An Introduction to Dialectics

Theodor W. Adorno, Christoph Ziermann, Christoph Ziermann

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780745694894
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

This volume comprises Adorno's first lectures specifically dedicated to the subject of the dialectic, a concept which has been key to philosophical debate since classical times. While discussing connections with Plato and Kant, Adorno concentrates on the most systematic development of the dialectic in Hegel's philosophy, and its relationship to Marx, as well as elaborating his own conception of dialectical thinking as a critical response to this tradition.

Delivered in the summer semester of 1958, these lectures allow Adorno to explore and probe the significant difficulties and challenges this way of thinking posed within the cultural and intellectual context of the post-war period. In this connection he develops the thesis of a complementary relationship between positivist or functionalist approaches, particularly in the social sciences, as well as calling for the renewal of ontological and metaphysical modes of thought which attempt to transcend the abstractness of modern social experience by appeal to regressive philosophical categories. While providing an account of many central themes of Hegelian thought, he also alludes to a whole range of other philosophical, literary and artistic figures of central importance to his conception of critical theory, notably Walter Benjamin and the idea of a constellation of concepts as the model for an 'open or fractured dialectic' beyond the constraints of method and system.

These lectures are seasoned with lively anecdotes and personal recollections which allow the reader to glimpse what has been described as the 'workshop' of Adorno's thought. As such, they provide an ideal entry point for all students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in Adorno's work as well as those seeking to understand the nature of dialectical thinking.

Lecture 1
8 May 1958¹

The concept of dialectic which we shall explore here has nothing to do with the widespread conception of a kind of thinking which is remote from the things themselves and revels merely in its own conceptual devices. Indeed, at the point in philosophy where the concept of dialectic first emerges, in the thought of Plato, it already implies the opposite, namely a disciplined form of thought which is meant to protect us from all sophistic manipulation. Plato claims that we can say something rational about things only when we understand something about the matter itself (Gorgias and Phaedrus).² In its origin, the dialectic is an attempt to overcome all merely conceptual devices of spurious argumentation, and precisely by articulating conceptual thinking in a truly rigorous fashion. Plato attempts to counter his opponents, the Sophists, by use of their own means.

All the same, the concept of dialectic as it has come down to us from classical thought is very different from what I mean by the term. For the ancient concept of dialectic is the concept of a philosophical method. And to a certain extent this is what it has always remained. Dialectic is both – it is a method of thought, but it is also more than this, namely a specific structure which belongs to the things themselves, and which for quite fundamental philosophical reasons must also become the measure of philosophical reflection itself.

What dialectic means for Plato is that a philosophical thought does not simply live there where it stands, as it were, but continues to live when it informs our consciousness without our realizing it. Platonic dialectic is a doctrine which enables us to order our concepts correctly, to ascend from the concrete to the level of the highest and most universal. In the first place, the ‘ideas’ are simply the highest general concepts to which thought can rise.³ On the other hand, dialectic also implies that we can subdivide these concepts correctly.⁴ This question regarding the correct division of our concepts brings Plato to the problem of how to articulate concepts in such a way that they are appropriate to the things which they encompass. On the one hand, what is required is the logical formation of concepts, but this must not be achieved in a coercive way in accordance with some schema; rather, the concepts must be formed in a way that is appropriate to the thing in question. This may be compared to the botanical system of Linnaeus⁵ and the natural system based upon the structure of plants. The old traditional concept of dialectic was essentially a method for organizing concepts.

On the other hand, Plato was already well aware that we do not simply know, without more ado, whether the conceptual order we bestow upon things is also the order which the objects themselves possess. Plato and Aristotle emphasized the importance of framing our concepts in accordance with nature, so that these concepts might properly express what it is they grasp. But how can we know anything about the non-conceptual being that lies beyond these concepts? We realize that our particular concepts become entangled in difficulties; then, on the basis of these problems, we are obliged to develop a more adequate body of concepts. This is the fundamental experience of dialectic: the way our concepts are driven on in the encounter with what they express. We must try and compare whether what is given corresponds to the relevant concepts or not.

The dialectic is indeed a method which refers to the process of thinking, but it also differs from other methods insofar as it constantly strives not to stand still, constantly corrects itself in the presence of the things themselves. We could define dialectic as a kind of thinking which does not content itself merely with the order of concepts but, rather, undertakes to correct the conceptual order by reference to the being of the objects themselves. The vital nerve of dialectical thinking lies here, in this moment of opposition. Dialectic is the reverse of what it is generally taken to be: rather than being simply an elaborate conceptual technique, it is the attempt to overcome all merely conceptual manipulation, to sustain at every level the tension between thought and what it would comprehend. Dialectic is the method of thinking which is not merely a method, but the attempt to overcome the merely arbitrary character of method and to admit into the concept that which is not itself concept.

On the issue of ‘exaggeration’:⁶ it is claimed that truth must always represent the simpler or primitive level, while what is more remote can only be a further arbitrary addition. This view assumes that the world is the same as the façade it presents. Philosophy should fundamentally contest this idea. The kind of thinking which shuns the effort to overcome inveterate ideas is nothing but the mere reproduction of what we say and think without more ado. Philosophy should help us to avoid becoming stupid. In a conversation with Goethe, Hegel once described dialectic as ‘the organized spirit of contradiction’.⁷ Every thought which breaches the façade, or the necessary illusion which is ideology, is an exaggeration. The tendency of dialectic to move to extremes serves today precisely to resist the enormous pressure which is exerted upon us from without.

The dialectic realizes that it furnishes thought, on the one hand, and that which thought strives to grasp, on the other. Dialectical thought is not merely intellectualist in character, since it is precisely thought's attempt to recognize its limitations by recourse to the matter itself. How does thought succeed within its own thought-determinations in doing justice to the matter? In the Phenomenology,⁸ Hegel claims that immediacy returns at every level of the movement which thought undergoes. Again and again thought encounters a certain opposition, encounters what can be called nature. An introduction to the dialectic can only be pursued in constant confrontation with the problem of positivism. Such an introduction cannot proceed as if the criteria of positivism had not been developed. On the contrary, we must attempt to measure them against themselves and thereby move beyond their own concept. Positivism is not a ‘worldview’ but, rather, an element of dialectic.

Notes

1 No transcription of Adorno's opening lecture of 8 May 1958 is available. The text has been based on a stenographic record of this lecture. 2 In the early dialogue Gorgias Plato starts by presenting the Sophist Gorgias (483–375 bce) as a proponent of the thesis that ‘there is no subject on which the rhetorician could not speak more persuasively than a member of any other profession whatsoever, before a multitude’ (Gorgias 456c4–6; Loeb Classical Library, trans. W. R. M. Lamb, p. 291). His interlocutor Socrates proceeds to distinguish between two kinds of persuasion, a distinction which allows Plato to contrast his dialectic with the approach typically adopted by the Sophists. Thus there is a form of persuasion which can produce only subjective opinion and belief because it understands nothing of the things of which it speaks; and there is a form of persuasion which is supposed to yield knowledge through acquaintance with the nature, concept, and ground of the thing in question. The first part of the dialogue ends with Gorgias conceding that the genuine rhetorician must indeed possess real knowledge of the matter if he is to teach the art of rhetoric (see Gorgias 459c8–460b1). In Plato's later dialogue Phaedrus, the second main part of the text, which is concerned with the distinction between a good rhetorician and a poor one, begins with the same antithesis between the possession or the lack of genuine knowledge: ‘Socrates: If a speech is to be good, must not the mind of the speaker know the truth about the matters of which he is to speak?’ (Phaedrus 259e4–6; Loeb Classical Library, trans. H. N. Fowler, p. 513). Adorno underlined this passage in his edition of Plato (Plato, Sämtliche Dialoge, ed. Otto Apelt, vol. 2, Leipzig c. 1922), and here wrote ‘F’ in the margin (for ‘Forte’: strong). And above the passage Adorno has written: ‘core of the theory of rhetoric’. In the Phaedrus too the discussion comes to the same conclusion as the Gorgias: ‘Socrates: One must know the truth about all the particular things of which one...