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

falling into ideological illusion. Sections 4-5 in turn concentrate on clarifying the
structure of this form of reflection.
In section 4, I show that the model of dialectical reflection that can be developed
on the basis of the “contradiction in the object” corresponds to the structure of negative
dialectical reflection that was discovered already in chapter 2, and I employ the
discussion in this chapter to refine that initial account. In section 5, I argue that this form
of reflection is structurally homologous to a Hegelian-Marxian model of dialectics. This
model is specifically suited to the object of critical reflection, i.e., the structure of social
reality derived from the first element of antagonism: internal heteronomy. The model,
however, proves to be incomplete when we bring the second element in Adorno’s social
ontology of antagonism to bear: the element of global heteronomy due to the
determination of the social order by nature. I explain how the first element corresponds
in reflection to the Hegelian-Marxian model, and how the model breaks down, or is at
best incomplete, when we take into account the global heteronomy of ‘antagonistic’
society. The element of global heteronomy demands a different analysis of social reality
and, in particular, of its relation to nature. (This account will be the topic of chapters 5-6,
and will undergird another dimension of Adorno’s conception of contradiction, namely
that of the “contradiction in the concept,” which I develop in chapters 7-8).
4.1 Society’s determination by exchange and its epistemological consequences
I begin by analyzing Adorno’s conception of social reality, and the place that
reflection has within that conception of reality, concentrating for the moment on the view
of social reality that follows specifically from the first element of social antagonism:
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