Determinate negation in negative dialectics

1.3 Determinate negation in negative dialectics

The question I wish to consider now is how Adorno’s critique and dialectical development of Hegel affects how we should understand the notion of negation in negative

dialectics. Adorno claims to endorse a Hegelian notion of determinate negation. 49 He claims of his own concept of negativity, “daß darin die Anweisung steckt zu dem, was bei Hegel

bestimmte Negation heißt” [that it contains a pointer to what Hegel calls determinate negation]. 50 He emphasizes that his concept of negativity is not just abstract negation, and that the latter

would transform itself into a “schlechte Positivität” [bad positivity]. 51 “Aber trotzdem soll man bei dieser Haltung [der abstrakten Negativität] nicht stehenbleiben. Eben das liegt in der

Forderung der bestimmten Negation.” 52 Clearly, Adorno takes himself to be working with a

49 See, for example, Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklärung, in Max Horkheimer: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1997), 46, where Adorno assimilates Hegel’s

call for determinate negation to philosophical respect for Bilderverbot—a respect we ought to follow and foster— but claims that, in his final complete system of identity, Hegel violates the Bilderverbot and thus also his own call for determinate negation. (English reference in trans. Jephcott, Edmund, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 18.)

50 Adorno, Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 16 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003), 44. Cf. Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 25. 51 Ibid.

52 Adorno, Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 16 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003), 45. Cf. Livingstone’s translation in Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics (Cambridge: Polity 52 Adorno, Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 16 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003), 45. Cf. Livingstone’s translation in Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics (Cambridge: Polity

At this point one might think that there are two possibilities for Adorno’s own account of the determinacy of negation in negative dialectics: Either (1) we must reject the notion as it stands in Hegel and develop a new account, or (2) we can preserve the Hegelian conception of determinate negation as an appropriate conception of negation for one strand of the dialectic, i.e. for the internal logic of “the system,” but we must also develop an account of the logic of negation appropriate to the dialectical other of the system—namely to nature and its development.

It is clear, however, that (2) is not an option. Once it is seen through that the Hegelian conception of the Concept and the teleological account of Reason to which it gives rise is only one side of a further dialectic with nature, the Hegelian view of the Concept and Reason itself is transformed, for, though the Concept does not incorporate nature, its relation to nature is internally constitutive insofar as it mediates the Concept, rather than merely external. We cannot simply take the Hegelian system and its logic of determinate negation, on the one hand, and the relation of non-conceptual nature to concepts and rationality with some independent account of its internal logic, on the other, and then juxtapose the two or relate them in some ex post facto manner. Adorno’s critique of Hegel is in fact built on the idea that the Hegelian system contains

Press, 2008), 26: “[W]e cannot allow this [merely abstract negativity] to be the end of the story, and this is what is implied in the call for determinate negation.” Press, 2008), 26: “[W]e cannot allow this [merely abstract negativity] to be the end of the story, and this is what is implied in the call for determinate negation.”

We are, then, left with the following quandary: Either negative dialectics proceeds through some alternative conception of determinate negation, or else Adorno illegitimately imported the Hegelian conception into his own philosophy, without realizing that his critique of the Hegelian system made such importation problematic. The second view is defended by Michael Rosen in the last chapter of his Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism (1982). My goal is to explore the viability of the first position, 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 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

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 ultimately blind to this problem. He attempts to retain a notion of dialectical progression without realizing that, in rejecting the Hegelian ‘absolute’ system, he has removed the justificatory ground for dialectical movement and can legitimately assume the validity of negation only as abstract, skeptical negation.

This criticism of Adorno constitutes a fatal blow only on the assumption that abstract negation and the Hegelian conception of determinate negation exhaust the conceptions of negation available to Adorno’s philosophy. Let us review the philosophical commitments that have created difficulties for Adorno. In the first place, he rejects the completeness of the Hegelian system as an absolute account of reason, which means that he rejects Hegel’s view that an already-developed rationality (i.e., the self-determining movement of the Concept) is what

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 of interpreting contradictions in such a way that they move the dialectic forward. Yet such an answer would work only on the assumption that thought has an imminent rational standard moving it forward to higher self-understanding—that is, on the assumption that thought develops through (Hegelian) determinate negation impeled forward by reason. On this view, negative dialectics requires a view of the activity of thought that finds philosophical justification on the very Hegelian grounds that Adorno rejects.

alone pushes the dialectic forward in the activity of thought. This entails a rejection of the conditions that make Hegel’s account of determinate negation possible, and it also entails that the Hegelian conception of determinate negation is limited and one-sided. And yet Adorno’s negative dialectics, like any form of Entwicklungsdialektik, requires that negation be determinate and not merely skeptical. The most charitable way to interpret the situation is to think that the form of negation at work in negative dialectics is a conception of negation different from (though perhaps closely related to) the Hegelian one, but also different from abstract negation.

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, 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,

Aber Denken darf auch nicht bei deren abstrakter Negation verharren. Die Illusion, des Vielen unmittelbar habhaft zu werden, schlüge ebenso in Mythologie, ins Grauen des Diffusen zurück, wie am Gegenpol das Einheitsdenken Nachahmung blinder Natur durch

deren Unterdrückung, mythische Herrschaft wäre. 56

Adorno’s view presupposes a concept of negation (contradiction) that stands somewhere between abstract negation (simple negativity) and Hegel’s notion of determinate negation (where the negation immediately acquires positive content and the complete series of dialectical negations gives rise to the system, which itself cannot be negated). Our first task in looking for an account of what makes negation determinate in negative dialectics is therefore to articulate Adorno’s views on contradiction.

One of Adorno’s most lucid discussions of contradiction occurs in the first of his Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik. He says,

Trotzdem hat das, was Ihnen als negative Dialektik soll vergeführt werden, mit dem Begriff der Dialektik etwas Entscheidendes zu tun, —und das ist doch nun auch vorweg einmal zu sagen. Nämlich: der Begriff des Widerspruchs, und zwar des Widerspruchs in

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 differentiated appears divergent, dissonant, negative, only so long as consciousness, by its own structure, is obligated to enforce unity: so long as it [the differentiated], which is not identical with it consciousness, is measured in terms of consciousness’s demand for totality. This is what dialectics holds before consciousness as contradiction.”

56 Adorno, Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 16 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003), 200. Cf. Linvingstone’s translation in Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics (Cambridge: Polity

Press, 2008), 158-160: “But thinking must not confine itself to abstract negation. The illusion that it is possible to take possible to take hold of the many directly would regress to mythology, to the horrors of the diffuse, just as much as, at the opposite pole, unity thinking would mean the imitation of blind nature by suppressing it, mythical domination.” Cf. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 161-162.

den Sachen selbst, des Widerspruchs im Begriff, nicht des Widerspruchs zwischen Begriffen, wird in dem, was wir besprechen, eine zentrale Rolle spielen. Dabei hat—und Sie werden nicht verkennen, daß das in einem gewissen Sinn eine Transposition oder eine Fortbildung eines Hegelschen Motivs ist—der Begriff des Widerspruchs selbst einen doppelten Sinn. Auf der einen Seite wird nämlich, ich deutete das schon an, gehandelt werden von dem widerspruchsvollen Charakter des Begriffs. Damit ist gemeint, daß der

Begriff selbst in Widerspruch zu der mit ihm gemeinten Sache träte. 57

The second meaning of contradiction is explained in the following page:

Das ist nun aber—und gerade in dieser Doppelseitigkeit werden die Kenner unter ihnen weitergetriebene und sehr veränderte Hegelsche Motive unschwer erkennen können—, das ist nur die eine, wenn Sie wollen: die subjektive Seite des Problems der Dialektik, und nicht die Seite, die am Ende sogar die entscheidende ist. Wenn ich also sage, daß zu dialektischem Denken in dem Sinn, daß die Kategorie des Widerspruchs in sein Zentrum tritt, die Struktur des Begriffs und das Verhältnis des Begriffs zu seiner Sache selbst nötige, dann nötigt umgekehrt dazu auch die objektive Realität, die Sphäre des Objekts, —wenn Sie einmal einen Augenblick lang sich ganz einfach so etwas wie eine Sphäre der Objektivität, wie es der naïve Realismus tut, als unabhängig von dem Denken vorstellen.

Das Modell dafür ist, daß wir in einer antagonistischen Gesellschaft leben. 58

57 Adorno, Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 16 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003), 17. Cf. Livingstone’s translation in Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics (Cambridge: Polity

Press, 2008), 6-7: Nevertheless, what I intend to present to you as negative dialectics possesses something quite crucially

related to the concept of dialectics in general—and this is something I wish to clarify at the outset. It is that the concept of contradiction will play a central role here, more particularly, the contradiction in things themselves, contradiction in the concept, not contradiction between concepts. At the same time—and I am sure that you will not fail to see that this is in a certain sense the transposition or development of a Hegelian motif—the concept of contradiction has a twofold meaning. On the one hand, as I have already intimated, we shall be concerned with the contradictory nature of the concept. What this means is that the concept enters into contradiction with the thing to which it refers.

58 Adorno, Vorlesung über Negative Dialektik, in Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol. 16 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003), 19-20. Cf. Livingstone’s translation in Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics (Cambridge: Polity

Press, 2008), 8: However, that is only one side of the matter—and the fact that the question has two sides will enable the

connoisseurs among you to identify without much difficulty a number of Hegelian motifs that have been extended and altered. And this side is the subjective aspect of dialectics, the aspect that is not the decisive one in the final analysis. Thus for dialectical thought in the sense in which the category of contradiction is central, what is needed is the structure of the concept and the relation of the concept to the thing it stands for. But to say this is also to imply the converse, namely objective reality, the sphere of the object—if, like the naïve realists, you can for a moment entertain the notion of a sphere of objectivity that is independent of thought. The model for this is the fact that we live in an antagonistic society.

The first contradiction is internal to the concept and is developed by comparing it to its intentional object. The second is a contradiction in the object, and it expresses the contradiction inherent in social reality.

The overarching goal of the present study is to develop an account of what makes negation or contradiction determinate in Adorno’s negative dialectics, and to answer this question I will proceed by developing an account of (1) the contradiction as a “contradiction in the concept” (between the concept and the thing to which it refers) and the theory of concepts that this contradiction presupposes, (2) the contradiction as a “contradiction in the object,” in the sense of the inherently antagonistic nature of society, and its consequences for a theory of concepts, and, finally, (3) the relation between these two kinds of contradiction.