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

deutenden Philosophie darauf an, Schlüssel zu konstruieren, vor denen die Wirklichkeit
aufspringt. Um das Maß der Schlüsselkategorien ist es nun sonderbar bestellt.” 392
Second, the successful reading of a philosophy presented as a constellation
requires that the reader have a particular experience. That which is disclosed in the
constellation, because it is an experiential content, is first of all not just communicated in
final form to the reader (like a list of propositions could be), but rather is successfully
expressed to the reader only when the latter reads it and experiences it in turn. Benjamin
and Adorno both hold that truth is not communicable; it requires subjective experience
and not every reader is capable of having, or interested in pursuing, this experience. 393
392 Adorno, “Die Aktualität der Philosophy,” Philosophische Frühschriften, Gesammelte Shcriften,
Band I (Frankfurt: Surkham Verlag, 2003), 340. English translation in Adorno, “The Actuality of
Philosophy,” Telos, No. 31 (Spring 1977), 130: “The point of interpretive philosophy is to construct keys,
before which reality springs open. As to the size of the key categories, they are specially made to order.”
See also Negative Dialektik, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 66:
“Als Konstellation umkreist der theoretische Gedanke den Begriff, den er öffnen möchte, hoffend, daß er
aufspringe etwa wie die Schlösser wohlverwahrter Kassenschränke: nicht nur durch einen Einzelschlüssel
oder eine Einzelnummer sonder eine Nummernkombination.” English translation in Negative Dialectics
(New York and London: Continuum, 2005), 163: “As a constellation, theoretical thought circles the
concept it would like to unseal, hoping that it may fly open like the lock of a well-guarded safe-deposit
box: in response, not to a single key or a single number, but to a combination of numbers.”
393 See Adorno, Negative Dialektik, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1970), 50-52, where Adorno argues that the capacity to have philosophical experience, in turn
required for philosophical reflection and knowledge, is not something that everyone has or is interested in
having. He notes that this may seem like an elitist argument in a world that makes it compulsory for
thought to be presented in the manner of scientific knowledge and replicable by everyone. But
philosophical knowledge is not like this, first of all because it requires a critical capacity and motivation in
the reader—a capacity that, he argues, the pathological social world in which we live is all but destroying.
The individual who can and might be receptive to philosophical experience must not have been completely
stripped of her critical and experiential capacities by the social system; she must not have been thoroughly
normalized. But being spared total control by the system in the way needed to retain the capacity for
criticism requires an element of luck.
In schroffem Gegensatz zum üblichem Wissenschaftsideal bedarf die Objektivität dialektischer
Erkenntnis nicht eines Weniger sondern eines Mehr an Subjekt. Sonst verkümmert philosophische
Erfahrung. ... Jedenfalls behält der subjektive Anteil an Philosophie, verglichen mit der virtuell
subjektlosen Rationalität eines Wissenschaftsideals, dem die Ersetzbarkeit aller durch alle vor
Augen steht, einen irrationalen Zusatz. Er ist keine Naturqualität. Während das Argument
demokratisch sich gebärdet, ignoriert es, was die verwaltete Welt aus ihren Zwangsmitgliedern
macht. Geistig können nur die dagegen an, die sie nicht ganz gemodelt hat. Kritik am Privileg
wird zum Privileg: so dialektisch ist der Weltlauf. ... Kriterium des Wahren ist nicht seine
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