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

world, and the nature of the subject-object relation, how the contradictions in the object
are connected to subjective reflection.
The second kind of contradiction in negative dialectics, the “contradiction in the
concept,” arises from Adorno’s view of “the concept”—by which he means, not an
isolated concept, but rather a conceptual framework that defines a specific theoretical
position on the world 59 —and of the relation of concepts to the objects they subsume.
Adorno takes concepts to arise from the confrontation between subject and “object”—
which here means not the social world but rather non-conceptual nature—in which
confrontation the subject attempts to order nature through imposition of its own
categories. But the object is never fully captured by the subject’s categories and remains
at once “more” and “less” than the categories. 60 This “contradictory” relation between
concept and object is the ground for the “contradiction in the concept.” In order to
understand this kind of contradiction, we need to explore Adorno’s theory of concepts
and their relation to the objects they determine. And this relation, again, is grounded in
Adorno’s conception of the subject-object relation—where the object here refers not to
the social world but rather to nature or the non-conceptual referent of concepts.
59 In this sense, Adorno’s use of the term ‘concept’ is akin to Hegel’s use of the ‘Concept’ (usually
translated with a capital ‘C’), which denotes the totality of dialectically connected conceptual
determinations that are deployed in order to determine any object at all, and which are “deduced” in the
Science of Logic. See Adorno, Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 16
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003), 18: “Es ist nämlich nicht der übliche Begriff, sondern der Begriff, der
eigentlich bereits Theorie ist.” English translation in Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics (Cambridge:
Polity, 2008), 7: “The fact is that I am not talking about ‘concept’ in the ordinary sense, but about concept
that is already theory.”
60 Adorno, Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 16 (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 2003), 19. English translation by Rodney Livingstone in Adorno, Lectures on Negative
Dialectics (Cambridge: Polity, 2008), 7-8.
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