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

observing consciousness has already implicitly reached the end of the dialectical
progression through all forms of ordinary consciousness. By following the dialectic, the
phenomenological observer does not acquire new knowledge but rather raises her implicit
understanding of speculative rationality to the level of explicit knowledge. Hegel says of
the necessity connecting one form of consciousness to the next that
Nur diese Notwendigkeit selbst..., der dem Bewußtsein, ohne zu wissen, wie ihm
geschieht, sich darbietet, ist es, was für uns gleichsam hinter seinem Rücken
vorgeht. ... [F]ür es ist dies Entstandene nur als Gegenstand, für uns zugleich als
Bewegung und Werden. Durch diese Notwendigkeit ist dieser Weg zur
Wissenschaft selbst schon Wissenschaft und nach ihrem Inhalte hiermit
Wissenschaft der Erfahrung des Bewußtseins. 20
The phenomenological observer does not follow a journey of development alien
to her, but rather observes fully and explicitly for the first time the journey that she has
herself already un-self-consciously undergone, and she is able for the first time to see that
the journey was a necessary progression. The development through which the ordinary
consciousness reaches the standpoint of speculative reason has already been
accomplished, even though only implicitly. The Phenomenology raises this implicit
achievement to the level of explicit knowledge. The reader of the Phenomenology
beholds the development of the natural consciousness and, through this experience, what
20 Hegel, G.W.F., Phänomenologie des Geistes, in Werke, Vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1970), 80. English translation in Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979),
87-88, p.56:
[I]t is just this necessity itself…that presents itself to [the ordinary] consciousness without its
understanding how this happens, which proceeds for us, as it were, behind the back of
consciousness. … For it, what has thus arisen exists only as an object; for us, it appears at the
same time as movement and a process of becoming. Because of this necessity, the way to Science
is itself already Science, and hence, in virtue of its content, is the Science of the experience of
consciousness.
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