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

in the present study, and which I think shows that the critique of enlightenment
rationality does not equally apply to all forms of thinking. Negative dialectics for
Adorno takes the logical-ontological form that it takes precisely in view of the crisis of
reason diagnosed in Dialektik der Aufklärung, and in its relentless negativity it avoids
inflicting the kind of ‘violence’ on its object of reflection that Adorno takes other forms
of thought to inflict.
The philosophical study of Adorno’s negative dialectics has recently begun to
gain some independence from the early aporetic readings defended by Habermas and
Benhabib. But the logical study of negative dialectics as a form of philosophical
reflection on its own right remains a lacuna in the literature. Susan Buck-Morss’ The
Origin of Negative Dialectics (1977) 3 gives an excellent overview of the origin of
negative dialectics in Adorno’s intellectual exchanges with Benjamin and examines some
of the key ideas involved in Adorno’s philosophy, but it remains an introduction rather
than an in-depth philosophical study of the structure of negative dialectics. Jay
Bernstein’s Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (2001) 4 is an excellent and broad study
of Adorno’s philosophy, yet its focus consists in the development of a modernist account
of ethics on the basis of Adorno’s thought, and, though it develops an account of
Adorno’s theory of concepts in order to explain the epistemology and ontological
3 Buck-Morss, Susan, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin,
and the Frankfurt Institute (New York: The Free Press, 1977).
2001).
4 Bernstein, Jay, Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
3