# 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:** 1\ **Showing post:** 271
**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. --- _[View the full topic](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/reading-group-negative-dialectics-by-theodor-adorno/57)._