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

The constellation provides a field, a carefully arranged mosaic of fragments and
connections, intended to be animated by the reader in an experience. But the
constellation cannot tell the reader what to think 394 or replace the subjective experience in
which alone the objective content of the constellation can become alive. Philosophy, like
music, requires an experience in order to become alive and be expressed: “[W]as in ihr
[in der Philosophie] sich zuträgt, entscheidet, nicht These oder Position; das Gewebe,
nicht der deduktive oder induktive, eingleisige Gedankengang. Daher ist Philosophie
unmittelbare Kommunizierbarkeit an jedermann. Zu widerstehen ist der fast universalen
Nötigung, die Kommunikation des Erkannten mit diesem zu verwechseln und womöglich höher zu
stellen, während gegenwärtig jeder Schritt zur Kommunikation hin die Wahrheit ausverkauft and
verfälscht.
English translation by E.B. Ashton in Negative Dialectics (New York and London: Continuum, 2005), 40-
41:
In sharp contrast to the usual ideal of science, the objectivity of dialectical cognition needs not less
subjectivity, but more. Philosophical experience withers otherwise. … In any case, compared with
the virtually subjectless rationality of a scientific ideal that regards all men as interchangeable, the
subjective share in philosophy retains an irrational adjunct. It is not a quality of nature. While the
argument pretends to be democratic, it ignores what the administered world makes of its
compulsory members. Only a mind which it has not entirely molded can withstand it. Criticizing
privilege becomes a privilege—the world’s course is as dialectical as that. … Direct
communicability to everyone is not a criterion of truth. We must resist the all but universal
compulsion to confuse the communication of knowledge with knowledge itself, and to rate it
higher, if possible—whereas at present each communicative step is falsifying truth and selling it
out.
394 See Adorno, Negative Dialektik, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp
Verlag, 1970), 43:
Das Wesen wird durchs Résumé des Wesentlichen verfälscht. Philosophie, die zu dem sich
herabließe, worüber schon Hegel spottete; geneigten Lesern sich anbequemte in Erklärungen
darüber, was man nun bei dem Gedanken sich zu denken habe, gliederte der vordringenden
Regression sich ein, ohne doch mit ihr Schritt zu halten.
English translation by E.B. Ashton in Negative Dialectics (New York and London: Continuum, 2005), 32:
The essence is falsified by a résumé of essentials. If philosophy were to stoop to a practice which
Hegel already mocked, if it were to accommodate its kind reader by explaining what the thought
should make him think, it would be joining the march of regression without being able to keep up
the pace.
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