Reading Group: Negative Dialectics by Theodor Adorno

The Learning Zone Reading Groups
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I think that the difference here might have to do with the way that we each think of “content of thought”, or “object of thought”. I believe that the "particular matter-at-hand is already inherent within the thinking process of the subject, as the object of thought. It is not the independent, in-itself, the thing referred to by “the table”, or “the Roman empire”'. This is the Kantian principle, the in-itself cannot be the object of thought, nor could it be the “matter-at-hand”. Even Heidegger’s use of “at-hand” refers to a way of relating to things, not to the things themselves.

This is why I say that “object of thought” is best interpreted when “object” has the meaning of “goal”. Let’s say the matter-at-hand is problem X, and resolution of X is the object of the thinking. What is presupposed is that there is a resolution to X, otherwise the thinking would not be seeking it. I find Adorno was a little misleading, when he said “the explanatory attempt presupposes the explanation”, because it’s not the actual explanation which is presupposed, but that there is an explanation. When we seek to satisfy a desire, we assume that the desire can be satisfied.

So the matter-at-hand which Adorno refers to now is “simple logical contradiction”. And what I believe he says, is that if we call in an external ordering schemata from what he calls “objective cognition”, “the factical, especially by society”, then non-contradictoriness will already be presupposed. And this is where we see the other meaning of “object” which is distinctly different from “object of thought”. The “object” here is society, the factical of objective cognition. So Adorno says that the subjective thought-principle is inherent with the “object”, in this sense of “object”.

But if the matter-at-hand, problem X, the question of non-contradictoriness, is also understood as an “object”, the object of thought, then this object inheres within the subjective thinking. And within the subject alone, without reference to the outside ordering schemata of objective cognition, it may remain without judgement, without being ordered.

What I notice though, is that if problem X is my own problem as an individual subject, it is a particular. But if I express the problem to you, that is already to formulate it within such an outside ordering system, so it’s not a particular problem anymore, but a specific problem, and this takes it across the boundary from particular to universal. This is the issue of Wittgenstein’s private language.

Adorno then continues with an examination of how the subject can remove oneself from the outside ordering, the rule of objective logic. This is when thinking thinks against itself. And, he suggests it might be a good definition of “dialectics”. But here we may find expressed more clearly the two distinct senses of object. The “rules of thought” are proper to objective cognition, but he also says that thought is the object of thought, and that’s the other sense of “object”.

In certain respects, dialectical logic is more positivistic than the positivism which condemns it: it respects the object which is to be thought as thought, even there, where it does not follow the rules of thought.

I’d say yes and no here. The general principle refers to a method external to the matter-at-hand. But at the beginning of the chapter, the matter-at-hand is the possibility of a reciprocal relation of interdependence between subject and object. Therefore in this case we are talking about a method external to that relation.

What I think the issue is, is that we might take a specific matter-at-hand, and treat it as an object, the object of thought, problem X. X might be non-contradictoriness. Then we desire to understand how any particular subject might pass judgement concerning the applicability of X. If the subject turns to an external system, a part of the objective cognition of society, facticity, then the solution to X is already presupposed by the principles of that system which provides the solution. This doesn’t really tell us anything about the actual relation between the thinking subject at the object of thought, it merely tells us something about the thinking subject and the objective system of rules which the subject might apply in judgement. So the dialectical process is to reject all those systematized rules, and think against thinking, by making thought itself, the object of thought.

Yes, it’s a very interesting, and difficult section. I looked ahead at the next section, and it looks extremely difficult as well.

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I believe so too. Maybe you have not been reading my posts very carefully.

But once again I’ll just say that while the implications of that section of ND might be profound, I don’t think it’s difficult to understand what he is saying. It’s elegant and simple. You are piling difficulty upon difficulty to no avail—at least, that’s how it looks from my point view.

In any case, I’ll move on to “LOGIC OF DISASSEMBLY” next.

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Well, he does start off the chapter with “These sorts of considerations seem to give rise to a paradox.” That indicates to me, a difficulty. And he ends the chapter with “The act of violence of making something the same reproduces the contradiction which it stamps out.” And that indicates to me, that he does not think that he has resolved the difficulty. If the conclusion is that contradiction ought to be acceptable, then that in itself is a difficulty, and the attempt to resolve the apparent paradox is to no avail. I mean, to assert that reality is such that resolution is impossible, is not a proper solution to the appearance of a paradox.

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I’m not suggeting he “resolved” anything, and as I said, I’m not suggesting that the problem isn’t difficult. What I was trying to say is that understanding his statement of the problem, or what he thinks the problem is, is not hard. That’s the task.

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OK, we’ll have to just disagree on that. But do you recognize the dual sense of “object”?

1. “the objectivity of cognition in turn could not be without thinking, subjectivity.”

2. “it respects the object which is to be thought as thought,”

The “objectivity” of cognition is not provided for by the “object” of thought. This means that the relation between subject and object is fundamentally twofold, 1) a relation with the object which objectifies cognition, and 2) a relation with the object of thought. In dialectics the two “objects” oppose each other.

Then he refers to a negative type of dialectics which turns this around, (in an attempt I suppose to produce consistency between the two forms of “object” and escape the paradox). This is done by making dialectics the object of thought, rather than making thought the object of thought, where difference is the subject rather than sameness.

Nothing leads out of the dialectical context of immanence than it itself. Dialectics meditates critically on itself, reflects on its own movement; otherwise Kant’s legal claim against Hegel would never expire. Such a dialectics is negative. Its idea names the difference from Hegel.

But this proposed reconciliation is untrue because it treats the whole as the particular, thereby contradicting it’s own principles.

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Yes, I recognize the dual sense of “object”. The object as in the objectivity of cognition, not to be had without thinking, and the object to be thought as thought, respected even where it doesn’t follow thought’s rules.

But I wouldn’t say the two “objects” oppose each other. Rather, they’re two moments of one object: as constituted in cognition, and as preponderant over that constitution.

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I can see how you could be inclined that way, but it doesn’t make sense to me. They can’t be two distinct moments of the same object because they co-exist at the very same time in dialectics, which is thought which thinks against itself without sacrificing itself. In this case, I interpret “the rules of thought” to be representative of the objectivity of cognition. So when the thinking subject takes the rules of thought as the object of thought (e.g. non-contradictoriness is the matter-at-hand), the two “objects” may coexist within the thinking subject, as opposed to each other. It is subjectivity which forces this. That’s why I conclude that they cannot be two moments of the same object, subjectivity separates them even while they coexist.

And, I think this leads into a further complexity developed at the end of the chapter. If the thinking subject takes a single rule “non-contradictoriness” as the object of thought, this is not the totality of objective cognition, it is just a part, and therefore not truly the object itself. So the negative form of dialectics takes dialectics itself as the object, to provide a more complete representation of objective cognition, as “absolute Spirit”. But this “power of the whole” as object, does not resolve the problem because it makes the subject a particular. Then each subject would be an object, and “the Spirit” would be indistinguishable from “the existent”, as an object. So I conclude that thinking apprehends two very distinct types of object.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure we’ll just have to disagree.

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ND Part II / Logic of Disassembly (Part 1)

Link to online text

As fiendishly difficult as these sections might be at times, I feel like light is dawning over the landscape of negative dialectics where before I was stumbling around with a torch.

The first paragraph here forces me to revisit my earlier struggle with the status of contradictions, in my posts about LND Lecture 1. There, Adorno distinguishes the “dual character of contradiction”:

the fact that on the one hand we have a contradiction in the realm of ideas and concepts, and on the other that the world itself is antagonistic in its objective form

LND p.9

I struggled to understand the way in which contradictions reside not only between concepts and things but within things. Now it is becoming clear that he never meant that things are contradictory in themselves, in the naive realist sense of the thing. 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.

So the thing is not a naive realist lump lying outside of thought, and it isn’t a mere construct of thought either—it’s both at once (or both are moments). And that’s how there can be contradiction in the thing: it both is and is not what its concept makes of it.

In the lectures, he wanted to emphasize the objective side of contradiction against the positivist objection that he’s just talking about subjective confusions that can be ironed out with better logic. Here in ND, he is emphasizing the other side of it: that a contradiction…

is a reflection-category, the thinking confrontation of concept and thing

The end of the first paragraph is compressed and difficult:

Dialectics as a procedure means, to think for the sake of what was once experienced in the thing as a contradiction and against it in contradictions. A contradiction in reality, it is a contradiction against these.

To “think for the sake of what was once experienced in the thing as a contradiction” is to do justice to the contradictory in experience—and this could refer not only to intellectual experience but something like the experience of freedom in capitalist society, in which one is free to choose any job at all but at the same time compelled by necessity etc.

These contradictions are experienced as being in the thing, even though the thing is not some naive-realist in-itself. But dialectics is also at the same time to think against the bad existent, meaning to oppose the contradictory reality, by thinking in a sense along with this real contradiction such that it is not resolved. This is dialectics as a righteous weapon.

A contradiction in reality, it is a contradiction against these.

The “it” refers to “dialectics as a procedure” from the previous sentence. So this sentence is saying that dialectics is a contradiction in reality and a contradiction against such real contradictions. But that still needs unpacking…

  • Dialectics is a contradiction in reality. This can be split into two moves.
    1. The same as in the lecture: emphasizing that contradiction is not a mere matter of a subjective logic applied to reality, but is something in reality.
    2. Dialectical thought is itself one of these contradictions in reality. Dialectical thought is part of social reality and an event in objective history. And it is a contradiction in the sense that it goes against what exists, refusing identity.
  • Dialectics is a contradiction against real contradictions. In going against what exists, it goes against the real contradictions. This makes it special among the real contradictions: it’s the one that goes against all the others.

I have a lot of tolerance for Adorno but these last few sentences of the first paragraph are way too Ouroboric.

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You have more patience than I. I just give up with stuff like that, assuming the author is being flamboyant and that the line is more for show, than to actually say anything important. I mean stuff like “contradiction in reality”, and “experienced in the thing as a contradiction”, I just can’t come to terms with.

The second paragraph makes more sense to me. here he is talking about a dialectics which is “no longer compatible with Hegel”. This I assume to be negative dialectics, and he speaks of the disassembly of concretized concepts. The cognizing subject identifies them as untruth, as “the phenomenon slides in front of what is non-identical”, before the individual.

The power of that negativity rules to this day in reality. What would be different, has not yet begun.

So he continues in the next paragraph:

In the process of demythologization positivity must be negated all the way into the instrumental reason, which demythologization supplies.

In the final paragraph he speaks of an untrue whole a “summation of the totality”, and this relates back to the first sentence of the chapter:

The farewell to Hegel becomes palpable in a contradiction concerning the whole, which is not programmatically settled as a particular one.

In the following passage, I think “absolute being-for-itself” refers to that “developed summation of the totality”.

Pure identity is what is set up [Gesetzte: posited] by the subject, and to this extent is brought from outside. To immanently criticize it means therefore, paradoxically enough, to criticize it from outside as well. The subject must render compensation to the non-identical, for what it perpetrated on it. Precisely this sets it free from the appearance [Schein] of its absolute being-for-itself.

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That’s not what I was talking about. That there are contradictions in reality is pretty basic in Adorno. I was talking about the multiple self-referentiality.

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The untruth he points out is the identity of the subject with the immediate, concretized (objective) concepts, i.e., things. Through this identity, the “subjective pre-formation of the phenomenon” obscures the actual particular.

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ND Part II / Logic of Disassembly (Part 2)

Link to online text

Such a dialectics is however no longer compatible with Hegel. Its movement does not tend towards identity in the difference of every object from its concept; rather it suspects something identical in it.

“It suspects something identical in it” is ambiguous. It’s a bad translation of eher beargwöhnt sie Identisches. This unambiguously carries the sense of distrust, so a better translation is as follows:

Such a dialectics is however no longer compatible with Hegel. Its movement does not tend towards identity in the difference of every object from its concept; rather, it regards the identical with suspicion.

So, Adorno’s dialectics does not seek identity where it sees a discrepancy, as Hegel’s does. On the contrary, it is sceptical towards identity and avoids it.

Its logic is one of disassembly [Zerfalls]: [namely, the disassembly] of the prepared and concretized form of concepts, which the cognizing subject immediately faces at first.

(phrase added for clarification)

The logic of negative dialectics is a logic of disassembly, i.e., the logic of the disintegration of the prepared and concretized form of concepts immediately faced by the cognizing subject. This disassembly is not a mere moment on the way to an identity; it’s the terminal condition of things. To establish an identity with concepts is to falsify.

Their identity with the subject is untruth. Through it the subjective pre-formation of the phenomenon slides in front of what is non-identical, before the individuum ineffabile.

Subjective pre-formations such as the demand for a first, or some other conceptual scheme, obscure the real object.

The summation of identical determinations would correspond to the fondest wish of traditional philosophy, to the a priori structure and to its archaistic late form, ontology. However, this structure is, before every sort of specific content, in the simplest sense negative as something abstractly maintained, Spirit become compulsion. The power of that negativity rules to this day in reality. What would be different, has not yet begun.

Traditional philosophy would like to have, or to produce, the totality of all identities, of all determinations according to identity-thinking. But the a priori here, in this idealist impulse, is “Spirit become compulsion”. It is abstractly maintained, not derived from the things themselves or from one’s experience of them. In this passage he calls that compulsion negative in the simplest sense. The simplest sense he intends is that of absence or emptiness: the a priori structure is, as abstractly maintained, empty of content—but even in its emptiness it works compulsively, imposing its form on what is given in experience. And this compulsion rules in reality, because identity-thinking and the urge to mastery continue to produce domination and suffering (recall mastery of nature/mastery of men from Lecture 1).

This affects all specific determinations. Each one which appears non-contradictory proves to be as contradictory as the ontological models of being and existence. Nothing positive is to be obtained from philosophy which would be identical with its construction. In the process of demythologization positivity must be negated all the way into the instrumental reason, which demythologization supplies.

This passage outlines the consequences of the foregoing arguments (not only in this section but in previous ones). Another way to put what he is saying is that the Enlightenment must finish the job of demythologization that it started. A residual myth following the Enlightenment’s demythologization was the dominance of instrumental reason; it stopped short of demythologizing instrumental reason itself. That’s what Adorno and Horkheimer did in Dialectic of Enlightenment, and he continues to emphasize its importance here in ND.

But he is not rejecting idealism entirely:

Nevertheless, the critique of idealism does not discard what the construction of the concept towards the insight once garnered, and what the guidance of the concepts once won in terms of energy from the method.

Idealism achieved the insight into the conceptual constitution of the objects of thought, and a methodological driving force, applicable everywhere and deep into the nature of things and their relations.

Only that which is inscribed in the idealistic magic circle goes beyond its figure, by calling it by name in the completion of its own deductive process, demonstrating what is separated from it, what is untrue in it, in the developed summation of the totality.

Adorno wants to go beyond the idealism, but says this can only be done from the inside idealism’s magic circle, using the deductive method to push through, demonstrating that the system is false. What matters is that Adorno doesn’t want to critique idealism (primarily Hegel, here) as a whole and from the outside. Rather, he watches idealism convict itself in the completion of the system, attempting to prove itself as a totality. In idealism’s effort to show that the whole is the true, we see that the whole is the false. We see the remainder, the non-identical, that falsifies the system.

:+1:

Pure identity is what is set up [Gesetzte: posited] by the subject, and to this extent is brought from outside. To immanently criticize it means therefore, paradoxically enough, to criticize it from outside as well. The subject must render compensation to the non-identical, for what it perpetrated on it.

Remember that “from outside” means from outside the matter-at-hand, not from outside the subject-object relation. But here, this also implies that immanent critique has to take a stand outside the imposed principle of identity, on the side of what that principle excluded.

Precisely this sets it free from the appearance [Schein] of its absolute being-for-itself. This latter for its part is the product of the identifying thought, which, the more it devalues a thing to the mere example of its kind or species, the more it imagines that it has it as such, without subjective addition.

In taking the side of the non-identical—which is also to take the side of the particulars against their conceptual subsumption—the subject frees itself from the appearance of its absolute being-for-itself: the illusion that it, the subject, is self-sufficient, that nothing ultimately stands outside it.

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I’m seeing another side to that, though. When we look at people in the abstract, their individuality is lost. We lose access to their suffering at the same time because it becomes idealized suffering, the suffering of the poor citizens. We can put that on a pedestal and worship it, and this is how the leftist identity can become dependent on suffering. Delete the suffering, and there are no more leftists. I realize their may be a naive American slant to that, maybe Europeans don’t think of suffering in that way. But what I think we have in common is that we think of real suffering as happening to the subject.

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Hey all, I’m back, nice to find you again.

After long absence, I am trying to find a way back in, but I am struggling with where to begin.

I think first I am going to finish off where I left things standing so that this wasn’t a complete waste of time, and then quickly move to current affairs.

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Right, I understand that he has insisted that there are contradictions in reality, since we started reading this material. I could not truthfully understand what he meant. Now I think I apprehend what he is talking about. “Reality” here refers to what he has called the “facticity” of objective cognition, the concretized concepts of society. He has taken the idealist position that reality is our conception, in order to criticize it.

You apprehend self-referencing because you apprehend the duality of “object” as distinct moments of the same object. But I see them as distinct objects, and the apparent self-referencing clears away. The two instances of “object” could only refer to the same object when the thinking subject makes the objective cognition of concrete concepts into the subjective object of thought. But when this is done, contradiction is found within the objective cognition (reality), so the (subjective) object of thought is pitted against the objective (reality), as further contradiction. It is not really self-referential because it is different objects, and different contradictions. I believe that it is this difference which actually constitutes non-identity.

The two objects cannot be the same object for the reasons I stated in the prior post. The subject identifies the concretized concepts (objective object) as untrue, based on the subjective appearance of the phenomenon (subjective object), and this is non-identity.

The further point though, which I believe shows that the two senses of “object” must be distinct, is that the “summation of identical determinations” (objective object) is supposed to make a whole, which is produced by the compulsion of “Spirit”. But it’s not a true whole because it’s incomplete, and this is why the first sentence says that the whole is not settled as a particular one. I believe that the object of thought (subjective object) always becomes a particular object, and this is why the two must be distinct. So there is not only contradiction within the objective object (reality), but also contradiction between the subjective object (object of thought) and the objective object.

This is why I believe that he takes the idealist position that reality is the objective conception. He already seems to adopt the Kantian position that the in-itself is not “the object” we are discussing. He is arguing from within the idealist structure where objects are objects of thought. Now I believe he is demonstrating a fundamental incompatibility between the objective object of thought, and the subjective object of thought. And I think that this is the foundation of non-identity

Notice though, the context of this statement of “pure identity”. It is just after the statement about the magic circle of idealism, which through a false completion creates a summation of the totality.

I believe what is said is that pure identity is posited by the subject, as a sort of grounding for each particular determination of identity. But this posit of “pure identity” is outside the magic circle of idealism, the objective object, and Spirit. So the criticism of “pure identity” must also be from outside that magic circle of idealism, it must be done through subjective principles. And this is why the subject must pay respect (compensation) to the non-identical. The pervasiveness of the non-identical could prove that “pure identity” is false.

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A lot of your post is pleasantly agreeable, but your big move—though I see where you’re coming from—doesn’t seem to work as a way of accurately interpreting Adorno. If non-identity is a relation between two distinct objects, then the preponderance of the object is eliminated: there’s no excess of the object over the concept, just a mismatch between two conceptual items. This flattens the situation into a totally subjective affair—which is one of the central mistakes, for Adorno.

The non-identical is not the gap between two objects compared; this would posit the non-conceptual in the way that Kant does, re-introducing his dualism. Rather, it is the concept’s failure registered negatively in the act of applying the concept to the object. It is the lack of closure that is manifest internally to the conceptual effort. The persistent failure of concepts to capture the object is not a comparison of two objects, but a doomed and repeated application of concepts to an object, producing contradictions within whatever determination you are attempting.

In the end you may think the difference is too subtle, but the consequences of the difference are stark. I think it’s important to resist any hypostasizing moves that Adorno does not himself make in the text.

The object is both subjectively constituted and preponderent.

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Welcome back pussycat. When we restarted the group here on the new site, we were quite close to the start of Part I, which is a sustained critique of Heidegger. Now we’re 6 or 7 sections into Part II: Concept and Categories, the theoretical core of the work.

One option is just to skip the critique of Heidegger and dive into Part II. Part I does help with understanding Adorno, and it’s very good—if a bit repetitive at times—but as far as I can see it’s not absolutely prerequisite for Part II.

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I agree, though I am not necessarily 100% on board with your use of it to attack the Left. No doubt if you made it explicit I would agree with some of your critique, but not all of it.

Yes. But unlike the case of idealism that I was talking about in the passage you quoted, suffering is what is objective in our experience, that which cannot be abstracted away from.

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Your suffering is objective in your experience. Other people are also objective in your experience, and their suffering is very prone to being idealized, by which I mean the particular of Jim’s suffering gets lost in the shuffle.

This is inevitable, because it’s just the way the mind works. But it’s cool to remember that each person is a subject, and understanding suffering requires that we recall the nature of our own private, subjective domains.

Fortunately, we can be flexible about foundations, and allow that private subjective realm to become foundational when we’re talking about suffering. Do you agree with that?

I wasn’t attacking the Left. It’s always true that the identity of the dragon-slayer is dependent on the dragon. Once he kills the dragon, he has to become something else. In cases where a leftist is on a quest to fix a broken society, her identity depends on that brokenness. I don’t think Adorno wanted Leftism is become sunk in ideals in that way.

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Thanks Jamal, for your attention. And thanks for the compliment. To say that most of my post is “pleasantly” agreeable is high praise to me. However, I think you are wrong in this assessment, so I’m going to go through your post point by by point, and address all your criticism to demonstrate how it fails. Hopefully I won’t negate all the pleasantness.

This I think, is the heart of the criticism. So if we begin with this phrase, “a relation between two distinct objects”, we might see that the point which Adorno is developing is that one of them is not a true “object”. He is showing that the the “whole” which is supposed to be the summation and totality of every determination of identity, is not a true whole. Any such ideological system is incomplete. Therefore it is not a whole in the same sense that the particular is a whole, so maybe it is not a true object. I think that this type of supposed “whole” which manifests in ontology as Spirit, and Being, cannot properly be called an “object”. So we can only call it “the concept”. This allows for the preponderance of the object, and the excess of object over concept. However, I will say that by annihilating that ontology, he deepens the problem of what exactly is “the object”.

I oppose this. I believe Adorno is turning this into a totally subjective affair. He is very much influenced by Kant, and Kant shows how the thinking subject (a principle derived from Descartes) must be our starting point. Notice in this section Adorno says that the subject posits “pure identity”, and all “specific determinations” of identity are made by subjects. This leads to “The subject must render compensation to the non-identical”. He follows the Kantian model within which the thinking subject is central (for Adorno, mediator).

Where Adorno seems to disagree with Kant, and distances himself, is the way that Kant makes the subject into a thing-itself, an object. Adorno appears to be maintaining a separation between object and concept, and the separation is validated or justified by the mediation of the subject. So in Kant we might say that the in-itself is left irrelevant, and because of this he is able to construct a unity between object and concept, the object being the phenomenon, the concept the system of understanding. But Adorno disallows this supposed unity which supports the Kantian system, portraying the subject as a divisor, making contradictions points of division rather than points of unity as in Hegelian synthesis.

So I think it is a totally subjective affair for Adorno, as thinking is. But, with the subject as mediation, there is not only a subject-object relation, there is also a subject-concept relation. Though the concept is said to be “objective” it is lacking the completion which appears to be how Adorno is distinguishing object from concept at this point. I am hoping that he is going to provide us with a “true” approach to the object which avoids the Kantian problem. I use “true” as distinct from the objectively correct approach of ideological ontology. And I think Adorno uses “true” in this sense, that it is something inherently subjective. This is because phenomena as the basis for a judgement of truth is subjective.

The thing is, the Kantian dualism is not easily escaped. We can claim to escape it, and assert that we have, but without solid principles the escape fails, and we find ourselves still locked in it. The non-identical is the gap (as contradiction) between aspects which are posited as objective, of the object. What happens is that there are two distinct senses of “objective”, the concrete forms, or concepts of facticity, and the phenomenal appearance to the subject.

If we recognize that each of these two senses of “objective” are false, not true due to inherent contradiction, then they are reduced to being actually subjective, i.e. features of the subject. But now the object totally escapes us and we have a subject/object dualism. So we need to allow the object in, but on what principles? The Kantian principles are unacceptable. So how are we going to derive principles which allow for a real object, which is present to the subjective thinking.

This statement is problematic. We cannot really apply the concept directly to the object, because of that disjunct between concept and object which makes it so that objects appear as phenomena in the Kantian system. The phenomenon is not actually the object. So we pose an “object of thought” as a substitute for the true object in-itself. But what that does, is bring the posing object into the conceptual realm, as a concept instead, allowing us to apply concepts to the poser. The posing object must be created in a form compatible with the concept in order for us to apply the concept. But we’re not truly applying the concept to the object, only to the poser. In this case, the subject is no longer the true mediator between concept and object because these two are intentionally united and allowed to interact (apply concept to object). But that object is the poser, and the true object has escaped us altogether, remaining in the Kantian in-itself.

Maybe this is nit picking, but I would say that the lack of closure is the effect, where non-identity is the cause. This would make lack of closure, and non-identity two different things, the latter logically prior.

Consider that if we start with the assumption of two objects, the objectivity of concrete ideology, and the object as it appears as phenomenon, we find contradiction between these two. This is a form of non-identity according to the following. By the law of identity, identity is what an object has, and contradiction is outlawed from the object. So this necessitates that the two objects together are ‘non-object’ by those rules of what an “object” is. Then, we might find contradiction within the concrete ideology forcing “non-object”. And this creates the lack of closure. Furthermore, we might find contradiction within the phenomenal appearance, forcing the judgement of “non-object” here as well.

With contradiction at each level, we might conclude that we have no objects. By the rules of identity an object cannot have contradiction within. However, we might also conclude that identity, and non-contradictoriness are not true rules for what we should name as “object”. Then we could assert that non-identity and contradictoriness are true aspects of objects. This may be would Adorno is doing, and the whole thing would be inverted, because the rules of objective concepts force identity and non-contradictoriness, and this is where the object would extend beyond the concept, in these features.