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

the defining quality of geistige Erfahrung—that is, of the experience of thinking.
Moreover, geistige Erfahrung is not just a ‘general feeling’ that the thinker has; it is not
the same quality of affect in the experience of any object whatever. Rather, the quality of
suffering or guilt that accompanies the thought of a particular object is ineluctably
attached to that specific object and reveals something about that unique object. And,
finally, what the quality of geistige Erfahrung reveals about the object is not fully elusive
to interpretation. It is elusive to full conceptualization—i.e., to a conceptual analysis that
would pretend fully to render what the experience expresses about the object. The
interpretation has to ‘say’ what is only allegorically ‘sayable’ with concepts, as, for
instance, the psychoanalytic interpretation of the “Oedipus complex” expresses
something about unconscious development that is only approachable with language and
that cannot be fully conceptually unpacked ‘as it is in itself.’ But the allegory based on
the Greek myth does tell us something. Similarly, the natural element in the self can be
given meaningful expression in language; and the interpretation that aims to animate this
expression can be cognitively significant even if not reducible to conceptual analysis. 34
So, the standpoint of nature can enter conscious reflection in a manner that is
cognitively meaningful. But, in terms of the specific topic that concerns us—that is,
world history—what does the interpretation of nature ‘say’?
According to Adorno, the interpretation of world history from the standpoint of
inner nature gives voice to a narrative of infinite suffering. From this standpoint, for
instance, Auschwitz cannot be explained as an unfortunate stage in a world history
34 See chapter 5 for a detailed reconstruction of the interpretation of world history from the
standpoint of nature that Adorno and Horkheimer offer in Dialektik der Aufklärung. Chapter 6 analyzes
the philosophical conception of history presupposed by this form of interpretation.
36