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

from its beginnings in animism to high capitalist society is present, but this theme
changes historically as it undergoes pathological development, and the change is not
reducible to an overarching single principle or tendency contained from the beginning in
the concept of civilization itself and achieving greater expression as civilization
progresses. Rather, the moment at which the conflict leading to intolerable frustration
arises, and civilization’s response to the conflict—i.e., regression—mark a change in the
course of civilization, even a reversal, an event that of course is not disconnected from
the existing historical and natural conditions and tendencies prior to the change, but
which is nonetheless underdetermined by these conditions and not explainable in terms of
those conditions and tendencies alone. Something new happens with the entrenchment of
advanced capitalism and its final disavowal of happiness and liberation as directive
principles of society, something that cannot be fully accounted for on the basis of
civilization’s internal dynamics from its archaic beginnings.
6.2.2 The philosophy of history underlying Dialektik der Aufklärung
The reason why this change cannot be fully accounted for on the basis of the
‘natural history’ of civilization is not accidental; it rather exemplifies and corroborates
Adorno’s general view of historical development. In our interpretation of the dialectic of
civilization and culture, we have been oscillating between two levels of interpretation.
The first, which we may call the level of nature, consists in the interpretation of the
history of Western civilization in terms of an underlying pathological development in the
unconscious libidinal life of civilization. This narrative is a history of nature in the sense
that its object of study is the rise of the modern social order from the natural substratum
of social life, as well as the rise of the individual from the natural substratum of the
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