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

conceptual oppositions that arise from confronting finite elements of the object with the
logic of the whole in which they are embedded. Again, these oppositions are never self-
interpretive but rather require to be set in opposition with a reading of their structure from
the standpoint of natural history. Here we return once more to the contradiction in the
concept.
This dialectical movement from one form of contradiction to the other goes on
and on, at least as long as the dialectician is willing to continue her analysis: the
“contradiction in the object” and the “contradiction in the concept” sublate the other and
are in turn sublated by it ad indefinitum. The system is relentlessly “broken” by setting it
in opposition with the natural history of the object, but this natural history is in turn
always subsumed back into a more encompassing system.
So, the first result we reach by bringing together our account of the two forms of
contradiction is that they are joined by a logical structure whereby they are always
sublated (or sublatable) under a dialectically more developed version of the other. Call
this the “structure of concentric circles” (where there is no “final” circle).
This structure explains how dialectical movement is achieved in negative
dialectics: how, despite its ‘negativity,’ negative dialectics is in fact a form of
Entwicklungsdialektik whose movement is directed by the object. For the movement
does not simply bounce back and forth between the “contradiction in the object” and the
“contradiction in the concept” at the same level of complexity. Rather, the “contradiction
in the object” is sublated [aufgehoben] by the “contradiction in the concept” as a proper
moment of the latter, and then the “contradiction in the concept” is resolved into the
natural-historical interpretation of the object as a monadic representation for the social
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