Abstract

Calling his critique of damaged life an inverse theology in a letter to

Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno uses determinate negation to
foreshadow a world where religion will no longer be needed as
consolation when he negates the negative conditions that have
Volume 1, Issue 1, January 2017
given rise to religion. Determinate negation provides Adorno with
the normative basis for his social critique because it enables him to
envisage, albeit only obliquely, an improved state of affairs against
which existing conditions may be judged. To paraphrase Marx,
critique--in the form of determinate negation offers a glimpse of
earthly conditions that promise earthly happiness.

Through a Glass Darkly:

Keywords
Adorno’s Inverse Theology
Theodor W. Adorno, negation, determination negation, inverse
theology.

Deborah Cook
University of Windsor
[email protected]
67 | Through a Glass Darkly

KARL Marx claims that society and the state produce as irrational, distorted, often hellish, Adorno used determinate
religion as a “reversed world-consciousness, because they are a negation to convey the idea of a world that is more rational
reversed world.” In the face of immense human suffering, than our own.4 According to Pritchard, Adorno underscored
religion offers individuals the consoling belief that there is a “the features of damaged life that preempt redemption” in
world beyond this one where their suffering will be redeemed. order to “indicate something determinate about that
But if Marx called religion the opiate of the people, he also redemption, without thereby presuming its immanent
valued religion, arguing that religion retains the idea of a world arrival.”5
that is other, and better, than this one. An expression of real
distress, religion also protests against such distress.1 Against influential misreadings of Adorno’s ban on images,
Surprisingly, perhaps, Theodor W. Adorno agrees with Marx which confuse it with negative theology, Pritchard contends
about the need to retain the idea of a world transcending this that determinate negation neither yields a fully positive image
one. He warns that, “if the possibility, however feeble and of redemption–a positive theology–nor bans such images
distant, of redemption in existence were cut off altogether, the completely.6 I plan to expand on Pritchard’s argument here; I
human spirit would become an illusion, and the finite, shall explain how Adorno foreshadows a world where religion
conditioned, merely existing subject would eventually be is no longer needed as consolation when he negates the
deified as carrier of the spirit.”2 In this context, Adorno negative conditions that give rise to religion. I shall also argue
approves of Rimbaud’s idea of the deity as humanity freed that determinate negation provides Adorno with the
from oppression. normative basis for his social criticism precisely because it
enables him to envisage, albeit only indirectly, an improved
Hope for redemption, for a humanity free from oppression, state of affairs against which existing conditions can be judged.
is based on wresting truth from reality by negating it.3 Adorno To paraphrase Marx, critique–in the form of determinate
calls this inversion of our already inverted world “inverse negation–offers a glimpse of earthly conditions that promise
theology.” In an excellent article, Elizabeth Pritchard observes earthly happiness; it bears the historical burden of establishing
that Adorno first described his work as inverse theology in a the truth of this world against the untruth of the other one.7
1934 letter to Walter Benjamin. Depicting life under capitalism
4
Elizabeth A. Pritchard, “Bilderverbot meets Body in Adorno’s Inverse Theology,”
1
Karl Marx, “Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” cited in Theodor W. Adorno, Vol. I: Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theory (London, Thousand
Reader in Marxist Philosophy: From the Writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, tr. Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2004), 194-5.
5
unknown, eds. Howard Selsam and Harry Martel, (New York: International Ibid., 193.
Publishers, 1963), 227. 6
Ibid., 193.
2
Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, tr. E. B. Ashton, (New York: Continuum 7
I am taking some liberties with a passage in “Introduction to the Critique of
Books, 1973), 400; tr. mod. Hereafter ND. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” Reader in Marxist Philosophy, p. 227, where Marx
3
Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, tr. E. F. N. writes: “The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has
Jephcott, (London: New Left Books, 1974), 98. Hereafter MM. disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world.”

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Damaged Life But the ‘death of all’ will have a related cause. For, if the
lives of individuals have become lifeless, the natural world has
Adorno paints a nightmarish vision of a world in which we also been severely damaged under capitalism. Indeed, Adorno
have become the perpetrators of our own destruction. argues that “the complete reification of the world . . . is
Condemned by history to be mere tools of capitalism, indistinguishable from an additional catastrophic event caused
individuals are now “dragged along, dead, neutralized, and by human beings, in which nature has been wiped out and
impotent” (MM, 135). Emphasizing the lifelessness of the lives after which nothing grows any more.” Under monopoly
that individuals lead today, Adorno claims that the optimal conditions, “[l]ife’s sole remaining content is that there shall
organization of relations of production demands the be nothing living. Everything that exists is to be made identical
coordination of people from whom all vestiges of life have been to a life that is itself death, abstract domination.”8 Whether the
drained. Ironically, we subordinate ourselves to exchange annihilation of life that we now call “progress” is caused by a
relations, which drain us of life by reducing us to so many nuclear war waged in self-defence, or by plundering the earth
commensurable units of value, just to stay alive. According to in pursuit of profit, is irrelevant. Both are equally possible, but
Adorno, then, “[t]he will to live finds itself dependent on the the latter is becoming increasingly likely. The relative
denial of the will to live: self-preservation annuls all life in indifference of the owners of the means of production to these
subjectivity” (MM, 229). eventualities, along with our voluntary servitude to capital,
make the death of all an all too plausible prospect.
Since individuals are subsumed almost completely under
exchange relations today, Adorno grants an element of truth to To be sure, Adorno is describing the worse case scenario.
Hegel’s idea of world spirit: it offers a “distorted sense of the Critics have often objected that his description of damaged life
real predominance of the whole” over largely powerless is overblown. However, Adorno claims that social criticism
individuals (ND, 304). Monopoly capitalism not only arrests actually requires “an element of exaggeration, of over-shooting
the process of individuation, it physically damages individuals the object, of self-detachment from the weight of the factual,
by disregarding their vital needs in its relentless and ruthless so that instead of merely reproducing being it can, at once
pursuit of profit. Simply to survive, individuals must submit to rigorous and free, determine it” (MM, 126-7). Casting a harsh
a production process that is steered by the inherently light on current conditions by stressing their negative traits,
unpredictable financial transactions of the owners of the Adorno wants to show that these conditions fail to make good
means of production who falsely declare their interests are on the better potential which they also contain. By
identical with the interests of society as a whole. In fact, exaggerating the negative, then, Adorno tries to respond to the
Adorno also declares that the continued primacy of the ethical demand that damaged reality ought to change.
capitalist production process over individuals “has its
vanishing point in the death of all” (ND, 320). 8
Theodor W. Adorno, “Trying to Understand Endgame,” Notes to Literature, Vol. 1,
tr. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 245.

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Knowing the worst is a necessary condition for altering a animates Adorno’s exaggerations. Reification, the suppression
situation where things are already very bad.9 of difference in the name of identity,13 not only persists, it
continues to grow, deforming both human and nonhuman life.
What prompts this ethical demand for change is the horror Given their submission to the homogenizing and levelling
that was Germany under the Third Reich. In Nazi Germany, power of exchange in the interest of survival, individuals have
the faint glimmer of transcendence was completely become objects to be manipulated and controlled by interests
extinguished. By highlighting the worse case scenario, Adorno that are as irrational as they are inescapable.
wants us to recognize just how bad things can become in order To preserve ourselves, we must “negate precisely that
to satisfy the new categorical imperative that nothing like autonomous subjectivity to which the idea of democracy
Auschwitz should happen again (ND, 365). To cite J. M. appeals.” Individuals “can preserve themselves only if they
Bernstein: “Nowhere else in history has the terrifying renounce their self.”14 Here too, Adorno admits that he has
proximity of spiritual death and physical death been so “exaggerated the somber side.” But he explicitly justifies this
emphatically realized.”10 Before physically exterminating hyperbole by appealing to “the maxim that only exaggeration
millions of people in concentration camps, the Nazis succeeded per se today can be the medium of truth.” By exaggerating the
in systematically eradicating their humanity while leaving their negative aspects of late capitalist society, Adorno tries to
bodies alive: “what occurred was hence the most elaborate and reveal objective historical tendencies15 in the West where “the
extreme literal process of reification.”11 immense concentration of economical and administrative
power leaves the individual no more room to maneuver,” that
Adorno is not just making the point that unspeakable is, where society “tends toward totalitarian forms of
atrocities occurred in Nazi Germany. Rather, he believes that domination.”16 He wants to remind us, not just that the
the economic conditions that led to the emergence of Nazi conditions that gave rise to the Holocaust persist and may
Germany obtain even today in the West. What occurred in even have intensified, but that they could well lead to a
Germany may be, and arguably is being,12 repeated elsewhere. resurgence of that horror.
It is this bleak assessment of our current predicament that

9
I am paraphrasing Adorno’s citation of F. H. Bradley in his epigraph to Part Two
of Minima Moralia: “Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.”
10
J. M. Bernstein, Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge
13
University Press, 2001), 381. See Martin Jay, Adorno (London: Fontana, 1984), 68.
14
11
Ibid., 380. Theodor W. Adorno, “The Meaning of Working through the Past,” Critical
12
Robert Hullot-Kentor argued recently that Adorno’s work “must now be of vital Models: Interventions and Catchwords, tr. Henry W. Pickford, (New York: Columbia
concern in the United States . . . for what precisely can be learned from it in a nation University Press, 1998), 98.
15
that has so palpably entered primitive times.” See Resemblance Beyond Recollection: Ibid., 99.
16
Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) Theodor W. Adorno, “Discussion of Professor Adorno’s Lecture ‘The Meaning of
pp. 3-4. Working Through the Past’,” Critical Models, 298.

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Determinate Negation critique. To initiate change, critique must first show that
everything individuals “call culture consists in the suppression
Still, there is a positive dimension to Adorno’s exaggerated of nature and any uncontrolled traces of nature.”21 Critique has
judgements. For they enable him to evoke conditions in which the task of revealing that what currently counts as progress is
redemption faintly glimmers. To repeat an earlier point, just the unbridled instinct to control and exploit all forms of
Adorno insists that truth appears only when we recognize and life, to the point of destroying life altogether. By negating the
condemn the falsity of the whole. As he explains in negative through critical reflection on our compulsive
“Individuum und Organisation:” “we may not know what attempts to dominate both human and nonhuman nature,
people are and what the correct arrangement of human affairs Adorno hopes that individuals will eventually be able to direct
should be but we do know what they should not be and what their survival instincts towards more emancipatory ends. Here,
arrangement of human affairs is false.” Only in this critical reason will invert “into its other,” into a form of rationality
understanding of the negative aspects of the human that no longer pits itself antagonistically against nature.
predicament is “the other, positive, one open to us.”17 Indeed, Indeed, Adorno insists that reason is the ‘organon’ of progress;
Pritchard argues that, far from ‘banning’ all ideas of a world reason alone can abolish domination (P, 152).
that transcends this one, Adorno wants “to reveal . . . the
precise features of damaged life, as well as our proximity to The determinate negation of the negative conditions in
redemption.” Exaggerating the negative, he attempts to arrive which we find ourselves provides a glimpse of “the only
at ideas about improved conditions in the form of inverted permissible figure of the Other.”22 Amending Spinoza in his
images of damaged life.18 essay “Critique,” Adorno argues that “the false, once
determinately known and precisely expressed, is already an
Like Marx, who (to cite Moishe Postone) also rejected the index of what is right and better.”23 Echoing this remark in his
‘abstract’ negation of existing conditions, maintaining instead lectures on Negative Dialectics, Adorno again rejects Spinoza’s
that radical social change is “rooted in the possibility of a proposition “that verum index sui et falsi, or that the true and
determinate historical negation” 19 of them, Adorno thinks that the false can both be read directly ... from the truth.” Here
the “possibility of wresting free” of late capitalism is Adorno contends that “the false, that which should not be the
“effectuated by the pressure of negativity.”20 In the first case, is in fact the standard of itself: . . . the false, namely that
instance, however, determinate negation takes the form of
21
Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems, tr. Edmund Jephcott
17
Theodor W. Adorno, “Individuum und Organisation,” Soziologische Schriften I (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001),118.
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972), 456. 22
Theodor W. Adorno, “Toward a Portrait of Thomas Mann,” Notes to Literature,
18
Pritchard, “Bilderverbot meets Body,” Theodor W. Adorno, 193. Vol. 2, tr. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)
19
Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s p. 18. Cited in Pritchard, “Bilderverbot meets Body in Adorno’s Inverse Theology,”
Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 372. Theodor W. Adorno, 193.
20 23
Theodor W. Adorno, “Progress,” Critical Models, 152. Hereafter P. Theodor W. Adorno “Critique,” Critical Models, 288.

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which is not itself in the first instance–i.e. not itself in the Calling determinate negation a methodological principle,26
sense that it is not what it claims to be–that this falseness Adorno employs it throughout his work. In Negative Dialectics,
proclaims itself in what we might call a certain immediacy, and for example, he shows how the negation of unfree conditions
this immediacy of the false, this falsum, is the index sui atque gives rise to the counterconcept of freedom. Here he reiterates
veri. So here then, . . . is a certain pointer to what I consider a claim he already made in “Progress:” the shape of freedom
‘right thinking’.”24 “can only be grasped in determinate negation [bestimmte
Negation] in accordance with the concrete form of a specific
The ‘false’ is an index of truth because it points dialectically unfreedom” (ND, 231; tr. mod.). Our ideas about freedom arise
to its own reversal. Adorno calls this reversal of fortune, which in oppressive situations “as resistance to repression” (ND,
is outlined by means of determinate negation, the dialectics of 265). Although they have changed over the course of human
progress. Progress is dialectical because “historical setbacks, history, our concepts of freedom have always recoiled “against
which themselves are instigated by the principle of progress . . . dominion as freedom’s model” (ND, 221). Consequently,
also provide the condition needed for humanity to find the freedom invariably offers “a polemical counter-image to the
means to avert them in the future” (P, 154). In “Progress,” suffering brought on by social coercion.” Since freedom
moreover, Adorno traces this idea back to Kant who taught emerges in the negation of the negative–unfreedom–
that “the entanglement of progress in myth, in nature’s hold unfreedom is both “an impediment to freedom” and “a premise
upon the domination of nature, in short, in the realm of of its concept” (ND, 223).
unfreedom, tends by means of its own law toward the realm of
freedom.”25 To Kant, reconciliation is “immanent” in the When he insists that the universal should never
antagonisms that afflict society. Here, Adorno contends that “completely submerge the moment of something particular,
Hegel himself modelled his idea of progress–the cunning of something opaque,” Adorno also suggests that individuals
reason–on Kant’s idea that “the conditions of the possibility of would play a far more active role in a rational society than they
reconciliation are its contradiction, and . . . the conditions for currently do in our irrational one (ND, 328). For Adorno, there
the possibility of freedom are unfreedom” (P, 149). is “no available model of freedom save one: that consciousness
as it intervenes in the total social constitution
[Gesamtverfassung] will through that constitution intervene in
the complexion of the individual” (ND, 265). A more rational
24
society–the inverted image of a society in which individuals are
Theodor W. Adorno Lectures on Negative Dialectics: Fragments of a Lecture Course
1965/1966, tr. Rodney Livingstone, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008), 28-9; tr. mod.
mere pawns of monopoly capital–would leave individuals free
25
See Kant’s fourth proposition in “Idea for a Universal History with a to shape the institutions that in turn shape them. Such a
Cosmopolitan Purpose,” Kant’s Political Writings, tr. H. B. Nisbet, (Cambridge: society would accommodate individuals qua particular, while
Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 44: “The means which nature employs to bring
about the development of innate capacities is that of antagonism within society, in so far
26
as this antagonism becomes in the long run the cause of a law-governed social order.” Theodor W. Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics, 28.

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ensuring the satisfaction of all their needs–whether of the inverting the adaptation and conformity, which now result in
stomach or the imagination. Only in this way would damaged forms of collectivity. Again, “it takes the repressive
reconciliation—“the communication of what is form of conscience to develop the form of solidarity in which
27
differentiated” —be achieved. the repressive one will be voided” (ND, 282).

Yet, just as a free society would not “agree with the present Adorno applies determinate negation to exchange relations
concept of collectivity” (which historically took such forms as under capitalism as well. The exchange principle on which
fascism and Stalinism), so individuals would no longer “be capitalism rests has always been a lie: its “doctrine of like-for-
frantically guarding the old particularity” (ND, 283-4). Given like” is contradicted by the fact that “the societally more
the damaging effects of reification and narcissism on powerful contracting party receives more than the other.” The
individuals today, the ‘old particularity’” is largely a sham. Like “repeatedly broken exchange contract” will be redeemed only
Hegel, Adorno rejects the equation of individuality with self- when it finally makes good on the promise contained in the
seeking when he maintains that happiness will elude us “until very idea of an exchange of equivalents, that is, only when
the category of the individual ceases to be self-seclusive” (ND, “truly equal things” are exchanged (P, 159). To become more
352). He also endorses Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: contained rational, then, particular acts of exchange must satisfy the
in the idea that “everyone’s freedom need be curtailed only emphatic notion of “free and just exchange” (ND, 147). Since
insofar as it impairs someone else’s is a reconciled condition” the abstract negation of exchange would merely serve as an
that transcends both “the bad universal, the coercive social apology “for recidivism into ancient injustice” (ND, 146),
mechanism” and “the obdurate individual who is a genuine progress is not “merely an Other in relation to
microcosmic copy of that mechanism” (ND, 283). exchange, but rather exchange that has been brought to itself”
(P, 159). Moreover, once exchange becomes free and fair,
Adorno also uses determinate negation to outline a new society will “transcend exchange” because workers will receive
form of social solidarity. Since the superego consists in their full share in the production process. No part of their
internalized societal norms, our so-called ‘moral conscience’ is labour will be withheld from them any longer (ND, 147).
derived from the “objectivity of society, . . . the objectivity in
and by which human beings live and which extends to the core For its part, self-preservation may become more fully
of their individualization.” However, these norms are also rational by serving the end to which it is implicitly directed:
riven with antagonisms: in this case, they contain the the preservation of the species as a whole. Citing Max Weber,
contradictory moments of both “heteronomous coercion and Adorno contends that, when emancipated from “the
the idea of a solidarity transcending divergent individual contingency of individually posed ends,” the “subject of ratio,
interests.” A more rational idea of solidarity can be gleaned by pursuing its self-preservation is itself an actual universal,
society–in its full logic, humanity.” What is “inexorably
27 inscribed within the meaning of rationality,” then, is just the
Theodor W. Adorno, “On Subject and Object,” Critical Models, 247.

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“preservation of humanity.”28 Emphatically conceived, reason Adorno, the “realization of materialism would mean today the
“should not be anything less than self-preservation, namely end of materialism, of the blind and degrading dependence of
that of the species, upon which the survival of each individual human beings upon material conditions.”30
literally depends.” Here Adorno also endorses the determinate
negation of the current, unbridled form of self-preservation. The Limits to Determinate Negation
Only by reflecting critically on self-preservation today will the
species acquire “the potential for that self-reflection that could Adorno declares that the negation of existing conditions is
finally transcend the self-preservation to which it was reduced “the only form in which metaphysical experience survives
by being restricted simply to a means.”29 today.”31 However, despite his attempts to derive a sense of
what is right and better from his sustained critique of the false
Materialism itself may be superseded in an emancipatory totality, Adorno “concurs with the theological ban on images”
inversion similar to those which may liberate self-preserving to the extent that his materialism does not permit a positive
reason from its thraldom to nature, exchange from its reifying depiction of a reconciled state (ND, 207). Having sketched
abstractions, solidarity from rank conformity, freedom from some of his attempts to negate the negative, it should already
unfreedom. The supersession of materialism–and, by be clear that Adorno does not, in fact, claim to provide a fully
extension, of a history that has been more or less blindly positive account of the redemption of damaged life. Even as he
impelled by the instinct for self-preservation–will occur when negates the negative conditions in which we live to acquire
human beings are emancipated from pressing material needs ideas about an improved state of affairs, he acknowledges the
(ND, 207). In his secular interpretation of the resurrection of difficulties with this procedure. To conclude, I shall consider
the flesh, Adorno believes that the flesh will be successfully both Adorno’s own caveats regarding determinate negation,
“resurrected” only when individuals are no longer forced to along with some objections that have been levelled against it.
devote their entire lives to securing their material survival. For
Transcendence, says Adorno, “feeds on nothing but the
28
experiences we have in immanence” (ND, 398). But while he
Theodor W. Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis,” Critical Models, 272
passim.
endorses an idea of transcendence that is evoked by concepts
29
Ibid., p. 273. Yet Adorno warns against hypostasizing the species. If it is “part of
derived from the negation of determinate aspects of damaged
the logic of the self-preservation of the individual that it should . . . embrace the life, he also admits that thinkers who attempt to “nail down
conception of the preservation of the species,” there is also “an intrinsic temptation transcendence can rightly be charged . . . with . . . a betrayal of
for this universality to emancipate itself from the individuals it comprises.” Should transcendence.” Since no individual can completely transcend
“species reason” eventually liberate itself “from the particularity of obdurate
particular interest,” it may nonetheless “fail to free itself from the no less obdurate existing conditions, any attempt to provide a fully positive
particular interest of the totality.” Since this pressing “conundrum” has not yet been
resolved, it remains “a problem of the greatest possible gravity.” See History and
30
Freedom: Lectures 1964-65, tr. Rodney Livingstone, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), Theodor W. Adorno, “Why Still Philosophy,” Critical Models, 15.
31
45-6. Theodor W. Adorno Metaphysics, 144.

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image of redemption is illusory (ND, 17). As Adorno eloquently the speculative transcendence of objects using concepts that
states in his lectures on moral philosophy: “no one can promise point to their unrealized potentials.
that . . . reflections . . . in the realm of moral philosophy can be
used to establish a canonical plan for the good life because life Fotini Vaki claims that Adorno retains only the “first
itself is so deformed and distorted that no one is able to live dimension of Hegel’s determinate negation” when he sets “the
the good life in it or to fulfil his destiny as a human being.”32 object against its own internal tensions, contradictions and
inconsistencies, manifesting thereby the object’s failure to
Since our ideas about the good life are rooted in damaged fulfill its own concept,” while rejecting the second dimension,
life, they are also tainted by that negativity. Even if we could namely that determinate negation will lead to “more coherent
“imagine all things radically altered,” our images would remain and complete forms of life and consciousness.”33 Against this, I
chained to ourselves and “to our present time as static points would argue that what Adorno rejects in Hegel is his view that
of reference, and everything would be askew” (ND, 352). The determinate negation necessarily leads to more coherent and
critique of damaged life may indicate what is right and better, complete forms of life. While Adorno hopes the real will
but it does so only obliquely. The negation of the negative become rational, he denies that the real will become rational of
‘remains negative’ because positivity is only indirectly outlined necessity. In fact, Adorno again denies that determinate
by critique. Negating existing states of affairs, determinate negation yields something entirely positive when he argues
negation discloses something equally negative: namely that that to “equate the negation of negation with positivity is the
what exists is not yet what it ought to be, and that what ought quintessence of identification” (ND, 158).
to be does not yet exist. In other words, the negation of the
negation only yields more negativity. Vaki also questions how far Adorno can go “by relying only
on the recognition of contradictions.”34 She objects that his
Negative dialectics is a dialectics of both immanence and normative standpoint “is only glimpsed indirectly in a
transcendence. Although philosophy should immerse itself in completely unspecified way.” Furthermore, Adorno never
“things that are heterogeneous to it without placing those clarifies the conditions under which ideas derived from
things in prefabricated categories” (ND, 13), Adorno cautions determinate negation would become “a concrete possibility.”35
that, as long as philosophers simply mirror the objects they are Yet, pace Vaki, Adorno would readily concede both points.
trying to think, they will fail to grasp them, because the object Adorno explicitly admits that his materialism gives the ban on
“only opens itself up to the subjective surplus in thought” (ND, images a secular form “by not permitting Utopia to be
205). His negative dialectics involves both the concerted effort
to understand particulars qua particular through immersion in
33
them–and a more active determination of these particulars, Fotini Vaki, “Adorno contra Habermas and the Claims of Critical Theory as
Immanent Critique,” Historical Materialism 13, no. 4 (2005), 111.
34
Ibid., 114.
32 35
Theodor W. Adorno, Problems of Moral Philosophy, 167. Ibid., 116.

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pictured.” Indeed, “this is the substance of its negativity” (ND, rejects a complete ban on images because such a ban would risk
207). Determinate negation offers only an indirect glimpse of leaving the status quo unchallenged.38
improved conditions.
To the related charge that Adorno lacks a firm basis for his Adorno makes this point in a discussion with Ernst Bloch
social criticism, Adorno would counter that no more secure (which Pritchard does not cite):
standpoint for critique exists. We can only start from where we
are: our ideas about improved conditions arise historically in If the question of utopia is so complex, it is because we are
forbidden to generate images of it. But this has another
our lived experiences of existing ones. Society’s rational
disturbing consequence: the more it becomes possible to
potential discloses itself only to those who resist its talk only negatively about the things that should exist, the
irrationality: the good life can be glimpsed today only “in less one can imagine anything definite about them. But,
resistance to the forms of the bad life that have been seen even more disturbing, this prohibition on giving concrete
through and critically dissected.” This negative prescription is expression to utopia tends to discredit and absorb the
the sole form of guidance that Adorno can provide.36 Indeed, utopian consciousness on which the will that things should
Adorno not only problematizes his own critique, he exacts be different depends. [...] I am certainly not competent to
say ... what is possible given the current status of
humility from those who might otherwise claim to occupy a
humanity’s productive powers, but I am certain that this
morally superior standpoint. Critics must scrutinize their can be said concretely, simply, and without arbitrariness. If
critical concepts carefully: even the most uncompromising it is not said, if this image does not appear–I almost want
critic is not authorized to put herself in the right because the to say ‘in a tangible way’–then basically one does not know
concepts she wields are derived from, and sullied by, the very what the goal of the whole thing is, why whole structure
world she wants to change (ND, 352). has been set in motion. Forgive me if I adopt the
unexpected role of advocate for the positive, but I believe
that, without this, no phenomenology of utopian
As I remarked earlier, the “perspective vanishing point” of consciousness is possible.39
Adorno’s materialism is “the spirit’s liberation from the
primacy of material needs in their state of fulfillment” (ND, However, since it targets specific conditions at particular
207). Citing this passage, Pritchard notes that Adorno retains
the “traditional negativity” of the Bilderverbot, even as he
connects it “with materialism, and more specifically, with that 38
Ibid., 187.
conspicuous image of material limitation and longing: bodily 39
Ernst Bloch and Adorno, “Etwas fehlt . . . Über die Widersprüche der utopischen
resurrection.”37 Furthermore, Pritchard contends, Adorno Sehnsucht,” Tendenz-Latenz-Utopie, Werkausgabe, Ergänzungsband (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985), page 362ff: Quoted in Gerhard Schweppenhäuser,
Theodor W. Adorno zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 1996), p.181n124.
English translation: “Something’s Missing: A Discussion with Ernst Bloch and
36
Theodor W. Adorno, Problems of Moral Philosophy, 167-8. Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions in Utopian Longing,” The Utopian
37
Pritchard, “Bilderverbot meets Body in Theodor W. Adorno’s Inverse Theology,” Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays, tr. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg,
Theodor W. Adorno, 184-5. (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1988) 12-3.

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points in time, determinate negation can do no more than These claims about the powers of inverting our already
evoke varying and historically conditioned ideas about a better, inverted world help to explain why Adorno thinks that truth
because more rational, society. Fashioning “entirely from felt wrested from reality by negating it offers the only legitimate
contact” with the world, perspectives that “displace and grounds for hope. Even as he acknowledges the limits to his
estrange it,” criticism attempts to reveal the world to be “as ‘inverse theology,’ Adorno suggests that there are fragments of
indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the good in the world, but that these only appear through a glass
messianic light.” On the one hand, estrangement is “the darkly; they are glimpsed by those who resist (in thought,
simplest of things” because “consummate negativity, once action, or both) injustice, unfreedom, intolerance, and
squarely faced, delineates the mirror-image of its opposite. On oppression. Society’s rational potential manifests itself
the other hand, estrangement is difficult to achieve because wherever individuals confront and contest the limits to their
our ideas about the “opposite” of negativity are marred by “the freedom, in their struggles against their status as mere cogs in
same distortion and indigence” that we are trying to escape” the wheels of the economic machinery, or in their challenges to
(MM, 247). multifarious forms of state oppression.42 With determinate
negation, Adorno follows the lead of those who have resisted,
This estranging critique of consummate negativity has and continue to resist, oppressive social and economic
often been forged in the crucible of painful experiences of conditions in the West–conditions that now threaten all the
damaged life. Pain and negativity are “the moving forces of living. To borrow a striking phrase that he uses to describe
dialectical thinking” because, through them, we have Kafka, Adorno attempts “to beat the world at its own game,” by
historically gleaned reality’s better potential (ND, 202). Max turning “the moribund” into “the harbinger of Sabbath rest.”43
Horkheimer said something similar in Eclipse of Reason when
he wrote: “At all times, the good has shown the traces of the
oppression in which it originated.”40 As Herbert Marcuse also
remarks, the emphatic concepts derived from determinate
negation “conceptualize the stuff of which the experienced
world consists, and they conceptualize it with a view of its
possibilities, in light of their actual limitation, suppression and
denial.”41

consciousness becomes free for the higher historical rationality only in the struggle
40
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), 177. against the established society.”
42
41
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced The last two sentences appear in my “Response to Finlayson,” Historical
Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), 215. See also p. 222: “To the degree Materialism 11, no. 2 (2003), 192.
43
which consciousness is determined by the exigencies and interests of the established Theodor W. Adorno, “Notes on Kafka,” Prisms, tr. Samuel and Shierry Weber,
society, it is ‘unfree;’ to the degree to which the established society is irrational, the (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1967), 270.

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77 | Through a Glass Darkly

Works Cited Ernst Bloch and Adorno, “Etwas fehlt . . . Über die Widersprüche der
utopischen Sehnsucht,” Tendenz-Latenz-Utopie, Werkausgabe,
Theodor W. Adorno, “Notes on Kafka,” Prisms, tr. Samuel and Ergänzungsband (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985).
Shierry Weber, (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1967).
Ernst Bloch and Adorno, “Something’s Missing: A Discussion with
Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, tr. E. B. Ashton, (New Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions in
York: Continuum Books, 1973). Utopian Longing,” The Utopian Function of Art and Literature:
Selected Essays, tr. Jack Zipes and Frank Mecklenburg,
Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1988).
Life, tr. E. F. N. Jephcott, (London: New Left Books, 1974).
Deborah Cook, “Response to Finlayson,” Historical Materialism 11,
Theodor W. Adorno, “Trying to Understand Endgame,” Notes to no. 2 (2003), 189-198.
Literature, Vol. 1, tr. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1991). Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (New York: The Seabury Press,
1974).
Theodor W. Adorno, “Toward a Portrait of Thomas Mann,” Notes
to Literature, Vol. 2, tr. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, (New York: Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of
Columbia University Press, 1992). Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

Theodor W. Adorno, “The Meaning of Working through the Past,” Karl Marx, “Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, tr. Henry W. Right,” cited in Reader in Marxist Philosophy: From the Writings of
Pickford, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). Marx, Engels, and Lenin, tr. unknown, eds. Howard Selsam and
Harry Martel, (New York: International Publishers, 1963).
Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems, tr.
Immanuel Kant, Kant’s Political Writings, tr. H. B. Nisbet,
Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

Theodor W. Adorno Lectures on Negative Dialectics: Fragments of a Robert Hullot-Kentor, Resemblance Beyond Recollection: Collected
Lecture Course 1965/1966, tr. Rodney Livingstone, (Cambridge: Essays on Theodor W. Adorno (New York: Columbia University
Polity Press, 2008). Press, 2006).
Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A
J. M. Bernstein, Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics (Cambridge:
Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
Cambridge University Press, 2001).
University Press, 1993).

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78 | Through a Glass Darkly

Elizabeth A. Pritchard, “Bilderverbot meets Body in Adorno’s

Inverse Theology,” Theodor W. Adorno, Vol. I: Philosophy, Ethics
and Critical Theory (London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage
Publications, 2004), 194-5.

Gerhard Schweppenhäuser, Theodor W. Adorno zur Einführung

(Hamburg: Junius Verlag, 1996).

Fotini Vaki, “Adorno contra Habermas and the Claims of Critical

Theory as Immanent Critique,” Historical Materialism 13, no. 4
(2005), 79-120.

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