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

In order to locate an account of determinate negation in Adorno, we need to
explore his views on “negation” or “contradiction.” The key point will be to understand
on what presuppositions Adorno holds that the contradictions that thought discovers
within a particular position of thought give rise to a distinct new position of thought
rather than leading to a mere formal contradiction incapable of driving dialectical
reflection forward. Unless the contradiction that is generated uniquely determines a
specific interpretation or range of interpretations of its significance—an interpretation
that gives rise to the a new position and in so doing moves the dialectic forward—
negative dialectics would turn out to be a merely skeptical philosophy, and the
contradictions that it discloses in the positions that it targets would constitute a merely
abstract negation of those positions.
There are some readings of negative dialectics that take it to be a method for
driving any theoretical position whatever into merely abstract contradiction with itself,
and that take the philosophical payoff of this methodology to be the realization that
conceptual thought in general is contradictory and necessarily a failure. This is not
Adorno’s intention. Negative dialectics is not just a repudiation of rationality or
conceptual thought generally. In fact, for Adorno, such a repudiation would be a mere
inversion of the error contained in instrumental identity thinking, which elevates
conceptuality over all else. 55 The concept is neither to be made into an absolute nor to be
debased by simple, abstract negation.
55 The contradiction is not just an arbitrary, merely negative rebuttal of views. See Adorno,
Negative Dialektik, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 17: “Das
Differenzierte erscheint so lange divergent, dissonant, negativ, wie das Bewußtsein der eigenen Formation
nach auf Einheit drängen muß: solange es, was nicht mit ihm identisch ist, an seinem Totalitätsanspruch
mißt. Das hält Dialektik dem Bewußtsein als Widerspruch vor.” English translation (mine): “The
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