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

The logic of exchange thus determines reality in general. Rationality and
conceptual thinking, however, are themselves part of that reality. For Adorno and the
critical theorists in general, thought is first and foremost a form of social praxis, and as
such it is determined by the same principle that determines social life as a whole: the
principle of exchange. As Horkheimer emphasized in his influential inaugural lecture on
the meaning of critical theory, the latter holds that even the most theoretical and abstract
exercises of thought—those of the scientist and the scholar—constitute “Besonderungen
der Art und Weise, wie sich die Gesellschaft mit der Natur auseinandersetzt und in ihrer
gegebenen Form erhält” [particular ways in which society comes to grips with nature and
preserves its received (given) form]. “Sie [die Wirtschaftsubjekte in der bürgerlichen
Gesellschaft] glauben, nach individuellen Entschlüssen zu handeln, während sie noch in
ihren kompliziertesten Kalkulationen Exponenten des unübersichtlichen
gesellschaftlichen Mechanismus.” [The economic subjects of bourgeois society believe
that they behave in accordance with individual determinations, while in fact even in their
most complicated calculations they are exponents of the un-surveyable social
mechanism.] 154 Not only is the object of knowledge—reality, or finite elements
thereof—socially pre-formed, but also our epistemic apparatus—thought in general—is
formed in the same way. Both are determined by the essence of the social totality, which
in advanced capitalism corresponds specifically to the principle of exchange.
154 Horkheimer, Max, “Traditionelle und kritische Theorie,” in Traditionelle und kritische
Theorie: Fünf Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Fisher, 1992), 214. See also Ibid., 213: “Der Gelehrte und
seine Wissenschaft sind in den gesellschaftlichen Apparat eingespannt, ihre Leistung ist ein Moment der
Selbsterhaltung, der fortwährenden Reproduktion des Bestehenden, gleichviel, was sie sich selbst für einen
Reim darauf machen” [The scholar and his science are inserted into the social apparatus; his
accomplishments are a moment of the self-preservation and the continuous reproduction of the established
state of things, regardless of what he makes of them].
154