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

Hegel’s idea that history is in essence rational means that we can reconstruct the
main or essential moments of world history in an intelligible narrative which, despite
local irrationalities and contingencies, actualizes a movement toward ever-increasing
rationality and freedom. But I want to emphasize that this reconstructive narrative is
open only to the philosophical or speculative standpoint, which means that Hegel’s view
of history hinges on the distinction between different standpoints from which history can
be assessed, and on his view that the adequate standpoint for philosophical assessment is
that of absolute knowledge and not that of the empirical individual who has not yet
reached a self-conscious understanding of philosophical Wissenschaft. Hegel is well-
aware that historical events may seem irrational and terrible from the standpoint of the
individual, living consciousness that is trapped within historical development before the
completion of Geist’s journey toward self-knowledge, just as the ordinary consciousness
described in the Phenomenology does not itself understand the movement from one shape
of consciousness to another as necessary and driven in a journey toward absolute
knowledge. But the important point for Hegel is that from the speculative standpoint of
absolute knowledge we can reconstruct world history as an essential movement toward
the ever-more complete actualization of rationality and freedom in objective existence,
and thus to see even the ‘irrational’ moments of seemingly pointless suffering in history
as means by which Reason actualizes itself in the world.
However, for Adorno, the speculative standpoint is ultimately only a dialectical
moment that can be shown to be inadequate. Whereas for Hegel the ordinary
94: “[R]eason rules the world and thus also has ruled and continues to rule world history. Everything else
is subordinate to this universal substance in and for itself, and serves as a means for it. In addition,
however, reason is immanent in historical existence, bringing itself to completion in and through it.”
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