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

and, in so doing, reaching a standpoint from which the truth content of the sublated
[aufgehoben] position is more adequately articulated. Thus, Hegel says,
[E]s [ist] in der Tat bloß das endliche, abstrakt verständige Denken..., welches den
Skeptizismus zu fürchten hat und demselben nicht zu widerstehen vermag,
wohingegen die Philosophie das Skeptische als ein Moment in sich enthält,
nämlich als das Dialektische. Die Philosophie bleibt dann aber bei dem bloß
negativen Resultat der Dialektik nicht stehen, wie dies mit dem Skeptizismus der
Fall ist. Dieser verkennt sein Resultat, indem er dasselbe als bloße, d. h. als
abstrakte Negation festhält. Indem die Dialektik zu ihrem Resultat das Negative
hat, so ist dieses, eben als Resultat, zugleich das Positive, denn es enthält
dasjenige, woraus es resultiert, als aufgehoben in sich und ist nicht ohne
dasselbe. 11
Negation for Hegel thus always involves a positive moment: The negation of any one-
sided position or theory constitutes a new position “higher” than the one negated because
it resolves the contradiction contained in the position “below” it, in a way uniquely
determined by the contradiction itself. The dialectical movement of thought just is the
movement by which contradictions are produced from within specific positions or
theories, and are in turn immediately surpassed into more rational positions or theories. It
is this idea that the contradiction or negation of one position determines its own transition
into a unique new position that is captured by Hegel’s motto that negation is determinate
and not merely abstract.
11 Hegel, G.W.F., Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Vol. I, in Werke, Vol. 8
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp taschenbuch, 1986), §81, p. 176. English translation by T.F. Geraets,
W.A. Suchting, and H.S. Harris in The Encyclopaedia Logic (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1991),
§81, p.131:
[I]t is only the finite and abstract thinking of the understanding that has anything to fear from
skepticism, and that cannot resist it; philosophy, on the other hand, contains the skeptical as a
moment within itself—specifically as the dialectical moment. But then philosophy does not stop
at the merely negative result of the dialectic, as is the case with skepticism. The latter mistakes its
result, insofar as it holds fast to it as mere, i.e., abstract, negation. When the dialectic has the
negative as its result, then precisely as a result, this negative is at the same time the positive, for it
contains what it resulted from sublated [aufgehoben] within itself, and it cannot be without it.
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