Hegel and the Logic of Decay. A Genealogy of Adorno's Negative Dialectics

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Philosophy - Theoretical (Realisation, Science, Logic, Language), grade: 1,0, University of Vienna (Institut für Philosophie), language: English, abstract: In the first essay of the collection Hegel: Three Studies, Adorno evaluates Hegel's philosophy in the following way: 'Hegel, in many respects, [is] a Kant who came to himself'1. He justifies this verdict with the claim that Hegel succeeded in following the inner logic of the transcendental philosophy much more consistently than Kant himself. His idealism was not simply imposed on Kant's philosophy and thus using it as a shaky foundation for a foreign superstructure. Instead, Hegel had sensitively reacted to Kant's inherent contradictions and resentments and subsequently presented them coherently in his dialectics and made them usable for him - or one might even say, he 'sublated' it. In my examination of the negative dialectics, I have repeatedly come to a similar assessment towards Adorno. He too was able to react productively on the inconsistencies and gross misconceptions in Hegel's philosophy in his critical approach to Hegel, by which he measured and instructed his own dialectical philosophy on the Hegelian. He was always aware of the danger that the productive reception of Hegelian motifs and dialectical methods would lead to a dull epigonism if it did not consistently align itself with the original contents of his philosophy. In the present work, I would like to prove that Adorno's assessment of the relationship between Hegel and Kant also applies to his relationship to Hegel, i.e. that Adorno can and should be called - in a certain polemic way - a Hegel who came to himself. His negative dialectics convert Hegel's speculative philosophy into the modern philosophical discourse without being guilty of cherry picking. It does so by clearing Hegelian philosophy of its imperfections and enriching it with the political experience of the twentieth century. It is my goal to show with a genealogy of negative dialectics, its reference points to Hegel and to prove that Adorno's dialectic is a legitimate heir of Hegelian philosophy. In addition to Adorno's work Negative Dialectics, I will pay special attention to his Lectures on Negative Dialectics, because, as Adorno states himself, not only the 'methodical observation' and the 'fundamental considerations' of his negative dialectics are presented there, but also the development process of Negative Dialectics is considered.