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

grounding of this form of ethics, it does not focus on the structure of negative dialectics
itself. 5
Two more works should be mentioned, which focus more on the epistemological
and logical underpinnings of Adorno’s thought. Yvonne Sherratt’s Adorno’s Positive
Dialectic (2002) 6 develops a detailed account of Adorno’s theory of concepts and argues
that negative dialectics should be understood as developing the tension or contradiction
between two forms of identification: the aesthetic and the instrumental. However,
though Sherratt gives detailed accounts of what she means by these two forms of
identification, she does not examine and analyze how they give rise to dialectical motion
in reflection, i.e., how the transitions between them are connected in a determinate way
that impels dialectical reflection forward in virtue of the determinations of the object of
thought. As a result, Sherratt’s study does not answer the question of how negative
dialectics can be understood as a dialectical form of thought.
Finally, I want to mention another recent and so far very influential book, namely
Brian O’Connor’s Adorno’s Negative Dialectic (2004), 7 which argues that Adorno is best
understood as a transcendental philosopher. According to O’Connor, Adorno’s
philosophical strategy consists in arguing that the very possibility of experience requires
subject-object mediation, so that any philosophical account that can be shown to
presuppose a subject-object relation that is incompatible with the structure of mediation is
5 This is not meant as a criticism of Bernstein, since a work of philosophy has to choose a
particular focus. The point is just that his focus is different from the one I am pursuing, which I think is
essential for understanding Adorno’s thought and has not been sufficiently addressed by commentators.
6 Sherratt, Yvonne, Adorno’s Positive Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
7 O’Connor, Brian, Adorno’s Negative Dialectic (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2004).
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