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

The logical structure of paranoid projection thus defines the object of thought (the
historically determined state of reality) and grounds the form of contradiction in negative
dialectics (the “contradiction in the object” and the “contradiction in the concept”) as
well as the movement that restlessly moves from one form of contradiction to the other in
a never-ending dialectical progression. Without understanding the logical structure of
paranoid projection, I maintain, we cannot understand the ground for either form of
contradiction in negative dialectics, nor the relation between them.
I started this dissertation with the question of what makes contradiction, or
“negation,” determinate in Adorno’s negative dialectics: what drives the contradiction
forward so that it does not simply collapse into mere formal contradiction but rather gives
rise to a new interpretation of the object. I argued that negation in Adorno cannot be
made ‘determinate’ in the same way that the Hegelian negation is determinate, because,
in Hegel, what makes the negation determinate is that contradictions are driven by a
substantial interpretation that leads to their resolution in a position that sublates them: the
interpretation is, briefly put, that Reason drives thought and being forward in a direction
of the its ever growing actualization because the self-determining movement of “the
Concept” is the ultimate structure of all thinkable and experienceable reality. Since
Adorno rejects Hegel’s view of reality as essentially and fully determined by the self-
determination of Reason, the “contradiction” that impels negative dialectics forward
cannot be grounded in the Hegelian “absolute” conception of Reason. The question arose
in chapter 1 of whether this entails that negation in negative dialectics is therefore simply
“abstract” in the Hegelian sense—that is, a negation that is nothing but sheer
contradiction and does not have an immanent principle driving it toward a specific and
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