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

the events intelligible in terms of an analysis of pathology entails that the analysis is not
teleological.
The events can be explained only as a pathological distortion of the drive to
dominate nature, a distortion that actually runs against the achievement of domination
over nature. This seems to entail that the distortion itself cannot be explained in terms of
the tendency toward the domination of nature, so that the latter cannot be the final (most
basic) explanation of civilization’s descent into pathology. The pathological distortion of
this drive seems to require some additional explanation: some other element, event, or
tendency must also be involved in the descent into pathology, which, as I have argued,
does not in fact further the human domination of nature but rather runs against it.
However, we might imagine the following counter-argument against this claim:
Even granting that the descent into pathology constitutes a reversal of the movement
toward ever greater domination of nature, this reversal is brought about by elements fully
internal to the tendency toward the domination of nature, so that this tendency remains
the basic and persistent tendency in terms of which the history of Western civilization is
represented in Dialektik der Aufklärung. The argument would run as follows:
(1) Since the domination of nature is the basic tendency in early formations of
society, the development and growth of human society necessarily follows a
development of ever-greater domination over nature.
(2) At a certain point the quantitative increase in domination necessarily reached
dimensions so great that the basic principle of domination over nature underwent
a qualitative change, a change corresponding to pathological regression.
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