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

However, we do not yet know how the interpretation proceeds. But it is clear that
it cannot proceed via the dialectical structure developed in this chapter. Non-rational
nature is by definition not conceptual, and, since it is the alleged determining ground of
conceptuality, but is itself non-conceptual, it cannot be captured by the logic of concepts.
The mediation of society and of conceptuality by non-rational nature is itself neither a
constituent of the object-world nor a constituent of conceptuality, but is rather the pre-
conceptual ground on which both objectivity and conceptuality take shape. Because it is
not a positive constituent of the structures of thought and being, determination by nature
stands outside the conditions that I outlined above as conditions that make dialectics
possible and that can become visible through (appear in) dialectical exposition. This
means that the structure of dialectics outlined in this chapter is in principle incapable of
capturing the mediation of social reality by nature. And this further means that this kind
of dialectical analysis remains always incomplete. Grasping the mediation by nature in
philosophical reflection will require a form of interpretive analysis different from the
dialectical structure that we have discussed here, which, though uniquely able to unearth
the structure of reified society (i.e. “the contradiction in the object”), cannot interpret the
meaning of social reality as a whole.
There are several questions that arise at this juncture. First, on what
epistemological grounds does Adorno claim that there is such a “deeper” dialectical
mediation of both social reality and conceptuality by non-rational nature? Given that the
kind of dialectical strategy that we have seen him using so far is in principle unable to
uncover the determination of the object world and of conceptual structure by nature, the
thesis that such determination obtains is either a dogmatic assertion, or is uncovered
207