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

makes possible the observing consciousness’s application of determinate negation,
presupposes the teleological conception of rationality that constitutes the completed
Hegelian system.
Moreover, if the system is not complete and embedded from the start in the object
(i.e., in each form of ordinary consciousness described in the Phenomenology), then the
observing consciousness’s reconstruction of the path followed by Geist is (1) not
ontologically necessitated by the object, which means further that (2) the object is not the
ontological-logical ground of the operation of determinate negation, and this in turn
entails (3) that the observing consciousness’s view that it is able to reconstruct the
journey of Geist by successive applications of determinate negation is a mere illusion. At
this point, the observing consciousness would become debased to the status of yet another
ordinary consciousness in a progression of forms of consciousness that has not been
shown not to be contingent and perhaps even haphazard. In other words, if the division
between ordinary and observing consciousness holds—a division which, as we have seen,
is required for the very possibility of reconstructing the stages of Geist as necessarily
giving rise to each other, and thus also for the very possibility of the operation of
determinate negation—then the connection of all forms of consciousness into a unified
and complete system must be presupposed as already implicitly contained in each object
under consideration, and the implicit unfolding of the system must be presupposed as
already accomplished. Similarly, were the system susceptible of external negation, then
the observing consciousness would once again be debased to the status of another
ordinary form of consciousness, and the reconstruction of Geist’s journey given in the
Phenomenology would lose the ‘ontological necessity’ that allegedly moves it forward
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