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

If the theory in Dialektik der Aufklärung is to be understood as a teleological
theory at all, it must be in a functional sense. The idea is that we can look at Western
civilization as a system, a unified whole, in which the parts (events, historical periods, the
rise and demise of specific institutions, etc) ultimately work to achieve or maintain an
overall functional economy. A functional explanation views the system as exhibiting a
basic tendency to achieve or maintain a certain state—a tendency that is relatively
resilient in the face of contingent developments within or outside the system. Defenders
of the negative teleological reading of Dialektik der Aufklärung would identify the
persistent tendency in the history of Western civilization as the growth of human
domination over nature (inner and outer). So, the teleological reading maintains that,
regardless of the level of contingency that individual elements in the history of
civilization may exhibit, we can read off from them a basic movement of history in which
the tendency toward the growth of domination over nature ultimately triumphs over other
tendencies.
A teleological theory of history thus entails that major historical periods (their
inner structure and main tendencies), and major historical changes, are intelligible as
furthering some basic, persistent tendency—in the case of Dialektik der Aufklärung, the
tendency toward the growth of human domination over nature. If we find that there are
events, institutions, socio-historical developments, or other elements that work against
the alleged basic, persistent tendency, this finding should be a cause for doubting the
teleological account, although it could still be the case that the recalcitrant element only
seems to oppose the basic tendency because we are considering it in isolation from the
system as a whole, whereas, in systemic terms (taking into account other finite elements
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