On Theodor W. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics:
Outline, Quotes, Notes


English translations:

Adorno, Theodor W. Negative Dialectics, translated by E.B. Ashton. New York: The Seabury Press, 1973.

________________. Negative Dialectics, translated by Dennis Redmond. 2001. [Offsite] Note: all the links to sections of the work, below, are to this 2001 translation. For an updated, corrected version, see:

Negative Dialectics (2021), translated by Dennis Redmond. Also available at academia,edu.  See also:

Negative Dialectics (2001), in multiple formats by section with supplementary clarifications.




Offsite:: Negative Dialectics,
translation 2001 by Dennis Redmond
Excerpts on this site (from either translation)
Dumain’s notes (page references from Ashton)




Adorno on the Commodification of Theory
      • Privilege of Experience
The Privilege of Experience  
      • Qualitative Moment of Rationality
      • Quality and The Individuated [Individuum] 
      • Substantiality [Inhaltlichkeit] and Method
      • Existentialism
      • Thing, Language, History
      • Tradition and Cognition
      • Rhetoric
AFFIRMATIVE CHARACTER:
66: Heidegger's reading of Kant
67: subjectivity vs. the scientific universe
      • Disempowerment of the Subject
T.W. Adorno on Zen Buddhism  
      • Being, Subject, Object
      • Ontological Objectivism
      • Disappointed Need
      • "Lack as Gain"
      • No-man's Land
      • Unsuccessful Materiality-at-hand [Sachlichkeit]
      • On Categorical Intuition
      • Being Thesei [Greek: thesis]
      • "Meaning of Being"
      • Ontology Suborned
      • Protest Against Reification
      • False Need
      • Weakness and Support
    • II. Being and Existence
      • Immanent Critique of Ontology
      • Copula
      • No Transcendence of Being
      • Expression of the Inexpressible
      • The Child's Question
      • Question of Being
      • Volte [French: sudden about-face]
      • Mythology of Being
      • Ontologization of the Ontical
      • Function of the Concept of the Existent
      • "Existence ontological in itself"
      • Nominalistic Aspect
      • Existence Authoritarian
      • "Historicity"
  • Part II : Negative Dialectics: Concept and Categories 
    • Indissolubility of the Something
    • Necessity of the Substantive
    • Peephole Metaphysics
    • Non-contradictoriness not Hypostasizable
    • Relationship to Left Hegelianism
    • "Logic of Dissassembly" [Zerfalls]
    • On the Dialectics of Identity
    • Self-reflection of Thought
    • Objectivity of the Contradiction
    • Outset from the Concept
    • Synthesis
    • Critique of Positive Negation
    • What is Individual Too is No Ultimate
    • Constellation
    • Constellation in Science
    • Essence and Appearance
    • Mediation Through Objectivity
    • Particularity and the Particular
    • On the Subject-Object Dialectic
    • Redirection of the Subjective Reduction
    • On the Interpretation of the Transcendental
    • "Transcendental Appearance" [Schein]
    • Preponderance [Vorrang] of the Object
    • Object Not a Given
    • Objectivity and Reification
    • Transition to Materialism
    • Materialism and Immediacy
Ashton:
BEING, SUBJECT, OBJECT:
69-70: Husserl in division of labor. science. vs. Heidegger
70: Heidegger's Being an empty concept
THE DISAPPOINTED NEED:
73: ontology discreetly avoids science
74: Nazi irrationalism & technologism
75f: ANDERS on pseudo-concrete. GET ARTICLE.

UNSUCCESSFUL REALISM:
79: Heidegger's rejection of subjectivity a regression
79: Being vacuous
ON CATEGORIAL VISION:  I don't get it.
BEING: Heidegger's BS . ..
85: Heidegger's irrationalism, based on concepts
SENSE OF BEING
ONTOLOGY PRESCRIBED:
89: nostalgia for Being & Nazism
PROTEST AGAINST REFIFICATION
90: hierarchy, Hitler, order.
WRONG NEED: ontology, substitute gratification.
WEAKNESS AND SUPPORT: form & avant-garde art.
COPULA:
104: expression, experience, etc.
THE QUESTION OF BEING:
113:being & guilt
114: being & ontology
LOOPING THE LOOP:
116: ontological difference
118: Being & myth, pre-Socratics, Heidegger anti-intellectual
ONTOLOGIZATION OF THE ONTICAL:
119-120:  Hegel & the nonidentical
121: Engels
    • Dialectics No Sociology of Knowledge
"Dialectics Not a Sociology of Knowledge" by Theodor W. Adorno  
    • On the Concept of the Mind [Geist]
    • Pure Activity and Genesis
    • Suffering Physical
    • Materialism Imageless
Ashton, 203: somatic element's survival Key passage, insight into negative dialectic: This passage alone reveals Adorno's investment in and rebellion against German idealism, his conception of philosophy, the role of the intellectual in the division of labor, his opposition to reconciliation and affirmative philosophy, his dissension from self-preservation, the prioritizing of nonidentity, and no poetry after Auschwitz .
  • Part III (i). Models. Freedom: Metacritique of Practical Reason
    • "False Problem" [Scheinproblem]
    • Interest in Freedom Split
    • Freedom, Determinism, Identity
    • Freedom and Organized Society
    • The Pre-egoized Impulse
    • Experimenta Crucis [Latin: decisive experiment]
    • The Supplementary [Hinzutretende]
    • Fiction of Positive Freedom
    • Unfreedom of Thought
    • "Formalism"
    • The Will as Thing
    • Objectivity of the Antinomy
    • Dialectical Determination of the Will
    • Contemplation
    • Structure of the Third Antinomy
    • On the Kantian Concept of Causality
    • Plea for Order
    • Demonstrating the Antithesis
    • Ontic and Ideal Moments
    • Doctrine of Freedom Repressive
    • Self-experience of Freedom and Unfreedom
    • On the Crisis of Causality
    • Causality as Bane
    • Reason, Ego, Superego
    • Potential of Freedom
    • Against Personalism
    • Depersonalization and Existential Ontology
    • The Universal and Individual in Moral Philosophy
    • On the Condition of Freedom
    • Intelligible Character in Kant
    •  The Intelligible and the Unity of
      Consciousness 
    • Truth-content of the Doctrine of the Intelligible
  • Part III (ii). Models. World-spirit and Natural History. Excursus on Hegel 
    • Tendency and Facts
    • On the Construction of the World-spirit
    • "Being with the World-spirit"
    • On the Unleashing of the Productive Forces
    • Group Spirit [Gruppengeist] and Domination
    • The Juridical Sphere
    • Law and Fairness
    • Individualistic Veil
    • Dynamic of General and Particular
    • Mind as Social Totality
    • Antagonistic Reason of History
    • Universal History
    • Antagonism contingent?
    • Otherworldliness of the Hegelian World-spirit
    • Hegel's Partisanship for the Universal
    • Relapse into Platonism
    • Detemporalization of Time
    • Interruption of the Dialectic in Hegel
    • Role of the Popular Spirit [Volksgeist]
    • Popular Spirit Obsolete
    • Individuality and History
    • Bane
    • Regression Under the Bane
    • Subject and The Individuated [Individuum]
    • Dialectics and Psychology
    • "Natural History"
    • History and Metaphysics
Ashton, 320: Universal history: slingshot to atom bomb (paired with Redmond)
  • Part III (iii) Models. Meditations on Metaphysics
    • After Auschwitz
    • Metaphysics and Culture
    • Dying Today
Refusing “Positive Thinking” After Auschwitz
    • Happiness and Waiting in Vain
    • "Nihilism"
    • Kant's Resignation
    • Desire of Salvation and Block
    • Mundus Intelligibilis
    • Neutralization
    • Only an Allegory
    • Appearance of the Other
    • Self-reflection of Dialectics
KANT'S RESIGNATION:
383: Kant's topological zeal: Nietzsche's Protestant rage against reason
RESCUING URGE AND BLOCK:
385: Carnap
387-9: Kant & science
NEUTRALIZATION:
394-5: religion?
397: metaphysical experience, religion
ONLY A PARABLE:
399: science fiction vs theology
400-402: ideological untruth . . . non-sensory egoity . . . untruth threatens here and there
400: Cartesian dualism
401: spiritualism
402: ban on images

Some related quotations on this site:
Related commentaries on this site:

Reason & Society blog: several relevant entries on Adorno

More quotes:

“I would guess that at the next stage of regressive ideology people would be expected to believe in 'the positive', in the same spirit as marriage advertisements regard 'a positive attitude to life' as especially commendable.” — Theodor W. Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics, Lecture 2—The Negation of Negation, 11 November 1965

SOURCE: Adorno, Theodor W. Lectures on Negative Dialectics, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2008.


Theodor W. Adorno & Critical Theory Study Guide

The Frankfurt School: Philosophy in Relation to Social Theory, Cultural Theory, Science, and Interdisciplinary Research.
Phase 1: Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse in the 1930s.
Study Group Syllabus


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