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

CHAPTER 4:
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE OBJECT
The previous chapter concluded with a clarification of Adorno’s social ontology
of antagonism. I reconstructed Adorno’s notion of antagonism along two axes. The first
is a denial of what I have called the internal autonomy of finite elements of the modern
social order—in particular, of the internal autonomy of the central social institutions of
modernity. The institutions are heteronomous because their development is determined
by the principle of exchange, which is neither internally defined in terms of the
institution’s social role nor conducive to ends that constitute internal goods for the
institution. The second is a denial of the global autonomy of the modern social order as a
whole. The ground for this denial is Adorno’s idea that the social order’s determination
by the logic of exchange is heteronomously imposed on it because it is built on the basis
of an unconscious determination of society by non-rational nature, and, instead of
furthering the good of society as a whole, determination by the logic of exchange leads to
an increase in unconscious resentment toward civilization and pent-up aggression, which
in turn threatens to destroy society through periodic outbursts of violence and destruction.
The two forms of heteronomy are connected in that, for Adorno, the principle of
exchange’s determinative role in the social order (internal heteronomy) is the result of the
fundamental antagonism that characterizes the relation between the modern social order
and humanity’s instinctual desires (global heteronomy).
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