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

consciousness is ultimately able to supersede its opposition to the object and thus to raise
itself to absolute knowledge, for Adorno the subject is never fully able to supersede this
opposition. Specifically, the individual is not able to reconcile itself with the world,
because the concrete, living individual contains a non-conceptual natural component that
exists in ineluctable opposition to the world, and whose suffering relation to the world
enters into conscious reflection and denies the rational reconstruction that would see the
world, and world history, as reconciled with the subject.
Adorno’s point is not just that there is a natural component of the self that is not
fully conceptual or conceptualizable; after all, Hegel accepts this, for he holds that nature,
both inner and outer, always externalizes the Concept only to a limited extent and is
never fully rid of contingency. But for Hegel the human spirit (i.e., consciousness or
mind) is the first full actualization of the Concept, even if it is always embodied and thus
contains a natural moment that is finite. Hegel holds that human consciousness is unique
in the animal realm in that it is able fully to actualize and even to comprehend the full
rational structure of reality as the self-actualization of the Concept, of Reason; and since
spirit itself is a self-conscious externalization of the Concept, it can understand reality as
expressive of its own self, and so as fully reconciled to it.
For Adorno, on the other hand, the inner nature of the human being exists in
irreconcilable opposition with the human spirit or mind, which means that the mind can
never retrieve its natural element to see it as essentially determined by the categories of
reason. In chapter 5, I explain the opposition at issue in detail, showing that Adorno
holds it to be specifically defined by a relation of repression. For now, however, it is
sufficient to note that Adorno holds this opposition to be such that the human being is
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