Contradiction, Critique, and Dialectic in Adorno

This dissertation aims to explain how negative dialectics can be understood as a form of dialectics. One of the defining features of dialectical reflection is that it is not reducible to a list of propositions, but rather progresses from one position of thought to another, and it is the movement through the various positions that defines reflection. This movement is achieved by developing 'contradictions'? within every position under consideration, where the 'contradiction'? always gives rise to the following position. However, for this movement to be possible, the 'contradiction'? must be determinate: it must have a logical form and content that gives rise to a new position of thought, which in turn does not merely deny the initial position but rather encompasses it and corrects its insufficiencies. If the contradiction is not determinate but merely 'abstract,'? then it cannot give rise to dialectical motion. The question guiding this dissertation is how the 'contradictions'? in negative dialectics can be understood as determinate.

Insofar as Adorno discusses the determinacy of his account of contradiction, he claims to take over the Hegelian conception of determinate negation. However, the Hegelian account cannot be the same account at work in negative dialectics because Hegel's account presupposes the complete Hegelian system, whereas Adorno rejects the closure of the system. An account of how 'contradiction' is determinate in negative dialectics must thus go beyond Hegel. On the basis of Adorno's statement that there are two forms of contradiction in negative dialectics (the 'contradiction in the object,'? and the 'contradiction in the concept'), this dissertation proceeds by a detailed investigation of the two forms of contradiction and the relation between them. The upshot is that, while both forms of contradiction involve Hegelian insights, their overall structure is intelligible only in terms of Adorno's appropriation of the Freudian notion of 'paranoid projection.' This dissertation argues that it is ultimately the logic of paranoid projection that makes contradiction determinate in negative dialectics, and that makes dialectical development possible. The conclusion reflects on the extent to which Freudian theory is presupposed by the structure and integrity of negative dialectics as a whole.