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

want to focus on the last three stages, comprising the conflict leading to pathology and
the onset of illness proper. I will show that these stages cannot be understood as part of a
teleological narrative connecting them with the beginnings of civilization. There is an
irreducible element of contingency in these stages, and the contingency is such that it
constitutes a reversal, rather than a furthering, of the major tendencies present in the
development of civilization prior to pathology.
This section is divided into three subsections. In section 2.1, I consider what it
would mean to say that these events have occurred in accordance with a negative
teleology driven by the ever-growing domination of nature, and I argue that the events in
question simply cannot be understood in a way compatible with the teleology. The
teleological reading of Dialektik der Aufklärung actually runs against the diagnosis of
pathology. In section 2.2. I discuss the philosophy of history presupposed by Dialektik
der Aufklärung and, finally, in section 2.3, I show that the structure of this philosophy of
history stands at the crossroads between genealogy and teleology since its overarching
structure is genealogical (not teleological, as the negative teleological interpretation
maintains), but there is an element internal to the genealogy that is in fact teleological
structured.
6.2.1 Against the negative teleological reading of Dialektik der Aufklärung
The negative teleological reading takes the period that brought on civilization’s
regression into “barbarism” to be a necessary and inevitable consequence of the origins
of civilization in animism and mythology. Of course, we must be careful in how we
characterize the claim of necessity at issue here. It is not a claim of necessity in
accordance with efficient causation, but rather in accordance with a teleological
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