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

zum Entsetzen verifiziert und auf den Kopf gestellt. Verklärte jener die Totalität
geschichtlichen Leidens zur Positivität des sich realisierenen Absoluten, so wäre
das Eine und Ganze, das bis heute, mit Atempausen, sich fortwälzt, teleologisch
das absolute Leiden. … Zu definieren wäre der Weltgeist, würdiger Gegenstand
von Definition, als permanente Katastrophe. Unter dem alles unterjochenden
Identitätsprinzip wird, was in die Identität nicht eingeht und der planenden
Rationalität im Reich der Mittel sich entzieht, zum Beängstigenden, Vergeltung
für jenes Unheil, das dem Nichtidentischen durch Identiät widerfährt. Kaum
anders wäre Geschichte philosophisch zu interpretieren, ohne daß in Idee
verzaubert würde. 38
Adorno does not deny that there is an interpretation of history to be told in terms
of progress; he argues only that this progress is one-sided because history can also be
construed as a narrative of regression, and any interpretation that does not one-sidedly
emphasize the geistig moment in the individual, but that rather also looks at the natural
moment, has to deal with the narrative of regression. Moreover, the two ways of looking
at historical development—progress in instrumental rationality and regression in the
increase of domination and suffering—are not independent but rather mediate each other.
The very development of instrumental rationality, we are told in Dialektik der
38 Adorno, Negative Dialektik, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag,
1970), 314-5. See E.B. Ashton’s translation in Negative Dialectics (New York and London: Continuum,
2005), 320:
Universal history must be construed and denied. After the catastrophes that have happened, and in
view of the catastrophes to come, it would be cynical to say that a plan for a better world is
manifested in history and unites it. Not to be denied for that reason, however, is the unity that
cements the discontinuous, chaotically splintered moments and phases of history—the unity of the
control of nature, progressing to rule over men, and finally to that over men’s inner nature. No
universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the
slingshot to the megaton bomb. It ends in the total menace which organized mankind poses to
organized men, in the epitome of discontinuity. It is the horror that verifies Hegel and stands him
on his head. If he transfigured the totality of historic suffering into the positivity of the selfrealizing
absolute, the One and All that keeps rolling on to this day—with occasional breathing
spells—would teleologically be the absolute of suffering. … The world spirit, a worthy object of
definition, would have to be defined as permanent catastrophe. Under the all-subjugating identity
principle, whatever does not enter into identity, whatever eludes rational planning in the realm of
means, turns into frightening retribution for the calamity which identity brought on the
nonidentical. There is hardly another way to interpret history philosophically without enchanting
it into an idea.
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