Top 15 Theodor W. Adorno Quotes

The conflicts that tear society apart resemble the distinction between the concept and the particular facts subordinated to it. ... Whatever refuses to abide by the unity imposed by the principle of dominion manifests itself not as something indifferent to that principle, but as an infringement of logic: as a contradiction.

We cannot think any true thought unless we want the true. Thinking is itself an aspect of practice.

The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.

The thesis of the identity of concept and thing is in general the vital nerve of idealist thought, and indeed traditional thought in general. ... Negative dialectics as critique means above all criticism of precisely this claim to identity.

I remember well a junior seminar I gave with Paul Tillich shortly before the outbreak of the Third Reich. A participant spoke out against the idea of the meaning of existence. She said life did not seem very meaningful to her and she didn't know whether it had a meaning. The very voluble Nazi contingent became very excited by this and scraped the floor noisily with their feet. Now, I do not wish to maintain that this Nazi foot-shuffling proves or refutes anything in particular, but I do find it highly significant. I would say it is a touchstone for the relation of thinking to freedom. It raises the question whether thought can bear the idea that a given reality is meaningless and that mind is unable to orientate itself; or whether the intellect has become so enfeebled that it finds itself paralysed by the idea that all is not well with the world.

What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized.

When I speak of 'negative dialectics' not the least important reason for doing so is my desire to dissociate myself from this fetishization of the positive.

Underlying the concept of positivity is the conviction that the positive is intrinsically positive in itself, without anyone pausing to ask what is to be regarded as positive. ... It is significant and really quite interesting that the term 'positive' actually contains this ambivalence. On the one hand, 'positive' means what is given, is postulated, is there—as when we speak of positivism as the philosophy that sticks to the facts. But, equally, 'positive' also refers to the good, the approvable, in a certain sense, the ideal. And I imagine that this semantic constellation expresses with precision what countless people actually feel to be the case.

Hegel ... destroyed the illusion of the subject's being-in-itself and showed that the subject is itself an aspect of social objectivity. ... However, ... we must ask this question: is this objectivity which we have shown to be a necessary condition and which subsumes abstract subjectivity in fact the higher factor? Does it not rather remain precisely what Hegel reproached it with being in his youth, namely pure externality, the coercive collective? Does not the retreat to this supposedly higher authority signify the regression of the subject, which had earlier won its freedom only with the greatest efforts, with infinite pains?

Negative dialectics ... does not presuppose the identity of being and thought, nor does it culminate in that identity. Instead it will attempt to articulate the very opposite, namely the divergence of concept and thing, subject and object.

Negative Dialektik ... handelt sich um den Entwurf einer Philosophie, die nicht den Begriff der Identität von Sein und Denken voraussetzt und auch nicht in ihm terminiert, sondern die gerade das Gegenteil, also das Auseinanderweisen von Begriff und Sache, von Subjekt und Objekt, und ihre Unversöhntheit, artikulieren will.

Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.

Der des Jargons Kundige braucht nicht zu sagen, was er denkt, nicht einmal recht es zu denken: das nimmt der Jargon ihm ab und entwertet den Gedanken.

The jargon makes it seem that ... the pure attention of the expression to the subject matter would be a fall into sin.