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

each element of Kant’s theory on which he focuses: First, Adorno points out and
develops the conceptual tensions and contradictions in the text that characterize the
specific topic in which he is interested. Second, the theoretical dimension of these
contradictions is connected with the concrete social conditions that the contradictions
allegedly reflect. Third, the contradictions in the text are interpreted in terms of the
social experiences that they express; this step is achieved by repositioning Kant’s
philosophy in relation to the social experiences in which it first came to be. This step
corresponds to the task of bringing the “sedimented history” in Kant’s philosophy to
expression—that is, the task of providing a natural history of Kant’s thought. This last
step reconstructs the key experiences that constitute the pre-conceptual ground of the
conceptual aspects of the text, and the reconstruction proceeds by attempting to revive the
unconscious memories contained in the text, rather than the conscious intentions of the
author or the most consistent articulation of the (explicit or implicit) conceptual content
of the text. It is not, of course, that the latter do not matter, but a key presupposition in
Adorno’s mode of analysis is that, to really understand the object, we must penetrate to
the non-conceptual relation that it held with the social experiential context of its
Entstehung.
The re-connection of the text with its socio-historical experiential ground aims to
express the meaning of the contradictions that have been developed on the basis of the
text as well as on the basis of the social antagonism that the contradictions replicate. I
want to focus here on the interpretation of contradiction. 301 According to Adorno, it is
301 Adorno emphasizes the important of contradictions for interpretation in his lectures on Kant’s
Critique; see Adorno, Kants »Kritik der reinen Vernunft«, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Abteilung IV:
Vorlesungen, Band 4 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995), 127:
337