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

Since the contradiction between appearance and essence (or between limited
empirical studies of social facts and the theoretical concept of the social totality as the
determining ground for those facts) is irrevocable, for it is the constitutive ground of
social reality, the contradiction cannot be conjured away but must rather be understood.
And the kind of understanding that it calls for is insight into its structure as ideological
illusion that originates in reification—that is, the form of understanding that not only
exposes the contradictory relation between essence and appearance, but moreover
sublates [aufhebt] it into a tension internal to a more refined conception of appearance.
The method of critical reflection thus consists, first, in confronting the surface facts of
society with the theoretical conditions of their existence and intelligibility (that is, with
the category of society as a tightly structured totality present in all limited elements of
social life), then showing the discrepancy between the surface facts and the overarching
theoretical structure, and finally analyzing the discrepancy in terms of ideological illusion
grounded in reification.
We have thus found the theoretical ground for the structure of negative dialectics
as it was discovered and described in chapter 2. There I argued that negative dialectical
analyses have a two-step structure:
“Sociology and Empirical Research,” in The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (Brookfield, Hong
Kong, Singapore, Sydney: Avebury, 1994), 70:
The empirical and the theoretical cannot be registered on a continuum. Compared with the
presumption of insight into the essence of modern society, empirical contributions are like drops
in the ocean. But according to the empirical rules of the game, empirical proofs for the central
structural laws remain, in any case, contestable. It is not a matter of smoothing out such
divergences and harmonizing them. Only a harmonistic view of society could induce one to such
an attempt. Instead, the tensions must be brought to a head in a fruitful manner.
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