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

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Marx, the sphere of essence (the base, i.e., production) is expressed in appearance (the superstructure) only in a distorted form so long as the relations of production limit the full realization of the productive forces. Essence actualizes itself by way of the revolutionary transformation of productive relations in favor of new relations that better promote the full realization of productive forces. Historical development can thus be understood as pushed forward by the ever-greater actualization of essence. In the Marxian picture, the sphere of essence, interpreted as the ever-growing capacity of human beings to produce and reproduce their material reality in line with their needs, just is the final explanation for the nature of socio-historical change, and it expresses the nature of the human being and of societies: namely, the ever-advancing actualization of productive power over nature. Therefore, in Marx as well as in Hegel, the opposition between appearance and essence gives way (even if only in the future revolutionary change of society) to a greater realization of essence. So, whereas Marx’s conception of essence corresponds to the ultimate nature of human beings and their social forms of organization, and thus needs no further justification; and whereas Hegel’s conception of essence corresponds ultimately to the self-movement of the Concept, which determines everything that can be thought or experienced and thus needs no further justification, Adorno’s conception of essence is contingent, not self-justifying, and stand in need of further explanation. For Adorno, essence is always a negative notion. Even though essence (that is, exchange) does structure the totality of (social) reality, it is neither self-grounded, nor grounded on some deeper determination of essence, and this is why it becomes appearance and calls for 182
further interpretation. This need for further interpretation, to say it one last time, is the need for understanding the whole of (social) reality as mediated by nature. It is impossible to discuss Adorno’s conception of the dialectic between appearance and essence without discussing Herbert Marcuse’s 1936 essay on this topic, so I will conclude this section by comparing Adorno’s and Marcuse’s conceptions of this dialectic. I will argue that Marcuse’s conception in this early essay is basically a Marxian conception, and thus differs from Adorno’s conception in just the way I have explained with relation to Marx: Marcuse’s view of the dialectic ultimately subsumes the initial determinations of essence and appearance under a more developed conception of essence, because it operates with a positive (self-grounding and ultimate) conception of essence, whereas Adorno has only a negative conception of essence. In “Zum Begriff des Wesens” [“The Concept of Essence”], Marcuse initially defines essence and appearance, and their relation in advanced capitalist society, in the same way as Adorno: He defines essence as “die Totalität des gesellschaftlichen Prozesses, wie er in einer bestimmten historischen Epoche organisiert ist. In Relation zu ihm ist jedes einzelne Moment, als isoliertes Einzelnes genommen, insofern ‚unwesentlich’, als erst seine Beziehung zum Ganzen des Prozesses sein ‚Wesen’ einsehen läßt, d.h. den Begriff des wirklichen Inhalts einer Erscheinung gibt.” 173 He further claims that the internal structure of the totality is governed by the economy, so 173 Marcuse, Herbert, “Zum Begriff des Wesens,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, Vol. V (1936): 24. English translation in Marcuse, trans. Shapiro, Jeremy, “On the Concept of Essence,” in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (London: MayFlyBooks, 2009), 51: “[I]n a very general sense, essence is the totality of the social process as it is organized in a particular epoch. In relation to this process every individual factor, considered as an isolated unit, is ‘inessential’, insofar as its ‘essence’, i.e. the concept of the real content of an appearance, can be grasped only in the light of its relation to the totality of the process.” 183
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CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALEC
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CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALEC
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For my parents, Luz Marina and John
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4.3 Adorno’s resolution of the di
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FIGURES Figure 4.1: Inner contradic
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost,
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CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM OF DETERMINA
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in the present study, and which I t
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inadequate. In my view, O’Connor
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system, and Adorno rejects both the
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and instead examining only the assu
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In Hegel, there are three stages in
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dialectical movement in act. 16 Phi
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According to Hegel, the philosopher
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dialectic is driven forward from on
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observing consciousness has already
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consciousness to perform the operat
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and makes possible the successive a
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corresponds to the self-determining
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And yet, as I hope to have shown in
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claim; namely, that the Hegelian sy
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the system’s inability to express
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Hegel’s idea that history is in e
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irremediably caught in a situation
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defined in its essence by rationali
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zum Entsetzen verifiziert und auf d
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1.2.2 Hegelian dialectics as a form
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objectivity, but rather as an empha
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as thought, is a form of thought th
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conceptual element. It is thus ulti
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It is clear, however, that (2) is n
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ultimately blind to this problem. H
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Aber Denken darf auch nicht bei der
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The first contradiction is internal
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world, and the nature of the subjec
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undertaking of giving an account of
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eflection. 62 The idea is that, ins
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of subject and object characterizin
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then, will be to take a suitable ex
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in it as providing a stable view of
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2.2 The subject’s mediation of an
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It might be thought, then, that the
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the subject as, on the one hand, an
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of consciousness that are then said
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Note the radical nature of Adorno
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tasks of ideology: first, to mask t
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more intelligible but also to lead
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empirical subject. The transcendent
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something external to the individua
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Even the individual who explicitly
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others, and even her own self-under
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is “contradictory” and “false
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Moreover, even modern critiques of
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Einzelmensch, so wie er zu agieren
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says that the “fixity and invaria
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the subject-object relation. I cons
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the concrete living individual, exp
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Clarifying Adorno’s notion of ant
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structure of modern society maximiz
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the following points to be relative
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accordance with its own autonomous
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orthodox Freudianism, Adorno takes
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In this situation, autonomous ego-c
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Civil Society Let us now turn to an
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den Mann zu bringen, das heißt in
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elations of production inherently l
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according to which any one individu
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The State Finally, we need to consi
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The forces of production have indee
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Gewalt, der von Repression, wie ein
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political and even its military pow
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Page 157 and 158: Adorno’s conception of the antago
Page 159 and 160: The question I pursue in this and t
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Page 167 and 168: There is therefore a sort of social
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Page 177 and 178: If a critical form of thought expos
Page 179 and 180: The following diagram illustrates t
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Page 183 and 184: Adorno’s famous statement that
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Page 189 and 190: Hegel’s Science of Logic begins w
Page 191 and 192: In my view, the sublation [Aufhebun
Page 193: contingent historical development,
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Page 209 and 210: Since the contradiction between app
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Page 217 and 218: objects, for the constitution of ob
Page 219 and 220: However, we do not yet know how the
Page 221 and 222: CHAPTER 5: A FREUDIAN INTERPRETATIO
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Page 231 and 232: Adorno and Horkheimer see the Shoah
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that human beings on the average ca
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5.4.1 Development of civilization A
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The first stage of distance that Ad
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persuade it or “convince” it to
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much greater control over nature, b
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Threatening, wild nature is pushed
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stronger, and so became the exertio
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advanced capitalist societies is ne
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In his Vorlesung über Negative Dia
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Denken ineinsgesetzt, ohne dessen f
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instrumental reason. Stepping outsi
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een totally “civilized,” of all
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nature from the world; they repeat
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5.5 Conclusion This chapter has dev
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teleologically ordered structure th
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CHAPTER 6: THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHT
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6.1 The dialectic of enlightenment
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development of the modern period an
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necessitated by the very mechanism
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The interpretation of Dialektik der
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doing without society provides no a
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conception of historical developmen
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of the system and perhaps also taki
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alone, seemingly for its own sake.
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accordance with which social realit
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(3) Therefore, the result of regres
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from its beginnings in animism to h
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subsection (6.2.2), I briefly expla
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constraints to bring about the emer
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Just like the social-historical lev
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6.2.3 Adorno’s historical method:
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dans sa force et sa faiblesse, la s
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emplacements et de déplacements, d
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individual as ailing from a weak eg
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this point is worth emphasizing bec
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element is a necessary component of
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exchange). Moreover, I said that, f
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within, and constructs the world as
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would be the case if exchange was a
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But the relation of nature to socie
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neither can be understood as more f
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The ‘natural history’ of a phen
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Verschlingungen; darum sind ihr so
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given to the structural order of so
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principle of exchange’s primacy o
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contradiction between appearance an
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introduced in chapter 3: the elemen
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When we consider the relation betwe
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The main goal of this chapter and t
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each of the Concept (beyond the rea
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object leaves room for an idea of c
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context of the object’s origin is
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each element of Kant’s theory on
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precisely through the interpretatio
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problems of the text (or other obje
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Ängste auskennt, das ist auf der e
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The world of empirical experience,
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Adorno interprets Kant’s division
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interpretation as the dissolution o
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demonstrates that the contradiction
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ist—der Begriff des Widerspruchs
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a. The first component corresponds
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historical context. But this way of
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The concern with retrieving the non
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object, which necessarily exceeds i
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the problem seems to be inherent in
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However, this society is pathologic
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sufficiency the “Schein des Ansic
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The category of ‘inner nature’
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fragments and their rhetorical form
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TABLE 7.1 DISCURSIVE-CONCEPTUAL V.
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moreover, a critique that simply ig
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The two philosophical strands, or s
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experience of suffering or damage,
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CHAPTER 8: PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A
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adicalization of the materialist st
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Adorno’s words, nature is that wh
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One important point in Benjamin’s
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After the fall, “the judging word
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Importantly, however, language afte
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particular object is preserved in o
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that, “Was aber solche Namen als
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Die platonische Anamnesis steht die
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elements in the exemplary particula
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hat Geschichte nur noch als einen G
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Das Echte - jenes Ursprungssiegel i
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It is not my purpose here philosoph
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Adorno takes the idea of constellat
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The notion of onomatopoeia is strai
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Ausdruck kommt, in sehr entrückten
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evelation of this symbolic dimensio
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anders als in der Sprache nicht ged
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an aesthetic (artistic) ability to
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The constellation provides a field,
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constellation succeeds, and in the
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Again in agreement, Benjamin and Ad
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Adorno’s basic disagreement with
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immediately related to the economic
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[B]eide sind die auseinandergerisse
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illumination of the phenomenon that
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Adorno says that “Die Formel daß
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echen: Ihre eigene, die rücksichts
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which nature mediates social realit
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concept,” and chapter 8 gave a fi
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eality—that is, the structure of
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conceptual tensions in the object a
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conceptual oppositions that arise f
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object,” as well as in the “con
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element and in terms of its interpr
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The logical structure of paranoid p
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I do want to conclude with some ref
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If Adorno is right, this abstract l
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that they repress the non-conceptua
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Adorno in the
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---. Negative Dialectics. Translate
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---. “On Some Motifs in Baudelair
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---. “Neurosis and psychosis.”
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---. Capital, Vol. I. Translated by
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