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

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to them, but rather a transformation of the theoretical problem into a depiction of the concrete and practical grounds of the problem, which in turn can be changed only through praxis. 303 The “objective content” of the contradiction is thus not abstract and theoretical at all; it is rather part of social reality, and its interpretation links the original 303 In his 1931 inaugural lecture at Frankfurt University entitled “Die Aktualität der Philosophie,” Adorno outlined a philosophical program that he followed the rest of his life. The program already connected the elements of rigorous dialectical thinking and the construction of constellations to break the system from within. In his lecture, Adorno emphasizes that this program offers the only true ‘materialist’ philosophy, first, because it seeks to unlock the object’s meaning from the object’s standpoint (from the standpoint of the nature in the object, rather than the standpoint of the subject), and, second, because this form of interpretation transforms theoretical problems into problems of practice: this is the meaning of his repeated expression that philosophy seeks to dissolve the “riddles” [Rätsel] of philosophy by showing that they are rooted in the pathological state of the object, a demonstration that transforms the initial problem into one that calls not for theoretical solutions, but for political practice. See Adorno, “Die Aktualität der Philosophy,” Philosophische Frühschriften, Gesammelte Shcriften, Band I (Frankfurt: Surkham Verlag, 2003), 338: Dafür möchte ich einen zweiten wesentlichen Zusamenhang von deutender Philosophie und Materialismus bezeichnen. Ich sagte: die Rätselantwort sei nicht der »Sinn« des Rätsels in der Weise, daß beide zugleich bestehen könnten; daß die Antwort im Rätsel enthalten sei, daß das Rätsel lediglich seine Erscheinung bilde und als Intention die Antwort in sich beschließe. Vielmehr steht die Antwort in strenger Antithesis zum Rätsel; bedarf der Konstruktion aus den Rätselelementen und zerstört das Rätsel, das nicht sinnvoll, sondern sinnlos ist, sobald die Antwort ihm schlagend erteilt ward. Die Bewegung, die hier im Spiel sich vollzieht, vollzieht der Materialismus im Ernst. Ernst heißt dort: daß der Bescheid nicht im geschlossenen Raum von Erkenntnis verbleibt, sondern daß ihn Praxis erteilt. Die Deutung der vorgefundenen Wirklichkeit und ihre Aufhebung sind auf einander bezogen. … In der Vernichtung der Frage bewährt sich erst die Echtheit philosophischer Deutung und reines Denken vermag sie von sich aus nicht zu vollziehen: darum zwingt sie die Praxis herbei. English translation by Benjamin Snow in Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy,” Telos, No. 31 (Spring 1977): 129: I would like to point out a second essential connection between interpretive philosophy and materialism. I said that the riddle’s answer was not the ‘meaning’ of the riddle in the sense that both could exist at the same time. The answer was contained within the riddle, and the riddle portrayed only its own appearance and contained the answer within itself as intention. Far more, the answer stands in strict antithesis to the riddle, needs to be constructed out of the riddle’s elements, and destroys the riddle, which is not meaningful, but meaningless, as soon as the answer is decisively given to it. The movement which occurs in this process is executed in earnestness by materialism. Earnestness means here that the answer does not remain mistakenly in the closed area of knowledge, but that praxis is granted to it. The interpretation of given reality and its abolition are connected to each other, not, of course, in the sense that reality is negated in the concept, but that out of the construction of a configuration of reality the demand for its [reality’s] real change always follows promptly. … Only in the annihilation of the question is the authenticity of philosophical interpretation first successfully proven, and mere thought by itself cannot accomplish this [authenticity]: therefore the annihilation of the question compels praxis. 340
problems of the text (or other object of interpretation) to a critique of social conditions. But, since the text does not explicitly link its theoretical shortcomings and contradictions to the concrete social life-world of its emergence, the latter must be teased out of the text through a form of interpretation that does more than look at the concepts explicitly and intentionally deployed in the text. Consider as an illustration the way Adorno interprets Kant’s dualism between phenomena and noumena. Adorno first emphasizes and exacerbates the opposition between the two realms through a series of related dualisms: for instance between a realm of phenomena that can be fully known, with absolute certainty, and a realm of noumena that is most real but cannot be known at all; or between the empirical subject, who confronts a world determined by unchanging and necessary laws of nature beyond her control, and whose psychological contents are themselves determined by natural laws, on the one hand, and a transcendental subject whose cognitive structures determine the very structure of the world and who is absolutely free, on the other. I have already talked about Adorno’s analysis of the subjective part of this opposition in chapter 2, so I will briefly discuss here his analysis of the objective part, namely the opposition between phenomenal objects and their noumenal ground. Adorno argues that Kant’s “duplication of the world” into phenomena and noumena is in the first place a reflection of the structure of the reified world: the structure of the social order as determined by exchange, by the commodity structure. 304 304 Adorno argues that the division between a knowable realm of appearances and an unknowable realm of noumena reduces the things we can know to the subject: only those things that exhibit our cognitive structure are available to us, which means that nothing truly external enters knowledge anymore. In this situation, the subject can ultimately gain knowledge only of itself. What is truly external in the object recedes from view. Adorno refers to this process as a process of the “Subjektivierung” 341
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CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALEC
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CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALEC
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For my parents, Luz Marina and John
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4.3 Adorno’s resolution of the di
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FIGURES Figure 4.1: Inner contradic
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost,
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CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM OF DETERMINA
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in the present study, and which I t
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inadequate. In my view, O’Connor
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system, and Adorno rejects both the
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and instead examining only the assu
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In Hegel, there are three stages in
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dialectical movement in act. 16 Phi
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According to Hegel, the philosopher
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dialectic is driven forward from on
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observing consciousness has already
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consciousness to perform the operat
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and makes possible the successive a
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corresponds to the self-determining
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And yet, as I hope to have shown in
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claim; namely, that the Hegelian sy
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the system’s inability to express
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Hegel’s idea that history is in e
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irremediably caught in a situation
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defined in its essence by rationali
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zum Entsetzen verifiziert und auf d
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1.2.2 Hegelian dialectics as a form
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objectivity, but rather as an empha
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as thought, is a form of thought th
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conceptual element. It is thus ulti
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It is clear, however, that (2) is n
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ultimately blind to this problem. H
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Aber Denken darf auch nicht bei der
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The first contradiction is internal
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world, and the nature of the subjec
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undertaking of giving an account of
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eflection. 62 The idea is that, ins
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of subject and object characterizin
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then, will be to take a suitable ex
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in it as providing a stable view of
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2.2 The subject’s mediation of an
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It might be thought, then, that the
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the subject as, on the one hand, an
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of consciousness that are then said
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Note the radical nature of Adorno
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tasks of ideology: first, to mask t
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more intelligible but also to lead
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empirical subject. The transcendent
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something external to the individua
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Even the individual who explicitly
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others, and even her own self-under
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is “contradictory” and “false
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Moreover, even modern critiques of
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Einzelmensch, so wie er zu agieren
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says that the “fixity and invaria
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the subject-object relation. I cons
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the concrete living individual, exp
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Clarifying Adorno’s notion of ant
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structure of modern society maximiz
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the following points to be relative
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accordance with its own autonomous
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orthodox Freudianism, Adorno takes
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In this situation, autonomous ego-c
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Civil Society Let us now turn to an
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den Mann zu bringen, das heißt in
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elations of production inherently l
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according to which any one individu
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The State Finally, we need to consi
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The forces of production have indee
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Gewalt, der von Repression, wie ein
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political and even its military pow
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economic activity for global capita
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that social freedom, or the freedom
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and nature has actually become a th
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epression and domination for their
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case, Hegel’s model would remain
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how the potential can be fulfilled
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antagonistic relation to internal n
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Adorno’s conception of the antago
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The question I pursue in this and t
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local heteronomy, or total determin
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selbst waltende” [not merely the
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efusal to acknowledge social factor
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There is therefore a sort of social
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their own autonomously defined ends
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available to thought. By bringing t
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durch ihre einzelnen Momente hindur
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eality by the principle of exchange
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If a critical form of thought expos
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The following diagram illustrates t
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appearance and essence characterist
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Adorno’s famous statement that
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false or delusory. So, the idea tha
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it is also not merely ‘logically
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Hegel’s Science of Logic begins w
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In my view, the sublation [Aufhebun
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contingent historical development,
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further interpretation. This need f
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Marcuse’s builds his conception o
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essence gives way to a more develop
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(2) that there are tendencies alrea
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eality as a whole does not result i
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asking them to choose their prefere
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eality “in itself,” or essentia
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Since the contradiction between app
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appearance to essence. But the empi
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eflection to the study of social re
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nature, which constitutes social re
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objects, for the constitution of ob
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However, we do not yet know how the
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CHAPTER 5: A FREUDIAN INTERPRETATIO
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objects only to the extent that the
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it does not follow the rules of thi
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mechanism, namely paranoid projecti
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civilization and enlightenment has
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Adorno and Horkheimer see the Shoah
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thought has experienced a loss of e
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any objective appreciation and judg
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der Menschheit im Bann der technisc
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imagination exists that ‘reality
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esults in the radical creation of s
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of Adorno’s negative dialectics i
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that human beings on the average ca
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5.4.1 Development of civilization A
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The first stage of distance that Ad
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persuade it or “convince” it to
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much greater control over nature, b
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Threatening, wild nature is pushed
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stronger, and so became the exertio
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advanced capitalist societies is ne
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In his Vorlesung über Negative Dia
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Denken ineinsgesetzt, ohne dessen f
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instrumental reason. Stepping outsi
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een totally “civilized,” of all
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nature from the world; they repeat
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5.5 Conclusion This chapter has dev
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teleologically ordered structure th
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CHAPTER 6: THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHT
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6.1 The dialectic of enlightenment
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development of the modern period an
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necessitated by the very mechanism
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The interpretation of Dialektik der
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doing without society provides no a
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conception of historical developmen
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of the system and perhaps also taki
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alone, seemingly for its own sake.
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accordance with which social realit
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(3) Therefore, the result of regres
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from its beginnings in animism to h
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subsection (6.2.2), I briefly expla
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Page 305 and 306: 6.2.3 Adorno’s historical method:
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Page 377 and 378: However, this society is pathologic
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Page 385 and 386: TABLE 7.1 DISCURSIVE-CONCEPTUAL V.
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Page 389 and 390: The two philosophical strands, or s
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Page 393 and 394: CHAPTER 8: PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE A
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Page 397 and 398: Adorno’s words, nature is that wh
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Importantly, however, language afte
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particular object is preserved in o
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that, “Was aber solche Namen als
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Die platonische Anamnesis steht die
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elements in the exemplary particula
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hat Geschichte nur noch als einen G
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Das Echte - jenes Ursprungssiegel i
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It is not my purpose here philosoph
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Adorno takes the idea of constellat
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The notion of onomatopoeia is strai
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Ausdruck kommt, in sehr entrückten
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evelation of this symbolic dimensio
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anders als in der Sprache nicht ged
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an aesthetic (artistic) ability to
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The constellation provides a field,
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constellation succeeds, and in the
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Again in agreement, Benjamin and Ad
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Adorno’s basic disagreement with
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immediately related to the economic
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[B]eide sind die auseinandergerisse
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illumination of the phenomenon that
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Adorno says that “Die Formel daß
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echen: Ihre eigene, die rücksichts
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which nature mediates social realit
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concept,” and chapter 8 gave a fi
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eality—that is, the structure of
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conceptual tensions in the object a
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conceptual oppositions that arise f
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object,” as well as in the “con
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element and in terms of its interpr
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The logical structure of paranoid p
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I do want to conclude with some ref
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If Adorno is right, this abstract l
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that they repress the non-conceptua
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Adorno in the
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---. Negative Dialectics. Translate
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---. “On Some Motifs in Baudelair
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---. “Neurosis and psychosis.”
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---. Capital, Vol. I. Translated by
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