# Reading Group: Negative Dialectics by Theodor Adorno **URL:** \ **Category:** Reading Groups\ **Tags:** critical-theory\ **Created:** [February 17, 2026, 4:37am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57 "2026-02-17T04:37:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2026, 8:28am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/262 "2026-08-27T08:28:48Z")
## ND Part II / Objectivity of the Contradiction (part 2) [Link to online text](https://negativedialectics.org/#objectivity-of-the-contradiction) The second paragraph starts with a sentence full of ambiguity: > Experience refuses to settle whatever would appear in what is contradictory in the unity of consciousness. Here is a better translation of the original German, which I got by comparing and combining a few AI translations: > Experience refuses to allow whatever contradictory elements may arise to be smoothed over within the unity of consciousness. Experience, honestly undergone and considered, gives the lie to any attempted resolution or unity. He gives an example of such a contradiction: > like that between the determination, which the individual knows as its own, and that which society imposes on it, if it wishes to keep itself alive, that of the “role” In other words, the contradiction between your self-conception and the role imposed on you by society. This contradiction … > is not to be reduced to any sort of unity without manipulation, without the fine-tuning of impoverished master concepts, which cause the essential differences to disappear We can fine-tune our concepts to accommodate the contradiction, but this is merely falsification. For example, we might explain it away by thinking of the individual as a _well-rounded personality_. But this is a delusion—experience will continue to be felt as something unreconciled and antagonistic to the core. He gives another example, which I think has come up before in the group: > the exchange-principle, which increases the productive-forces in existing society, simultaneously threatens these to an increasing degree with annihilation At this point, it’s reasonable to be sceptical, and to think once again as follows: hold on: how is that more than an _antagonism_, or a _self-undermining dynamic_, which appears as a contradiction only if we fail to fine-tune the concepts? If we lazily say that capitalism is progressive and leads to eternal growth, then there’s a contradiction. But we can resolve it: if we say that capitalism has a dynamic towards productive expansion and at the same time another dynamic toward destruction, owing to a blindness or lack of x, y, and z, then the contradiction appears not to be objective after all. “Contradiction”, then, would be akin to familiar Marxist rhetoric. I think Adorno would say that the lazy description expresses an important truth, that capitalism has a single dynamic. There are not two opposing, separable forces—to say so is to impose formal logic on reality, since it cannot accommodate a self-negating dynamic—but rather a single internally contradictory one. The remaining question is how these examples relate to the abstract and theoretical contradictions elucidated in the first paragraph. It’s clear that Adorno thinks they are the same kind of thing, and intimately related. We might be tempted to say that the basic contradiction in the object under judgement is the basis for the contradictions of the self and of capitalism, but we’ve seen already that Adorno often puts it the other way: identity-thinking is the exchange principle in the medium of thought. So in the end, the two are the same abstraction, with neither being a ground for the other. I won’t write much about the third paragraph, which is just advocating for dialectics again, but this bit reinforces what I’ve been saying: > The dialectical contradiction “is” not purely and simply Although the contradiction is objective, that doesn’t mean it’s a self-standing metaphysical object, an existent just sitting out there. ---
**Author:** ![Meta\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Meta\_U](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Meta_U)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2026, 12:30am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/263 "2026-08-28T00:30:46Z")
> [@Jamal](#): > > You have once again read the dualism he has been at pains to critique, _back into his own words_. The particular is not in the mind. The particular is the existent under the aspect of judgement. I don’t see how you conclude that Adorno is opposed to dualist strategies. You yourself said the following: > [@Jamal](#): > > He always meant the thing in its dual character: as reciprocally constituting and constituted by the subject, and as the preponderant non-identical non-conceptual pole of thought. Our way of seeing things is really not very different. I think that it’s mainly that we use different terminology. I may concede to your way of describing things however, through a sort of compromise. We might say that the particular which is “in judgement” is an aspect of the existent, in the same way that the individual is an aspect of the society. The particular, as it is in judgement, is an aspect of the thinking subject, as the subject is making judgement. But as much as the subject is an aspect of the (existent) society, then so is the particular in judgement an aspect of that existent. But this makes the particular in judgement twice mediated in relation to the existent itself, once between the particular and the subject, and once between the subject and the existent. The existent is validated through the society rather than through the particular. This I think explains why he has so many different types of contradiction, contradiction within the object, within the subject, and between the two. But can you tell me what you think is the meaning of the following passage? Your last description appeared like basic dualism to me when you said “The particular ‘included in the judgement’ only approximates to that real existent.” Can you describe what you think the intention is, which is not satisfied? Doesn’t it seem to you, that what is not satisfied is the requirement of an existent which is beyond the particular which is in the judgement? > But the objective contradictoriness designates not only whatever of the existent remains outside of the judgement, but something in what is judged itself. For the judgement always means that existent which is judged beyond that particular, which is included in the judgement; otherwise it would be, according to its own intention, superfluous. And exactly this intention is what it does not satisfy. > [@Jamal](#): > > He gives another example, which I think has come up before in the group: I think it’s all part of the same example. It’s the contradiction between the subject (individual) and the existent (society). The exchange-principle is what society imposes, in this instance. (I would call it the particular.) The individual subject finds this contradictory because the productive forces which this is meant to increase, are also threatened by it. The subjective consciousness is forced with a difficult decision, either harmonize itself with “the course of the world and, against its better insight”, or “conduct itself as if there were no course of the world, and perish in it”. The solution it appears is something else all together “comprehend it”. ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2026, 5:25am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/264 "2026-08-28T05:25:53Z")
Saying the thing has a dual character is not an endorsement of dualism. The latter, dual_ **ism** _, is a philosophical tradition and way of thinking, criticized by Adorno earlier: > subject and object do not firmly oppose one another, as in the Kantian outline, but penetrate each other reciprocally > > — [Peephole Metaphysics](https://negativedialectics.org/#peephole-metaphysics) It’s the firm opposition that Adorno opposes, not the use of conceptual pairs. After all, dialectics, including the negative kind, is full of these pairs, and Adorno doesn’t reject them: subject/object, universal/particular, concept/thing, form/content, identity/non-identity. It’s “dual character” everywhere you look. What he rejects is the hardening of each item of the pair into a sealed, self-standing pole—as if they could exist independently of each other or as if one could be the ground of the other. In dialectics, the items in a pair are mutually mediated, unintelligible on their own. So, to have a dual character in the sense I intended is to be one thing standing in such a mutually mediated relation, and seen under two aspects. Dualism splits this into two things. > [@Meta\_U](#): > > We might say that the particular which is “in judgement” is an aspect of the existent, in the same way that the individual is an aspect of the society. The particular, as it is in judgement, is an aspect of the thinking subject, as the subject is making judgement. You can’t have it both ways. These are contradictory: 1. The particular which is “in judgement” is an aspect of the existent 2. The particular, as it is in judgement, is an aspect of the thinking subject, as the subject is making judgement. An aspect of the existent is the object under a certain aspect (as judged, in this case). It’s on the object side of the relation. An aspect of the subject is some content of the mind doing the judging. It’s on the subject side of the relation. Your second sentence moves the particular, or the existent, from the object to the subject. This mentalization is inadmissible, unless you’ve already assumed the existent is in the mind. On the other hand, if “the particular, as it is in judgement, is an aspect of the thinking subject” just means that the act of judging the particular is something the subject does, then of course that’s right: it’s the subjective aspect of the particular. If that’s your point, then okay. But be careful. The _particular-as-judged_ is the object in relation to the subject, but **the particular-as-judged is not an object in its own right**. Ultimately I don’t think there’s a way of making the statement that _the particular-as-judged is an aspect of the thinking subject_ out to be true, because it mixes up what the aspect is an aspect of. What you can say is that _the particular-as-judged—an aspect of the particular—is the subjective moment of the particular._ > [@Meta\_U](#): > > Doesn’t it seem to you, that what is not satisfied is the requirement of an existent which is beyond the particular which is in the judgement? With one small tweak, yes. And this is exactly the character of thought that Adorno is showing, namely the unavoidable excess of the object beyond the concept. This “beyond,” for Adorno, is not the realm of the in-itself but the non-identical and non-conceptual, which is nevertheless still immanent to the relation between subject and object. But my “immanent” there does not equate to “in the mind”. The non-identical _belongs to the object_, even if this object cannot be reached except through the subject-object relation. The excess beyond the concept is its real inexhaustibility, not something supplied by thought. EDIT: The “Peephole Metaphysics” section is the one to re-read. My post about it is [here](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/163). ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2026, 6:19am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/265 "2026-08-28T06:19:20Z")
@Meta_U This is relevant: > [@Jamal](#): > > Anyway, note carefully that the critique is directed at _the notion of a glance_ into the pure in-itself, not at the pure in-itself as such. Does he reject that too? Yes and no, I’d say. It is the in-itself _as correlate of a possible glance_ and as _separate realm_ that is criticized, i.e., the what-would-be-seen-without-seeing. So it’s an attack on dualism, and it still leaves space for the object’s in-itself _in the sense of its irreducibility to the subject_. ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2026, 10:41am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/266 "2026-08-28T10:41:05Z")
## ND Part II / Outset from the Concept (Part 1) [Link to online text](https://negativedialectics.org/#outset-from-the-concept) Beginning with the concept as we must, we see > relics of static thought and of a static cognitive ideal in the midst of dynamized consciousness. The immanent claim of the concept is its order-creating invariance as opposed to the change in what it analyzes. The form of the concept rejects this latter, is therein “wrong”. There is just something “wrong” with concepts as such, the mismatch built in to conceptuality, between dynamic reality and conceptuality’s invariant order. He cannot say “wrong” without scare-quotes because he means something like _constitutively inadequate_, not wrong in the usual sense that some judgements are wrong and some are right. This is why dialectics is so important: > In dialectics thought raises the objection against the archaisms of its conceptuality. > Dialectics amounts, according to its subjective side, to a thinking wherein the form of thought no longer turns its objects into immutable things which stay the same; that they would be so, is refuted by experience. He illustrates the non-identity in identity with an everyday example, familiar to many: > an older one, looking back to when it once began to consciously exist to some extent, clearly recalls its distant past. It produces a unity, however irreally childhood may slip away from it. In that irreality however the I which one remembers, which one once was and potentially is once again, becomes at the same time an other, an alien, to be detachedly observed. An older one = an older individual consciousness. > Such ambivalence of identity and non-identity is preserved all the way into the logical problematic of identity. The expert jargon had the ready-made formula of the identity in the non-identity ready for this. It would need to be contrasted first with the non-identity in identity. The “expert jargon” is the specialist terminology of the philosophers, particularly Hegel and the German idealists. For Hegel, identity-in-non-identity is something like a “ready-made formula”—differences and opposites are to be comprehended as moments in a higher (or deeper) identity, achieved in the synthesis of sublation. Adorno flips it around, to find the non-identity in identity. But… > Such a mere formal inversion meanwhile allows room for the subreption, that dialectics would be in spite of everything prima philosophia, as “prima dialectica”. The turn to the non-identical is borne out in its execution; if it remained a declaration, it would revoke itself. He immediately distrusts his own inversion and says, effectively, _be careful not to turn this into another ready-made formula_. Non-identity is not another first principle, but is to be found in philosophical practice. ---
**Author:** ![Meta\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Meta\_U](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Meta_U)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2026, 1:15pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/267 "2026-08-28T13:15:03Z")
> [@Jamal](#): > > You can’t have it both ways. These are contradictory: > > 1. The particular which is “in judgement” is an aspect of the existent > 2. The particular, as it is in judgement, is an aspect of the thinking subject, as the subject is making judgement. > > An aspect of the existent is the object under a certain aspect (as judged, in this case). To characterize this as contradiction, I think is a misunderstanding of what I wrote (although in the context of “objective contradiction” contradiction may actually be required for an accurate understanding of Adorno.) The “existent” is a general term. And I think the use of this general term in its distinction from “the particular” is very intentional by Adorno. This maneuver puts the particular within the mind, within the judgement of the subject, allowing that the existent extends beyond what is a part of the judgement. This further extension is provided for by the use of that more general term. This means that “the existent” does not refer to any particular object, it just refers to “what is existing” in general. I see it as a reworking of Heidegger’s “being” where he removes the faulty part which causes ambiguity, when “being” is taken to refer to something ontic. The ontic, as individual things, is replaced with “the existent” as the whole of existence. The whole of existence, as “the existent” is most immediately present to the individual subject as society. This is how Adorno gets beyond the phenomenologists’ and Heidegger’s faulty way of dealing with Hegel’s “pure insight”, whereby the particular becomes the universal. Now “the existent” as society is present to the individual subject through concepts, ideology, etc.. Notice the example now, the individual subject in relation to the ideology of society, the exchange-principle. Now society, with this concept the exchange-principle, is how “the existent” is present to the subject. Consider the wording used, “The course of the world”. “The world” represents society, as “the existent” in its presence. “The existent” is not a collection of individual ontic things, that is Heidegger’s mistake. “The existent” is a reworked sense of “being” which avoids this problem, where the term is assigned to a “whole” which is separated from the particulars by the two levels of mediation which I referred to. > Dialectics need not fear the reproach, that it is obsessed with the fixed idea of the objective antagonism, while the thing would already be pacified; nothing individual finds peace in the unpacified whole. > [@Jamal](#): > > What he rejects is the hardening of each item of the pair into a sealed, self-standing pole—as if they could exist independently of each other or as if one could be the ground of the other. In dialectics, the items in a pair are mutually mediated, unintelligible on their own. So, to have a dual character in the sense I intended is to be one thing standing in such a mutually mediated relation, and seen under two aspects. Dualism splits this into two things. I think what he is trying to avoid, is the notion of an individual, concrete thing, which corresponds with the “particular” in thought. That is the foundation of identity thinking. In reality, thought puts the particular in relation to concepts and judges that way. And the concepts are derived through society (the two levels of mediation I referred to), so through society is how “the existent” appears to us. Notice how this totally removes the importance of the subjective end of the chain of mediation, i.e. sense perception, to work completely with logic. “The existent” is not apprehended through sense perception which grants us the particular, it is apprehended through the medium of society. This is why the next chapter moves toward “the concept”. > [@Jamal](#): > > On the other hand, if “the particular, as it is in judgement, is an aspect of the thinking subject” just means that the act of judging the particular is something the subject does, then of course that’s right: it’s the subjective aspect of the particular. If that’s your point, then okay This would correctly represent what I meant, with one crucial change. The act of judging the particular is something the subject does, and the particular is an aspect of the subject in that way, as you say. However, to respect the distinction between “the particular” and “the existent”, this is not “the subjective aspect of the particular”, it is the subjective aspect of the existent. And what I am arguing is the “the existent” is not a concrete (ontic) object. Notice how he then goes on, in his example, to portray the objective aspect of the existent as society, not as some individual concrete thing which corresponds with, or is united with, the particular in judgement through some sort of identity principle. That is why “nothing particular is true”, there is no such correspondence with the particular in judgement. > [@Jamal](#): > > Ultimately I don’t think there’s a way of making the statement that _the particular-as-judged is an aspect of the thinking subject_ out to be true, because it mixes up what the aspect is an aspect of. What you can say is that _the particular-as-judged—an aspect of the particular—is the subjective moment of the particular._ You only make this conclusion by neglecting how “the existent” is truly present to us, through society. This is the point Adorno made long ago in the introduction, by demonstrating how society is the substance. We must respect this principle, though it is contrary to the traditional way of thinking (derived from Aristotle), that “substance” is assigned to the individual, particular thing. He falls back on this principle constantly, because substantiating his claims requires relating them to the substance of existence (the existent), which is society, rather than the individual. > [@Jamal](#): > > With one small tweak, yes. And this is exactly the character of thought that Adorno is showing, namely the unavoidable excess of the object beyond the concept. This “beyond,” for Adorno, is not the realm of the in-itself but the non-identical and non-conceptual, which is nevertheless still immanent to the relation between subject and object. I agree with this. But for me, it is evident that for Adorno “the relation between subject and object” is represented as the relation between subject and society. so when he talks about the particular within the judgement of the subject, this relates to the existent (object) through the mediation of society rather than as corresponding with an independent concrete particular. ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2026, 7:25am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/268 "2026-08-29T07:25:11Z")
You make some good points there, particularly that for Adorno the objective is socially mediated. It reaches us through concepts and ideology, as “the course of the world,” not as raw data. Where your interpretation diverges from the text is regarding “the existent”. You’re using it for the social whole, and “the particular” for something in the mind. But in this section the existent and the particular are the same thing: the existent is the particular that’s judged—the individual thing the judgement aims at and falls short of. There isn’t a mental particular on one side and a social totality on the other, but one existent, the thing under judgement. > [@Meta\_U](#): > > Notice how this totally removes the importance of the subjective end of the chain of mediation, i.e. sense perception, to work completely with logic. “The existent” is not apprehended through sense perception which grants us the particular, it is apprehended through the medium of society. Actually it’s both: the existent is given through society _and_ through sense perception. And the deeper point is that the particular can’t be removed. Take a look again here: > Philosophical thinking has for its content neither the remainder after the cancellation of space and time, nor general findings about what is spatio-temporal. It crystallizes in the particular, in what is determined in space and time. > > — [Necessity of the Substantive](https://negativedialectics.org/#necessity-of-the-substantive) Removing the particular to “work completely with logic” is ruled out: content isn’t what remains once the spatio-temporal is cancelled. It’s what crystallizes in the particular. Anyway, I’ll leave it there and continue moving on. ---
**Author:** ![Meta\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Meta\_U](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Meta_U)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2026, 12:40pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/269 "2026-08-29T12:40:41Z")
> [@Jamal](#): > > Where your interpretation diverges from the text is regarding “the existent”. You’re using it for the social whole, and “the particular” for something in the mind. But in this section the existent and the particular are the same thing: the existent is the particular that’s judged—the individual thing the judgement aims at and falls short of. I don’t think so. Take a look at the opening sentence of “Outset From The Concept”: > Because the existent is not immediate but only through the concept, one should commence with the concept, not the mere given fact. It’s not likely that he has switched to a new meaning for “the existent”. I think he is taking the Kantian metaphysics to the extreme of what it entails. There is an insurmountable chasm between the appearance and the in-itself. We understand the appearance, (called “the particular” in this context), by establishing associations with concepts, predication, description, etc., but because of that chasm we ought not even talk about the in-itself. Independent of our conceptual understanding of the in-itself, we can’t even say whether it consists of separate individual particulars, "things’, because this is a feature of the appearance, and we haven’t the means to conclude that it is a feature of the in-itself. > [@Jamal](#): > > There isn’t a mental particular on one side and a social totality on the other, but one existent, the thing under judgement. I’d say that Adorno frames it as a mental particular on one side, and the social construct, conceptions and ideology, on the other side. Both are within the thinking subject in the act of judging the particular. Note that “particular” is quite broad in applicability, simply meaning how the concrete appears to the subject. It may be a particular circumstance requiring moral judgement, etc.. The “side” of the societal conceptions and ideologies is the side toward the existent. So the concept is the medium between the subject and the existent. The “side” of the particular concrete circumstances (in appearance) is the end, or beginning, (depending on how one flips the inversion), and this end is due to the reality of the Kantian chasm. This is very consistent with Platonic dialectics which point us away from the deceptions of the human body, and the sensations in general, understanding that the true route toward understanding the existent, is through the intelligible. > [@Jamal](#): > > And the deeper point is that the particular can’t be removed. Take a look again here: This, I think is where things get messy. I agree that the particular is just as essential to the whole, as is the universal. “Society” is substantiated by Adorno under the Aristotelian principles of matter (content) and form. The unified combination is required for “substance”. This is the fundamental refutation of idealism which prioritizes Form, it lacks substance due to the lack of content. So the particular and universal are united in society as the substance of society, yet they are divided within the individual subject (in philosophical thought), while the individual subject is yet still the content of society. You can see why there is objective contradiction. From this perspective, how is it possible that the existent is given through sense perception? The individual with sense perception provides only the content for the existent, which is society. And within the thinking subject, is a relation of content and form which is divisive by contradiction, so that the subject is not a united substance, as “an existent” in relation to society. That is the negation of individualism. So when Adorno says “It crystallizes in the particular, in what is determined in space and time.”, speaking of the particular in the quote you provided, he is using “space and time” in the Kantian sense as intuitions which are the necessary condition for the appearance of particulars. ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2026, 5:08pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/270 "2026-08-29T17:08:13Z")
## ND Part II / Outset from the Concept (Part 2) [Link to online text](https://negativedialectics.org/#outset-from-the-concept) Next, Adorno says that in “the traditional philosophies”—the tradition of Hegel and German idealism—everything _beyond_ the thinking subject was interpreted as _part of_ the thinking subject. Identity-thinking identified its concepts with objects and took that correlation as proof of the subjective constitution of objects. Adorno says that this results in “a gigantic analytic judgement, leaving no room for the qualitatively new”. This again makes use of the distinction between analytic judgements as explicative versus synthetic judgements as ampliative. It’s pretty much the same as saying philosophy is one gigantic _tautology_. Next, a puzzling statement: > All these sorts of considerations are too radical and for that reason, like most radical questions, not radical enough. He is exploiting an ambiguity in the meaning of _radical_. He employs two different senses: 1. Originating in the root or ground ([etymonline: radical](https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=radical)) 2. Very different from what is conventional or traditional; thoroughgoing. Considerations about the deep character of concepts are too radical(1) because they try to reach the root, origin, or ultimate ground, of conceptuality; this drive to find a foundation is one that Adorno has been exposing and criticizing since the beginning of part II. But this drive is also not radical(2) enough, because it is not thoroughgoing enough, not different enough from the conventional way of thinking or from the philosophical tradition. A properly radical(2) philosophy would question the very drive to reach a foundation. > The form of the untiring recourse, in which something of the lash of the work-ethic rages, shrinks ever further away from what is to be seen through, and leaves it undisturbed. Going for the origin takes you away from the object—foundation-seeking is a flight from the thing you’re trying to understand. And this is a relentless, brutal, self-defeating compulsion, just like the work ethic. > The category of the root, of the origin itself is dominating, the confirmation of what came first, because it was there first; of the chthonic against the migrant, of the settled against the mobile. What is alluring as the origin, because it does not want to be assuaged by what is derived, by ideology, is for its part an ideological principle. The imagined origin is dominant and compelling, and thus chauvinistic, favouring what is settled in one’s own milieu (or nation) against the nomadic or migratory. Origin/foundation/root is blood-and-soil ideology (chthonic = of the earth), partly because it sets itself up, in its radicality(1), as being resistant to ideology, which is supposedly merely derived and secondary to that origin. In the last paragraph, Adorno chooses to reinterpret Kraus’s “Origin is the goal”, making it more in line with what he’s after. Viz., our goal is not the reactionary one of getting back to a pure origin, before everything went wrong; rather, the origin is in a sense produced by the goal, and lies at the end instead of the beginning. I think by this Adorno means that Utopia—reconciliation, freedom, and the good—lies at the end of all our efforts and not at the start as an uncorrupted pure and natural way of life. > No origin except in the life of the ephemeral. What matters is what is historical, mutable, and made by us—not what is pure and fixed. ---
**Author:** ![Meta\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Meta\_U](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Meta_U)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2026, 2:18pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/271 "2026-08-30T14:18:53Z")
> [@Jamal](#): > > Next, Adorno says that in “the traditional philosophies”—the tradition of Hegel and German idealism—everything _beyond_ the thinking subject was interpreted as _part of_ the thinking subject. Identity-thinking identified its concepts with objects and took that correlation as proof of the subjective constitution of objects. Adorno says that this results in “a gigantic analytic judgement, leaving no room for the qualitatively new”. This again makes use of the distinction between analytic judgements as explicative versus synthetic judgements as ampliative. It’s pretty much the same as saying philosophy is one gigantic _tautology_. I like Adorno’s description of the tension between “a static cognitive ideal” as the concept, and the active “dynamized consciousness”. This is a reworking of the ancient being/becoming division. The difference being that in the ancient Greek philosophies “being” was associated with the ideas of the human mind, while “becoming” was associated with the physical things of the natural world. Now, under Hegelian principles “becoming” is associated with a consciousness that is dynamic, and “being” is associated with society and its conceptual products, “relics of static thought”. The tension between these two is due to the fact that there is something “wrong” with having an artificially created invariance as the measure of change. Dialectics is the inversion which results from this wrongness, when the dynamic thinking subject, as the content of the concept, turns against the wrongness in that form of invariance. But this is rejected by the form of the concept, which through the hypostasization of the identity-principle makes whatever is postulated by dynamic thought, a concrete entity. > Thereby however also the identity-principle: that what is solely postulated in thought-practice would be a matter-at hand in itself, something solid, something proper. Identifying thought concretizes by means of the logical identity of the concept. > [@Jamal](#): > > He is exploiting an ambiguity in the meaning of _radical_. I like that explanation, I never would have thought of two distinct meanings to radical. > [@Jamal](#): > > In the last paragraph, Adorno chooses to reinterpret Kraus’s “Origin is the goal”, making it more in line with what he’s after. Viz., our goal is not the reactionary one of getting back to a pure origin, before everything went wrong; rather, the origin is in a sense produced by the goal, and lies at the end instead of the beginning. I think by this Adorno means that Utopia—reconciliation, freedom, and the good—lies at the end of all our efforts and not at the start as an uncorrupted pure and natural way of life. What I interpret is that the origin goal is directly related to the dialectical breakdown of identity thinking which makes each product of thought an individual “unity”. Dialectics, is “a thinking wherein the form of thought no longer turns its objects into immutable things which stay the same; that they would be so, is refuted by experience”. The idea of “immutable things” cannot be upheld in the face of dialectics, so that form of thought which is directed toward the identities of individual unities turns toward the origins of the unities instead. This is expressed by Kant’s identity of “I”. But Kant’s representation only results in a childhood unreality which results in an ambivalence of identity and non-identity. the turn to an origin doesn’t produce an origin, but a mixture of identity and non-identity. And if there was an origin, non-identity would be prior to identity at the point of origin. This turns dialectics toward non-identity, a turn which is rendered absurd by the identity form, because it sees this as conceptualizing (identifying) non-identity. In the end, origin thinking cannot be upheld, because the two opposing extremes, origin (beginning), and goal (end) become the very same. ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2026, 7:27am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/272 "2026-08-31T07:27:43Z")
I agree with a lot of that and I like your stuff about “the tension between “a static cognitive ideal” as the concept, and the active “dynamized consciousness””. 😎 ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2026, 7:28am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/273 "2026-08-31T07:28:33Z")
## ND Part II / Synthesis [Link to online text](https://negativedialectics.org/#synthesis) I’ll cover this section briefly. I don’t think the detail on Hegel and the comments on the history of philosophy are particularly interesting or enlightening. However, there are some good bits. Back in the lectures Adorno expressed his extreme distaste for the concept of synthesis. Here he points out that the true power of Hegel’s method is not synthesis but determinate negation, the approach whereby the concept, closely examined, becomes non-identical with itself, i.e., non-identity in identity. This is a kind of analysis, not synthesis. But typically, rather than just reject synthesis, he wants to reconceive it and repurpose it: > The Hegelian synthesis is throughout the insight into the insufficiency of that movement, into the costs of its production, as it were. In other words, synthesis as it actually happens in Hegel is not the intended reconciliation and unification, but the moment in which the object’s diversity and disunity are revealed, when the movement of thought registers a loss and is thus revealed as insufficient. But traditionally, philosophy is “a partisan of the One”, always coming down on the side of unity and identity. However… > Not even its abstract negation deserves thinking. This is a familiar move. He is not recommending the Many against the One. That—the abstract negation of simply asserting the Many—would be an equally bad hypostasization, also ending in mythology and domination. At the same time, he is not rejecting the conceptual polarity entirely. The take-home message: > Solely the One transcends the One. Paying careful attention to how synthesis does violence to the diversity to be reconciled allows us to get beyond the falsity of synthesis. > The tendency of the synthesizing acts is to be redirected, by becoming aware of what it inflicts upon the Many. NOTE: His comment about a “repulsive” anti-Freudian movement is about _psychosynthesis_, which is about unifying and harmonizing the conflicting unconscious drives. ---
**Author:** ![Meta\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Meta\_U](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Meta_U)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2026, 12:19pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/274 "2026-08-31T12:19:34Z")
> [@Jamal](#): > > I agree with a lot of that and I like your stuff about “the tension between “a static cognitive ideal” as the concept, and the active “dynamized consciousness””. 😎 Plato had exposed the incompatibility between being and becoming (examples like Zeno’s paradoxes), and Aristotle proposed a sort of solution to the problem by imposing matter (potential) as a kind of medium between being and not being to account for becoming. Hegel did not like Aristotle’s proposal, and reworked the problem to portray being and not being as encircled by becoming, in synthesis. Adorno accepts neither of these proposed solutions, but draws lessons from the failures of each. I believe, that what Adorno is saying in this section on Synthesis, is that what alters, or accounts for the dynamic aspect of the concept is the analysis of the concept, not synthesis. This is what he described earlier as the violence done to the concept in order to make it equivalent with its negation. This makes the true dynamic aspect prior to the negation, as the deconstruction, rather than posterior as Hegelian synthesis supposes. > Its command – to gaze purely at each and every concept until it moves itself, becomes non-identical with itself, by virtue of its own meaning, hence of its identity – is one of analysis, not synthesis. What is static in the concepts is supposed, so as to satisfy these latter, to release what is dynamic out of itself, comparable to the commotion of the drop of water under a microscope. > > … > > In that the concept experiences itself as non-identical and moves, it leads, no longer merely itself, to what Hegelian terminology terms its Other,3 without sucking it dry. It determines itself by that which is outside it, because it does not exhaust itself according to what is its own. As itself it is not at all merely it itself. > Where Hegel in the Science of Logic deals with the synthesis of the first triad, that of becoming,4 it is only after he equates being and nothingness as what is entirely empty and devoid of determination, that he pays attention to the difference which registers the absolute divergence of the literal linguistic meaning of both concepts. > > … > > Only in the consummated synthesis, the unification of the contradictory moments, is their difference revealed. Without the step that being would be the same as nothingness, both would be indifferent to each other, to use a favorite term of Hegel; only when they are supposed to be the same, do they become contradictory. I believe the discussion of the One may be offered as an example of how negation fails as the most productive way to deconstruct (analyze) the concept. The Many cannot be formulated in such a way as to adequately negate the One. The Many is opposed to the One in some aspects, but the One is multifaceted and this is why it even transcends itself. So from the perspective of Hegelian dialectics the One remains untouchable (immutable). My opinion is that maintaining the One as untouchable because it cannot be adequately negated, would prove to be very problematic because many ideals (the eternal circle for example), tap into this strength. ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 6:35am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/275 "2026-09-01T06:35:33Z")
> [@Meta\_U](#): > > This makes the true dynamic aspect prior to the negation, as the deconstruction, rather than posterior as Hegelian synthesis supposes. I would be careful not to read a temporal order into what Adorno is doing, which is more along the lines of a redescription, in which negation and analysis are pretty much the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 8:11am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/276 "2026-09-01T08:11:42Z")
## ND Part II / Critique of Positive Negation [Link to online text](https://negativedialectics.org/#critique-of-positive-negation) Adorno criticizes Hegel’s idea that in dialectics, the negation of the negation is positive, i.e., double negation cancels out, leaving a positive. It is merely formal: guaranteed by the rule, regardless of the content. > With it the anti-dialectical principle wins the upper hand in the innermost core of dialectics, that traditional logic, which more arithmetico [Latin: in mathematical terms] books minus times minus as a plus. It was borrowed from that mathematics, against which Hegel otherwise so idiosyncratically reacted. There are in fact several possible models for the negation of a negation, and Adorno seems to be on solid ground in claiming that Hegel chooses one of them uncritically and illegitimately, imposing a formal rule beyond its proper scope. Whether double negation is in fact cancellation depends on which model you choose: - **Arithmetic, additive:** (−) + (−) = a bigger negative. - **Arithmetic, multiplicative:** (−) × (−) = + To negate a number is to multiply by −1, so negating a negative flips its sign, cancelling the negative. This is the model Hegel uses, according to Adorno. - **Classical logic:** ¬¬p ≡ p Cancellation again. - **Intuitionistic logic:** ¬¬p does not yield p. The doubled negation is _weaker_; it leaves a gap. No cancellation—at least, no _complete_ cancellation. - **Ordinary language:** Not unhappy ≠ happy And even “not unclothed” leaves a trace of the unclothed; it is not exactly equivalent in meaning to “clothed” (otherwise there would never be a reason to say “not unclothed” instead of “clothed”). No complete cancellation. Only in multiplication and classical logic does double negation give you a positive. Adorno effectively asks, why should only _these_ be the proper models for dialectical negation? Furthermore, Hegel’s approach can only seem correct _under the presupposition of the positive he claims to derive_. For Adorno, as far as we can say there is something positive, it is determinate negation itself, i.e., critique: > Its positive would be solely the determinate negation, critique, not a circumventing result, which the affirmation could happily hold in its hand. Of course, those models above are just analogies, and Adorno is not recommending a different choice of analogy. What matters is the content, not a formal principle, i.e., the thing, not the method. It’s the content that makes the multiplication analogy wrong, and in fact, Hegel failed to follow his own advice: > This [the cancellation of the negative] springs theoretically from the method, not, as it ought to according to Hegel, from the thing […] And the section concludes with an emphasis on the content that matters: > dialectics has its experience-content not in the principle but in the resistance of the Other against identity This is why rejecting the positive doesn’t undermine dialectics as such: its “vital nerve” was never the double-negation principle but the object’s resistance to identity. That’ll do for that section. ---
**Author:** ![Meta\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Meta\_U](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Meta_U)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 1:33pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/277 "2026-09-01T13:33:46Z")
> [@Jamal](#): > > I would be careful not to read a temporal order into what Adorno is doing, which is more along the lines of a redescription, in which negation and analysis are pretty much the same thing. Perhaps it is a mistake to read a temporal order, but I don’t think so. I mean, I can see that he is critical of the temporal order which Hegel relied on, but since he is working with a temporal medium, it would be impossible to deny the essential significance of temporal order. I can observe what you say, and offer a solution, as the conclusion to this post. Activity, dynamism, and becoming are temporal concepts, and the subject of this chapter is referred to as a “movement”. So it would be impossible to divorce the temporality. That’s the essence of the discredited eternal concepts, temporality has been removed to make them immutable. Even “moment” is a temporal concept, and distinct moments is what commonly provides relief from contradiction, as contradictory predicates are allowed at different times. So the temporal order is hard to avoid when concepts are put into the temporal context of “change”. This leads to descriptions of temporal priority. So Adorno has many temporal references here, and I don’t think the importance of the temporal order within this description can be denied. He describes the Hegelian dialectical “movement” as a process whereby being and nothing become the same, but only as distinct moments, then there is a “retrograde”, which is a “reaching back”, to derive a difference which disappeared in the production of those contrary moments, that is the synthesis. I believe Adorno’s point is that the change, which is the true evolution of the concept, actually occurs in the analysis of the concept, which is prior to the negation (what he earlier called violence to the concept). You say analysis and negation are the same, and maybe for Adorno they are, but Adorno is describing Hegel’s negation which only comes about as a result of that violence to the concept. In a way, the concept and its negation retain that status as inert things of distinct moments, where for Hegel, “synthesis” accounts for the change and evolution of the concept. Adorno describes Hegelian synthesis as just a reaching back to retrieve a difference which has already actually been determined as prerequisite for that moment of negation. Consider a “moment” as a timeless unchanging instant which supports a “state” of existence. > Its command – to gaze purely at each and every concept until it moves itself, becomes non-identical with itself, by virtue of its own meaning, hence of its identity – is one of analysis, not synthesis. What is static in the concepts is supposed, so as to satisfy these latter, to release what is dynamic out of itself, comparable to the commotion of the drop of water under a microscope. > Dialectics means, objectively, the breaking of the identity compulsion through the stored-up energies which are bound up in its concretizations. > In that the concept experiences itself as non-identical and moves, it leads, no longer merely itself, to what Hegelian terminology terms its Other,3 without sucking it dry. > Where Hegel in the Science of Logic deals with the synthesis of the first triad, that of becoming,4 it is only after he equates being and nothingness as what is entirely empty and devoid of determination, that he pays attention to the difference which registers the absolute divergence of the literal linguistic meaning of both concepts. > only when identified with each other, by means of its synthesis, would the moments become non-identical. > As the consciousness of non-identity through identity dialectics is not only a progressive but a simultaneously retrograde process; to this extent the image of a circle describes it accurately. The development of the concept is also a reaching back, the synthesis the determination of the difference which perished in the concept, “disappeared”; almost as in Hoelderlin’s anamnesis of what is natural, which fell away. > Without the step that being would be the same as nothingness, both would be indifferent to each other, to use a favorite term of Hegel; only when they are supposed to be the same, do they become contradictory. > Unquestionably Hegel had, against Kant, delimited the priority of the synthesis: in keeping with the model of the later Platonic dialogue, he cognized the Many and the One [Einheit: the One, the unitary], which Kant regarded as contiguous categories, as moments, neither of which would be without the other. Notice the last, “moments, neither of which would be without the other”. This is precisely descriptive of cause and effect, as in Neo-Platonism the Many are an emanation from the One. To be consistent with what you advise, to “not read a temporal order into what Adorno is doing”, I will assume that what he is doing is criticizing the Hegelian temporal order, and not proposing an alternative one himself. ---
**Author:** ![Jamal](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/jamal/32/95_2.png) [@Jamal](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Jamal)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 2:06pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/278 "2026-09-01T14:06:18Z")
Yes, you’re right that the text is full of temporal language; I guess my comment shouldn’t be taken too strictly. But “moment” isn’t temporal. > **moment (das Moment)** Hegel sometimes uses the term ‘moment’ to refer to an ‘aspect’ of something, or, more technically, a part which is separable from the whole only in thought. The term is often used by English-speaking Hegel scholars. It appears again in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, who makes a useful distinction (helpful for understanding Hegel) between ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’. A piece is a part which is literally separable, such as the carburetor in a car engine. A moment, on the other hand, is a part or aspect of something not literally separable. For example, hue, saturation and brightness are ‘parts’ of colour – but one could not literally separate these from each other. In Hegel’s Logic, each category is a mind moment in the whole. Each is a part, but not a literal, physical part – and each derives its meaning from its place in the whole, and is thus not fully intelligible considered in separation from it. The Logic is an articulation of the whole, via a demonstration of the dialectical relationship between its moments. > > — Glenn Alexander Magee, _The Hegel Dictionary_ That’s why the prior/posterior picture dissolves: with a moment as an aspect rather than a time-slice, there’s no sequence. The identification of being and nothing _is_ the contradiction, at once, not something spread across stages. And so, importantly, Adorno rejects the move to “provide relief from contradiction… at different times.” There is no such resolution. Of course, there is _movement_—and the use of “moment” is relevant to that—but there is no _temporal order of derivation_, with stages along the way. > [@Meta\_U](#): > > To be consistent with what you advise, to “not read a temporal order into what Adorno is doing”, I will assume that what he is doing is criticizing the Hegelian temporal order, and not proposing an alternative one himself. 😎 ---
**Author:** ![Meta\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Meta\_U](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Meta_U)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2026, 5:09pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/279 "2026-09-01T17:09:57Z")
> [@Jamal](#): > > But “moment” isn’t temporal. I agree the moment isn’t necessarily temporal, but Adorno is definitely describing its use within a temporal context, which is the process of Hegelian dialectics. Hegel’s dialectics is being described as a temporal process, and it is the temporal separation between the moments which allows Hegel to escape any contradiction. > [@Jamal](#): > > That’s why the prior/posterior picture dissolves: with a moment as an aspect rather than a time-slice, there’s no sequence. The identification of being and nothing _is_ the contradiction, at once, not something spread across stages. > > And so, importantly, Adorno rejects the move to “provide relief from contradiction… at different times.” There is no such resolution. I agree, and this is exactly the conclusion I came to. When I heeded your advice, to remove the temporal order from Adorno’s dialectics, then the concept and negation are aspects (moments) which coexist, at the same time within the process, as objective contradiction, non-identity. This replaces the Hegelian “synthesis” which Adorno portrays as the result of the process. The Hegelian temporal order of moments distinct in time, is rejected and replaced with moments which coexist at the same time. > [@Jamal](#): > > but there is no _temporal order of derivation_, with stages along the way. Right, I see now, that the described temporal order, with stages, is Adorno’s explanation of the Hegelian description of the process of dialectics. This process culminates with synthesis, which is a turning back on, or review of what has occurred to produce a conclusion. Adorno is rejecting this temporal order, to place all the aspects, concept, negation, and non-identity as coexisting at the same time, within the process, and this excludes synthesis. ---
**Author:** ![Meta\_U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Meta\_U](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Meta_U)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 12:58am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/280 "2026-09-02T00:58:29Z")
> [@Jamal](#): > > Only in multiplication and classical logic does double negation give you a positive. And we shouldn’t ignore the reality of “imaginary numbers”, which have become very useful in modern physics. The imaginary number “_i_”, (where _i_ squared equals -1), allows that a negative number has a square root, 2_i_ = -4. I like the way that Adorno resurrects subjectivity, by showing that the Hegelian way of suppressing it under objectivity is really in itself a subjective move. Here is the footnote to this: > Like almost every one of the Hegelian categories, that of the negated and thereby positive negation also has a degree of experience-content. Specifically, for the subjective course of philosophical cognition. If the cognizer knows precisely enough, what an insight lacks or where it is wrong, then he or she is practically obliged by virtue of such determinacy to already have what is missing. Only this moment of the determinate negation, as something for its part subjective, is not to be credited as something objective let alone to metaphysics. In any case that moment is the strongest argument in favor of the adequacy of emphatic cognition; in favor of its capacity for nevertheless doing so, and therein the possibility of a metaphysics, beyond the Hegelian one, finds support. Because of this purely subjective nature of the negation of the negative, Adorno concludes “That the negation of the negation would be a positivity, can only be argued by those to whom positivity, as a universal conceptuality, is already presupposed at the outset.” The result is that the contradictions derived from the subject “have seeped into the object”, because the posited object is not the object as object, but an object posited by the subject. > Through the formulation of the “equality with itself”, of pure identity, the knowledge of the object is revealed to be mere rigmarole, because this knowledge is no longer that of the object at all, but the tautology of an absolutely posited noêsis noêseôs [Greek: thinking of thinking]. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/frank/32/216_2.png) [@Frank](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2026, 1:07am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57/281 "2026-09-02T01:07:04Z")
Also look up “concept” in the Hegel dictionary. Sometimes Adorno seems to be using that word with the Hegelian meaning. [Previous page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57.md?page=13) [Next page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57.md?page=15)