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

and to that end it will be necessary to explore the possibility that Adorno offers a
different and plausible conception of determinate negation, of what makes it possible,
and, ultimately, of dialectical thought.
I agree with Michael Rosen that Adorno’s belief to be operating with a conception
of determinate negation that he owes largely to Hegel is based on Adorno’s misreading of
Hegel. Rosen argues that Adorno mistakenly interprets Hegel’s dialectic as moving from
one form of consciousness to another in two steps: The first is the critical negation of the
first form of consciousness, and the second is a “negation of the negation” by which a
new form of consciousness is constituted. Rosen sees Adorno as wanting to retain the
first, “critical negation,” and calling it alone “determinate negation,” while rejecting the
second. Rosen is right to point out that this view misinterprets Hegel’s philosophy, in
which the first and second negative moments above are one and the same. 53 Ultimately,
for Rosen, this misreading leads to grave consequences for Adorno, for his rejection of
the affirmative moment in negation entails the wholesale rejection of determinate
negation (in Hegel’s sense) and leaves in place only skeptical or abstract negation. But
abstract negation cannot generate dialectical movement. 54 In Rosen’s view, Adorno is
53 See Rosen, Michael, Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), 160-164.
54 Rosen considers a way out of this dilemma by articulating Adorno’s notions of mediation and
reflection. ‘Mediation’ is the relationship that meaning processes bear to their material substrata, and it
explains how meaning derives from material processes and becomes inscribed in material reality.
‘Reflection’ explains how the analysis of mediation makes possible negative dialectical reflection. “But
what entitles Adorno to make use of these two concepts? Evidently they are supposed to constitute the
common strand connecting his conception of philosophical experience with Hegel’s….” The problem,
however, is that Adorno’s attempt to use these concepts in isolation from the context of the Hegelian
system “removes it from the context in which the experience of Thought might give its only rigorous
justification” (Rosen, Michael, Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), 176). In the end, then, Rosen thinks that Adorno’s misreading of Hegel deals a heavy blow to
his philosophical views. Adorno tries to avoid falling into a mere skeptical position (operating with
negation that is abstract only) by assuming a view of the activity of thought as ‘reflection,’ which is capable
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