived as standing in accordance
with rationality and as imposed by the social order on all its constitutive elements (so, in
a sense, self-imposed or autonomous) for the sake of an overall social good.
As is to be expected, Adorno argues that the principle of exchange is not
rationally self-imposed by the modern social order. Instead, he takes it to be the result of
a pathological and un-self-conscious relation between modernity and nature, especially
the “internal nature” of the subject. Adorno’s argument for this point can be
reconstructed in two steps. The first is his claim that the development of rationality and
civilization in general requires an antagonistic relation to nature for the purpose of the
self-preservation of the species. The second step is his argument that, in modernity, this
relation continues to become ever more antagonistic even though in doing so it no longer
promotes survival. In becoming more antagonistic, the relation between human beings
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