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

is necessitated by the object of reflection without imposing anything external on it. The
progression from one stage of the dialectic to the next cannot be fully comprehended
through mere description of the path followed, for the subject cannot know on the basis
of such a description alone that the path described is necessitated by the object; a
dialectical path known only through description could be arbitrarily imposed on, or only
accidentally related to, the object. Only through direct acquaintance with the object and
with the demand that it places on thought to be understood along a specific dialectical
progression can consciousness be assured that its movement is directed and necessitated
by the object and is therefore genuinely ontologically grounded. Dialectical logic,
because of its ontological nature, requires that the subject have direct experience of the
object and of the ways in which the object directs consciousness along a specific path of
dialectical connections. It is therefore essential that the object of thought fully determine
the movement by which dialectics is driven forward.
The transition from one position or item under consideration to the next must be
rigorously imposed by the position or item itself, and this is what Hegel means when he
says that each position gives rise to the next with strict necessity—in other words, that the
Philosophie hätte also demzufolge ihren Gehalt in der ungeschmälerten Mannigfaltigkeit ihrer
Gegenstände aufzusuchen. Sie hätte sich ihnen im Ernst zu überliefern, ohne dabei immer schon
rückversichert zu sein durchs Koordinatensystem oder durch ihre sogennante Position. Sie darf
ihre Gegenstände nicht als die Spiegel benutzen, aus denen sie immer wieder sich selbst
herausliest, und sie darf nicht ihr eigenes Abbild verwechseln mit dem, worauf Erkenntnis
eigenlicht geht.
English translation by Rodney Livingstone in Adorno’s Lectures on Negative Dialectics (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2008), 81-82:
[P]hilosophy should seek its contents in the unlimited diversity of its objects. It should become
fully receptive to them without looking to any system of coordinates or its so-called postulates for
backing. It must not use its objects as the mirrors from which it constantly reads its own image
and it must not confuse its own reflection with the true object of cognition.
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