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

appropriate to the specific social, historical, and intellectual reality of the world in which
we live. 61
It is the object of reflection, reality itself, that requires reflection to take the
specific form it takes. This view is in agreement with Hegel’s conception of dialectics as
an ontological form of thought, a form of thought prompted and guided by the object of
61 The ideas that thought is necessarily situated, historically and socially, and can only rise above
blind determination by its situatedness through self-awareness of how it arises from, and intervenes into,
the present reality was a central tenet of the early Frankfurt School. Max Horkheimer stresses the
dependence of critical theory on its specific social and historical context in his influential inaugural address
as director of the Institut für Sozialforschung, entitled “Traditionelle und kritische Theorie.” As
Horkheimer notes, critical theory is always time-indexed because it concerns itself with the concrete social
and historical context from which it arises. Yet critical theory as a whole retains a degree of stability
because its substance will not change until we see a historical transformation of society and its basic
principle of commodity exchange. Within this relative stability, micro-historical changes cause a shift in
degrees of relative importance within elements of the theory (i.e. more concretization, new results based on
advances in the sciences, etc), but the principle driving the social totality remains unchanged. Moreover,
critical theory maintains stability and theoretical integrity through its evolution because this evolution is
itself an object of study for the theory. See Horkheimer, Max, “Traditionelle und kritische Theorie,” in
Traditionelle und kritische Theorie: Fünf Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Fisher, 1992), 255:
Das Gesagte sollte verdeutlichen, daß die beständige Umwälzung der sozialen Verhältnisse, die
sich unmittelbar aus ökonomischen Entwicklungen ergibt und im Aufbau der herrschenden
Schicht ihren nächsten Ausdruck findet, nicht bloß einzelne Zweige der Kultur, sondern auch den
Sinn ihrer Abhängigkeit von der Ökonomie und damit die entscheidenden Begriffe der ganzen
Konzeption betrifft. Dieser Einfluß der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung auf die Struktur der
Theorie gehört zu ihrem eigenen Lehrbestand. Die neuen Inhalte kommen daher nicht
mechanisch zu schon gegebenen Teilen hinzu. Da die Theorie ein einheitliches Ganzes bildet, das
nur in der Bezogenheit auf die gegenwärtige Situation seine eigentümliche Bedeutung hat,
befindet sie sich in einer Evolution, die freilich ebensowenig ihre Grundlagen aufhebt, wie das
Wesen des von ihr reflektierten Gegenstands, der gegenwärtigen Gesellschaft, etwa durch ihre
neuesten Umbildungen ein anderes wird. Selbst die scheinbar entferntesten Begriffe sind jedoch
in den Prozeß mit einbezogen. (emphasis mine)
English translation by O’Connell et. al. in “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in Critical Theory: Selected
Essays by Max Horkheimer (New York: Continuum, 2002), 238:
What has been said is intended to show that the continuous change of social relationships, due
immediately to economic developments and fining its most direct expression in the formation of
the ruling class, does not affect only some areas of the culture. It also affects the way in which the
culture depends on the economy and, thus, the key ideas in the whole conception. This influence
of social development on the structure of the theory is part of the theory’s doctrinal content. Thus
new contents are not just mechanically added to already existent parts. Since the theory is a
unified whole which has its proper meaning only in relation to the contemporary situation, the
theory as a whole is caught up in an evolution. The evolution does not change the theory’s
foundations, of course, any more than recent changes essentially alter the object which the theory
reflects, namely contemporary society. Yet even the apparently more remote concepts of the
theory are drawn into the evolution. (emphasis mine)
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