I. Concepts and objects in dialectical knowledge

Given their differences, one might argue that Adorno’s dialectic departs from a genuinely Hegelian notion of adjustment, making his claim to Hegelianism appear, at best, superficial. Yet, when Adorno contends that concepts and objects are not adjusted within the social arrangements of capitalism (ND: 9), I want to suggest that he is drawing on a model of knowledge whose roots lie in Hegel’s Phenomenology.

A productive starting point for exploring that model is the theory of experience outlined in the ‘Consciousness’ chapter of the Phenomenology. Adorno endorses two major aspects of Hegel’s theory of experience: its realist definition of concepts and its structural account of objects. In Hegel’s framework, ‘shapes of consciousness’ (PhG: ¶36) represent objective conditions, rather than subjective forms, of experience. Those conditions establish the objective limits defining what constitutes a possible experience for ordinary consciousness. For instance, the shape of ‘sense-certainty’ includes a series of conceptual conditions for a structured and determinate experience of sense-data, captured by the ‘this’ ‘here’ and ‘now’ (PhG: ¶95).

Moreover, that set of possible experiences belong to a particular metaphysical structure with its distinctive epistemic framework or its ‘essential’ aspect (PhG: ¶99). According to the latter, meaningful experiences rely on an immediate ‘fit’ between concepts and objects, where concepts are applied immediately to sensuous givens. The shape of sense-certainty is a structure of objective conditions in that sense: it allows for a type of conceptual application and conceptual entailments—the ‘thises’ and the ‘heres’ and ‘nows’—which cohere with the type of objects available to experience. The ‘worldview’ of sense-certainty coheres, in that sense, around three dimensions: a certain modality of concept application (sensuous); an objective outlook of experience (isolated sense-data); the self-conception of consciousness as agent (a subjective ground of experience). The shapes of ‘perception’ and ‘understanding’ are but variations of that three-dimensional, ‘structural’ space (more of this in section II and III).

Adorno, too, combines a conceptual realism and a structural account of experience in his dialectical epistemology. Objects have a conceptual structure that our knowledge acts must acknowledge, both philosophically (in our theories of knowledge) and socially or historically since the ‘concepts’ of objects refer to the meaning-conferring power of human mediations (O’Connor Reference O’Connor2013: 26–27). Adorno’s structural definition of experience is most visibly outlined in his social theory. The goal of social theory, according to Adorno, is to examine the laws and macro-logical dynamics underlying the seemingly isolated phenomena of modern social life. Addressing those phenomena in isolation is to succumb to their immediate evidence and to overlook the larger structures that situate them in the social totality (Adorno Reference Adorno1976: 8).

More importantly, we get the same three-dimensional conception of experience when Adorno’s conceptual realism and his structural account of experience combine in social theory. For example, when Adorno describes the social practices of capitalism as ‘administered’ (Horkheimer and Adorno Reference Horkheimer, Adorno and Noerr2002: 163) he points to a paradigmatic structure of experience in which social phenomena are immediately significant but fragmented (Adorno Reference Adorno1976: 14); our concepts identify given phenomena according to the socially prevailing interpretive schemes (ND: 83); socialized individuals see themselves as ‘windowless’ grounds of experience (ND: 219).

A second and arguably more contentious point of convergence between Hegel and Adorno is the idea that dialectical knowledge answers to the maladjustment between concepts and objects. In Adorno’s social criticism, concepts and objects are not ‘adjusted’ because the social arrangements of capitalism make experience possible but under conditions that prevent subjects from making sense of their own experiences beyond pregiven schemes (Adorno Reference Adorno and Zimmermann2017: 46; Adorno Reference Adorno2018: 16). Hegel’s shapes of consciousness provide models of the same contradiction. The structure of experience reflected in the shape of sense-certainty (and this also is true of the shapes of perception and understanding) is contradictory in that ordinary consciousness exercises its agency under a particular form (immediate, sensible, subjective) but is merely ‘certain’ of that agency as a pure given. In Hegel’s terms, it is incapable of reaching a ‘developed’ account of its object-relations and of its objective position in experience (PhG: ¶90). That incapacity is as objective and structural as the contradictory structure of experience that generates it.

Hegel has different ways of fleshing out that objective concept of contradiction. For example, the contradiction between what we ‘say’ and ‘mean’ in sense-certainty (PhG: ¶97) stems from the fact that our immediate concepts of objects claim to capture the particularity of the object in its universal significance but stumble upon an experiential diversity which they cannot account for. The concepts of sense-certainty are misaligned with their experiential content, in so far as ordinary consciousness fails by their means to give adequate expression to its singular experiences. Likewise, ordinary consciousness confronts a series of immediately significant but unrelated ‘thises’, ‘heres’, and ‘nows’. This makes its experience untenable because identical concepts are used to capture fundamentally different experiences. Finally, Hegel’s account recalls the explanation of contradictions typically put forward in a critical theory perspective. In both cases, experience presents a structural contradiction when its participants exercise their agency but without being able to identify, in the light of their experiences, the limitative context in which their agency can be realized. In Hegel, as in Adorno, experience is always structured and determinate but not necessarily ‘adjusted’ in a dialectical sense.

Can we go a step further and say that Hegel adjusts concepts and objects in a critical manner? Can we raise this question without committing to Hegel’s absolute idealism or to Adorno’s logic of disintegration? An exhaustive answer to those questions would arguably require a complete analysis of the transitions Hegel operates when moving from one shape of consciousness to another. A more economical way is to examine the general transformations that shapes of consciousness and their objects undergo and see how the meanings of ‘concept’ and ‘object’ have changed in that process.

Two transformations are particularly notable. The ‘thin’ conception of the object Hegel began with in sense-certainty has expanded into a ‘thick’ conception (Stern Reference Stern1990: 21–24) when we reach the shape ‘understanding’. The latter describes a structure of experience in which ordinary consciousness no longer perceives criteria of meaning as subjective tools but as objective conditions which highlight the relational context lacking in the disparate experiences of sense-certainty and perception. Ordinary consciousness has also been transformed in so far as it now acts as a self-conscious agent in a stronger sense: as a subject of understanding it now recognizes that its agency is as much constitutive (spontaneous and subjective) as constituted (determined and objective) by the structure of experience in which it applies. In Hegel’s terms, experience is now a ‘reflected object’ (PhG: ¶132) or an ‘objective essence’ whose components (subject and object) ‘are no longer separated from one another’ (PhG: ¶135).

Concepts (shapes of consciousness) and objects (structures of experience) have adjusted from sense-certainty to understanding in a specific way. Concepts have adjusted to their objects in so far as they now highlight (from the shape of understanding onwards) the structural elements underlying the seemingly isolated aspects of experience. Objects have adjusted to their concept in so far as the true constitution of the dialectical object has been revealed as a structure of experience in which human cognition is shaped by that to which it applies. Now it must be noted that Hegel has so far only argued that human agency is situated and has described that situatedness in its regime of immediacy. As Hegel puts it, the subject of understanding is conscious of its objective essence in some immediate sense but is not yet ‘consciousness as such’ (PhG: ¶132). The subject of understanding, that is, knows that it stands in a relation of immediate fit with the outer world and has some vision of the mediations constitutive of that relation.

This last point invites a broader remark about Hegel’s argument. At the stage of ‘understanding’, dialectical knowledge has adjusted concepts and object but only to reveal the objective a priori that constitutes any structure of experience in so far as it gives human agency (some form of) objective reality and affords it an immediate exercise. Moreover, that idea should not be misinterpreted against the background of another claim Hegel makes and which seems to contradict the argument just outlined. Hegel affirms that only ‘we’—his readers—are aware of the ‘completely developed object’ (PhG: ¶133) whereas it ‘presents itself to consciousness as something that immediately is’ (PhG: ¶133). According to Hegel we must ‘step into its place’ and involve ordinary consciousness in the full ‘reflection of the object’ (PhG: ¶80). Crucially, if this means imputing to ordinary consciousness a reflexivity it has not itself experienced, then Hegel contravenes to his own thesis that ‘consciousness […] justly demands that it be able to attain rational knowledge by way of the ordinary understanding’ (PhG: ¶¶13–14). Hegel’s point, as I take it, is that the ‘completely developed object’ of dialectical knowledge represents a structure of mediations which is not itself given in its immediate incarnation, at least not if we are to adopt the perspective of ordinary consciousness.

Hegel says as much when he argues that the subject of understanding allows or ‘lets go its own way’ (gewähren läßt) a conception of the ‘True’ that is not yet characteristic of its ‘being-for-self’ (PhG: ¶133/103). Thus, even if we might anticipate the fully developed conception of that truth, we would still have to do so from the perspective of ordinary consciousness. To put it differently, any conception we could form of a transparent (rational or true) relation between immediate life and its mediations must first consider the ‘immediation’ of mediations as it occurs in the immediate life of ordinary consciousness. That conclusion is in order, moreover, if we follow Hegel’s warning that life (or experience) in its immediacy is not a fully developed ‘actuality’ but ‘only a whole veiled in its simplicity’ (PhG: ¶13). The shape of understanding embodies that veil.

There is another way of showing that Hegel’s dialectical model is not designed to unilaterally transcend the ‘veil’ of immediacy. The subject of understanding enjoys a higher degree of reflexivity compared to sense-certainty and perception, but it still has an immediate grasp of the mediations constitutive of its position. In that sense, the latter is not different from the previous shapes of consciousness. Indeed, sense-certainty and perception expose some form of self-consciousness. The self-consciousness of sense-experience, in general, is as objective, immediate, and ultimately as limited, as the type of experience available to the subject of understanding. All of this is to say that the reflexive position of the subject of understanding, for all its objectivity, does not, as such, prove that experience is ‘adjusted’ in a rationalistic sense.

We can on this basis attribute the following thesis to Hegel: one cannot infer from the knowledge that an objective a priori—a set of mediations—situates subjects in relations of immediate fit with the outer world, that this objective a priori necessarily embodies the fully developed rationality lacking in its immediate incarnations. A dialectical model is not designed to make that claim, at least not without accomplishing a further decisive step, the significance of which is given by Hegel’s account of understanding. A rational or fully adjusted conception of the subject-object relation can be theoretically anticipated, but that conception will have to reflect the capacity of agents to overcome the position of understanding and its limits.Footnote ³ Experience is fully ‘adjusted’ when its conceptual structure allows subjects to overcome the immediate significance of mediations, i.e., the enabling conditions of their agency, and recognize these as genuinely constitutive of their selves. A dialectical model of knowledge envisions experience in the light of that capacity for overcoming, but it does not assume that experience is necessarily germane to it. A dialectical model asks whether the object, i.e., a given structure of experience, allows subjects to overcome the position of understanding, that is, within a structure of mediations that exists, first, in unmediated form. A dialectical model might tell us that overcoming the position of understanding is necessary for experience to be adjusted, and might even entertain a conception of that overcoming. But that conception does not stipulate that the conditions for adjustment are or can always be met in practice. A dialectical model will at most specify what would have to be observed about practical life for this adjustment to be considered real.

Let us take stock. We have good reasons to think that Hegel’s theory of experience applies the notion of ‘adjustment’ as part of a dialectical model that is prima facie neither identitarian nor ‘disintegrative’ in Adorno’s sense. This model includes (1) a description of the critical function of dialectical knowledge; (2) a conception of contradiction; (3) a definition of identity thinking:

1. (1) Dialectical knowledge discloses the existence of objective a priori which both structures experience in its immediacy and shapes subjects into self-reflexive agents, based on conditions at once enabling and limitative.

2. (2) Structures of experience fall into contradictions when they prevent individuals from recognizing the limitative aspects of these enabling conditions and from overcoming their position of understanding.

3. (3) Identity thinking is the misguided belief that the objective a priori of experience provides agents with all the conceptual and normative resources they need to overcome their position of understanding within the strictures of experience itself.

II. The identity problem of the Phenomenology

I have proposed a way of interpreting the adjustment thesis as part of a dialectical model neither identitarian nor disintegrative. That interpretation hinges on an idea contained in Hegel’s theory of experience, according to which a dialectical model will not reveal the rational structure of experience until it has demonstrated that this structure arises from subjects overcoming their position of understanding. Since Hegel’s theory of experience is fully grounded in the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, it does not in principle presuppose that overcoming. To that extent, it resists the charge of identity thinking. But does it resist that accusation when it culminates in the claim of ‘absolute knowing’ (PhG: ¶788)?

Much of what has been discussed so far seems to crumble under Hegel’s claim that ‘Science’ grounds a dialectical theory of experience all along the exposition of its formal, then social-historical, forms (PhG: ¶805). As Hegel notes in the Philosophy of Right, philosophical discourse deals with the ‘external’ realizations of reason in the realm of experience but to ‘find the inner impulse [of the rational] and detect its continued beat even within the external shapes’ (PR: 20–21). If Hegel’s theory of experience, as it seems, leads to identitarian conclusions when applied to social-historical knowledge, can we say that it does so from ‘non-identitarian’ premises? A more detailed analysis of the transition from the shape of perception to the shape of understanding in Hegel’s theory of experience is essential at this juncture, if only to examine whether Hegel constructs the shape of understanding in a way that justifies a ‘necessary advance’ to the claim of absolute knowing (PhG: ¶164).

A crucial aspect of the transition from perception to understanding is Hegel’s defence of an ‘unconditioned’ (PhG: ¶129) application of concepts against their ‘sensuous’ application in sense-certainty and perception (PhG: ¶129). In the latter shapes, the application of concepts was conditioned by the sensible given which ordinary consciousness assumed to be immediately identical to concepts. The subject of understanding discards that assumption, but only partly. Indeed, the subject now relates to empirical objects as conceptual relations, and thus no longer conditions concept-use to sensible content, but the ‘unconditionedness’ in question retains the aspect of externality involved in perceptual experience. The reflexive gain achieved in the position of understanding is shaped by our ‘perceptual’ access to it. Hegel makes this clear by arguing that the perceptual object is apprehended as a singular ‘one’ and a ‘many’ endowed with different properties (PhG: ¶113) and that, in perceptual experience, ‘the unity of the Thing is preserved [erhalten] while at the same time the otherness [Anderssein] is preserved outside [außer] of the Thing as well as outside of consciousness’ (PhG: ¶123/96). To paraphrase Hegel: consciousness navigates the contradiction between the unity and plurality of its object by externalizing the object’s otherness outside the scope of its perceptual experience.

That Hegel sees this externalization process as a ‘preserving’ and not as some unconscious denial of the object’s ‘otherness’ as such has three important consequences. The first is that the transition from perception to understanding carries with it, i.e., preserves, the sense of otherness typical of perceptual experience. The second is that the transition preserves some aspect of the object’s true otherness even though the latter is measured against an identity criterion or what Hegel calls an ‘indifferent difference’:

In this somewhat cryptic passage, Hegel argues that ‘oneness’ and ‘indifferent difference’ are both the same and ‘different’ within the perceptual object. ‘Difference’ is to be understood in a specific way here. Unity and plurality are ‘different’ because they do not communicate within a single object but within several objects, each of which has seen its otherness falling ‘outside itself’. The separation between ‘oneness’ and ‘plurality’ in one object is what different objects have in common, and this, according to a conceptual consciousness which can now relate to any object, irrespective of its sensible givenness, within the medium of an ‘indifferent identity’.

The third and perhaps most important lesson to be derived from these remarks is that Hegel can neither reduce the understanding shape to its identitarian constitution, nor transcend the latter in his defence of the ‘unconditionedness’ of concepts. First of all, any defence of the unconditioned character of concepts must acknowledge that their power of abstraction takes roots in a sensible mode of reflexivity. That these roots cannot and should not be left behind is clear if we see that a problematic kind of ‘identity’ is transferred from perception to the understanding and this transfer requires an adequate form of reflexivity. This point also shows that Hegel does not defend the unconditioned character of concepts without problematizing the ‘identitarian’ conception of identity with which we move conceptually within the realm of experience. In fact, there is no such thing as a problem of concept-object identity per se in Hegel’s account, for only the ‘indifferent identity’ or ‘external difference’ constitutes an identitarian mode of identity.

That Hegel neither overlooks the identitarian component constitutive of conceptual thought, nor transcends it in his defence of the lack of conditions of concepts is illustrated by his claim that the ‘becoming self-identical’ of the dialectical object is equally ‘a self-sundering’ (ein Entzweien) (PhG: ¶162/129). There would be no ‘sundering’ moment within the adjustment of the object to its ‘inner difference’ if the identitarian aspect was entirely left behind, and the object’s inner difference immediately accessible to us. Hegel’s theory of experience points in the opposite direction: the object’s self-difference is the result and not the premise of a process whereby its identitarian constitution is critically reflected upon.

Difficulties arise when we try to situate Hegel’s critique of identity thinking, and his defence of unconditioned concepts, within his broader view that dialectical knowledge takes an absolute or infinite standpoint on its object, contrary to sensuous or conditioned models of knowledge (PhG: ¶163). Quite surprisingly Hegel makes no reference to ordinary consciousness and its place in the ‘world of appearance’ (PhG: ¶147) to substantiate his view. In fact, one would expect Hegel to put forward the conception of the subject-object relation which validates the metaphysics underpinning his dialectic, especially since his metaphysics of difference derives from a critical conception of the subject of understanding. All the more so since Hegel himself tells us that sensuous models of knowledge overlook, and thus replay, the illusions of sense-experience. Clearly, sensuous models do not get our situation of the realm of appearance right, but dialectical models do. But why and how?

Short of an explanation as to how a dialectical model adequately reflects (within its metaphysical categories) the position of ordinary consciousness in the realm of experience, Hegel’s whole theory of experience appears to rely on the unproven assumption that the object of dialectical knowledge allows transitioning from the finite realm of experience to the philosophical standpoint of the absolute. Unchallenged, that assumption would mean that philosophical discourse always transcends the finite standpoint of ordinary consciousness. Thus, the same dialectical model which makes the idea of overcoming the position of understanding by subjects a condition for the rationality of experience, would fulfil that condition by purely theoretical means disconnected from any experiential truth. A scenario of that sort brings us back to the definition of identity thinking outlined above (see Section I): an identitarian discourse or theory vindicates the rationality of its concepts and the rationality of its objects because it assumes that the realm of experience is the place where subjects can always overcome their position of understanding and its limits.

This brings us to a crucial juncture of the identity issue. The same dialectical model that critically conceives of experience by adopting the perspective of ordinary consciousness ends up substituting for that perspective by attributing to experience a rationality it has not demonstrated. To make matters even more complex, the contradiction in question concerns less the conclusion of a potentially flawed argument in Hegel than it does the absence of an argument altogether, which places his theory of experience—and arguably the Phenomenology as a whole—between two incompossible interpretations: one identitarian and one critical. Choosing between these two approaches depends on how we fill this gap, that is, how we think the two perspectives of Hegel’s dialectic should be articulated.

A first option in this regard is to follow Hegel’s transcendence claim all the way down the identitarian route and argue that a dialectical model is designed to diagnose the finite realizations of human agency and reason based on conceptions of agency and rationality that do not share the same limitations as those diagnosed in practice. The alternative reading consists in arguing that Hegel does not substantiate the transcendence argument and, at any rate, should not do so in an identitarian manner, because his own theory of experience forbids vindicating ‘infinite’ concepts of reason or agency with no demonstrated links with their objects. This line of interpretation is critical or negative, as it focuses on diagnosing the finite realizations of human reason and agency whilst refraining from determining their ‘adjusted’ forms a priori.

That Hegel fails to explain his transcendence argument from the perspective of ordinary consciousness adopted in his own theory of experience does not mean that the idea of transcendence must be accepted or rejected outright. The identitarian interpretation itself allows for a total or limited conception of transcendence: transcendence is total if we assume that experience always allows agents to overcome their position of understanding, and it is partial if that overcoming is retained as possible but on determinate conditions otherwise determinable by theoretical insights. Likewise, the critical interpretation allows for a total or partial rejection of the transcendence claim. Abandoning the transcendence dimension is justified if the conditions for overcoming the position of understanding are not met in experience and if the whole idea of overcoming has lost all experiential ground. A critical dialectic along those lines leads to an ‘austere’ form of negativism (Finlayson Reference Finlayson2014: 17) from a both epistemic and substantive point of view (Freyenhagen Reference Freyenhagen2013: 4–5) as social diagnoses yield no remedies whatsoever. In contrast, if the practical conditions for an overcoming could be met but not anticipated given the ‘finite’ state of our social arrangements, then our dialectical model will only be weakly negative, and its negativism ‘meta-ethical’ (Freyenhagen Reference Freyenhagen2013: 10). On this view, historical facts compel us to remain normatively abstinent as regards the direction of social transformation, not to conclude that social transformation is either always possible or impossible given the current states of affairs.

From this, one general lesson can be drawn for the identity problem of the Phenomenology. Among the four models of dialectic outlined above, only the weakly negative model can justify the claim that Hegel’s dialectic begins on non-identitarian premises and leads to identitarian conclusions. This is because a weak negativism embodies the adjustment thesis better than the other three models. The strong identitarian model applies the notion of adjustment in a way that makes experience appear as necessarily driven by processes of rationalization. And it can only do so by imputing to agents the capacity to overcome their position of understanding (Lukács Reference Lukács1971: 18–19). The same procedure applies in the weak variant but with a twist: here, visions of the rational or moral potential of social life, its ‘normative surplus’ (Repa Reference Repa2023) are also secured, but by means of categories whose link to practice can be merely validated by theoretical assumptions.

In contrast, a weak negativism neither imputes to agents the capacity to overcome the limits imposed on their agency nor entertains purely theoretical visions of what this overcoming looks like. It also avoids the main danger of an austere negativism, namely, its tendency to turn a conjectural diagnosis into an ontological verdict, thereby ratifying in theory what it denounces about social life (Baumann Reference Baumann, Bonefield and O’Kane2022: 66). A weak negativism succeeds, in fact, where the other three models fail. To the dialectical question originally raised by Hegel—i.e., Do our categories reflect structures of experience in which subjects can or do overcome the limits of their position of understanding?—a weak negativism can offer positive or negative answers without committing to definitive conclusions. It is easy to see why the identitarian models fail here. By assuming rather than demonstrating that the finite standpoint of ordinary consciousness merges with the absolute standpoint of philosophical discourse, identitarian models anticipate a feature of the object—i.e., its rational structure—which ought to be established as a discovery and not the premise of dialectical inquiry. The failure of austere negativism is different, and to understand why we need to turn to the details of Adorno’s critique of Hegel.

III. Revisiting Adorno’s critique of Hegel

Before assessing whether Adorno’s negative dialectic serves as a credible alternative to Hegel’s identitarian model, we need to examine whether Adorno accurately identifies the identitarian root of Hegel’s thought. The identitarian root, as we have seen, lies in Hegel’s assumption that the object of dialectical knowledge justifies identifying the finite standpoint of ordinary consciousness with the infinite standpoint of philosophical discourse. The result is a dialectical model that rationalizes its object by aligning the reflexivity of ordinary consciousness with the reflexivity of theoretical discourse without verifying that this connection obtains in practice for ordinary consciousness itself. Consider in that sense Adorno’s statement in his Three Studies on Hegel:

Contrary to what Adorno suggests, Hegel does not ‘dissolve the given’ in his theory of experience. Hegel rejects the misguided conception of the given held by subjects ensnared in a sensuous application of concepts. Perhaps, the ‘dissolution’ mentioned by Adorno refers to Hegel’s claim that concepts must be ‘unconditioned’ to be determinative. Yet, we have seen that Hegel does not defend the unconditioned character of concepts without problematizing their ‘external’ mode of action, the goal being to ‘eliminate the sensuous idea of fixing differences in a different sustaining element’ (PhG: ¶160). Crucially, the idea Hegel seeks to ‘dissolve’ is but the identitarian, i.e., ‘external’ or ‘indifferent’, mode of thinking rooted in sense experience, and which finds a way up into our theoretical pursuits. Contrary to what Adorno writes, Hegel does not seek to eliminate ‘every’ particle of difference but only the ‘indifferent difference’ of external thinking which cuts us off from the object.

Even more problematic in the above passage is the assertion that an ‘infinite subject’ dissolves the given. The Phenomenology only describes philosophical consciousness as infinite, not ordinary consciousness. Interestingly, it could be that Adorno, in fact, conflates those two standpoints, either intentionally to highlight an illicit aspect of Hegel’s argument, or by mistake thereby replicating Hegel’s own. In either case, that conflation makes Adorno’s critique of Hegel vulnerable on several fronts. First, the subject of Hegel’s theory of experience does not dissolve the empirical given as such but its misguided conception of the given. Second, even if Adorno were to think of the ‘dissolution’ of the given as a feature of Hegel’s theoretical approach—and not as a description of a feature of experience—he would still have to explain why that sense of dissolution is problematic. A task Adorno cannot accomplish by conflating the two standpoints of dialectical knowledge under the same notion of ‘subject’.

An objection could be that the experiential and the theoretical levels are always related in a dialectical model, and thus that it makes little difference whether we think of the dissolution problem from either of the two levels—if the dissolution occurs at one level, then it does at the other. However, the issue remains that a critique of Hegel’s identitarian thought has very little purchase if it fails to locate the identitarian impulse in the right place and contrast it with the principles it violates. By failing to hold onto the distinction between the two standpoints of Hegel’s dialectic, in fact, Adorno overlooks the basic arguments he needs to do just that, i.e., locate the source of identity-thinking, redeem the principles it violates and build an alternative, critical dialectic. To begin with, any criticism of Hegel’s thought must contrast its identitarian claims with Hegel’s own model of a rational experience where the self-reflexive, critical and transformative shift of perspective which ordinary consciousness undergoes takes centre stage. Secondly, Adorno argues that ‘to think is to identify’ (ND: 11), but so does Hegel: to think is always to begin thinking in an ‘external’ mode. Not only that, but Hegel also shows something Adorno never does, namely, that identity thinking is neither a purely conceptual vice nor a natural reflex determined by sense-experience, but a result of their continuous mediation. Indeed, the identitarian belief that an object’s immediate appearances exhaust its conceptual determinacy owes as much to a conceptually mediated approach to the object as to our sensuous receptivity towards the object’s ‘unified’ givenness. One could argue here that reducing object to concept is an epistemic vice rooted in the realm of sensibility and that ‘identity-thinking’ is but one primordial modality of their reciprocal mediation.

This line of reasoning highlights another crucial dimension of Hegel’s theory of experience. There are good reasons to think that for Hegel, too, we need concepts to respond to the fact that any given object invites but resists immediate assignation of meanings. Moreover, in a Hegelian framework, resisting the identitarian impulse by conceptual means does not necessarily mean disregarding the non-conceptual nature of the given (ND: 172) but just what Adorno himself implies when he writes that ‘the determinable flaw in every concept makes it necessary to cite others’ (ND: 53). In that spirit, Hegel’s critique of identity thinking aligns with Adorno’s idea that ‘the concept does not exhaust the thing conceived’ (ND: 5). More generally, even if we believe, like Adorno, that Hegel’s philosophical discourse exhausts its object(s)—i.e., ‘Hegelian subject-object is subject’—what we cannot attribute to Hegel is an identitarian conception of experience. On the contrary, any critique of the identitarian dimension of Hegel’s philosophy must vindicate the non-identitarian conception of experience on which it rests.

If there are good reasons to contrast Hegel’s non-identitarian conception of experience with the identitarian model of philosophy which frames it, then we should also be in a good position to re-consider what is wrong with an identitarian dialectic beyond the terms set by Adorno. To the idea that an identitarian dialectic unduly rationalizes its object we have to add that an identitarian model of knowledge is, at bottom, incapable to situate human agency within the ‘realm of appearance’ without prejudging the ways in which experience is or can be rational for subjects themselves. For instance, the identitarian impulse does not solely consist in turning a blind eye to the objective reality of social contradictions but in imposing on agents conceptions of rationality and human agency which they should regard as valuable on their own terms. Either those conceptions will not help agents overcome their position of understanding (if those conceptions lack a connection to practice) or they will simply pre-determine the ways in which that overcoming can take place. An identitarian dialectic rationalizes its theoretical objects, but even more importantly it hijacks the capacity of subjects to express and fulfil their emancipatory interest in ways that only they should recognize as binding.

If we go back to the Phenomenology, we see the identitarian fallacy emerging every time Hegel attempts to align the practical objectivation of consciousness with the logical movement of the dialectical exposition—i.e., the two standpoints of dialectical knowledge—without establishing whether that alignment is justified in practice. Yet, because Hegel settles the adjustment issue in the ‘Consciousness’ chapter, the rest of the Phenomenology can seamlessly run its course by developing more and more complex forms of the same rationalist assumption about its object, until the crowning of Spirit and Reason in absolute knowing. A striking example is Hegel’s claim that the ‘Master-Slave’ relation embodies Spirit’s self-realization through ‘Recognition’. The idea that a structurally asymmetrical relationship could encapsulate the ‘duplication’ of a ‘spiritual unity’ characteristic of an ‘infinite’ self-consciousness (PhG: ¶178) can only hold water within a framework which has already resolved the issue as to whether Spirit’s objective constitution is rational from the perspective of ordinary consciousness.

The concept of ‘ethical substance’ (Sittlichkeit) testifies to the same fallacy. Hegel recognizes the existence of a ‘limited ethical substance’ in social life which reflects the immediate authority of laws, norms and customs for historical subjects (PhG: ¶354). Yet, he believes that our ethical experience must necessarily ‘press forward’ to a more comprehensive form of ethical substance because the individual allegedly knows the customs and the laws of his nation ‘not only as his universal objective thinghood, but equally knows himself in them or knows them as particularized in his own individuality, and in each life of his fellow citizens’ (PhG: ¶351). That the finite realizations of Spirit must necessarily progress towards their ideal form through the integrative power of a Sittlichkeit is not just a theoretically optimist hypothesis. It is a thesis whose affirmative power relies entirely on the assumption that the subjects who acknowledge the normative authority of a Sittlichkeit will de facto deem its norms adjusted to their first-person experience of the social world. Only a theoretical postulate can seal this alignment between the individual and society a priori.

If we follow Hegel’s critique of understanding all the way down, then a question social theory must always ask is whether the normative structures of social life allow for their moral and epistemic validation by subjects (Honneth Reference Honneth2023: 41–44). A social theory might acknowledge that social norms regulate some kind of fit between first-person experiences and the objective conditions enabling human agency. But what it cannot assume is that social norms are a priori adjusted to any possible experience or that experience never gives subjects reasons to move beyond their position of understanding and challenge socially prevalent forms of adjustment. After all, social norms derive their authority not only from the uses they make possible but from the capacity of agents to make their experiences count as dignified components of the socially objective reality that these norms purport to shape. If agents have to endorse the socially given interpretive schemes for the process of epistemic authorization to take place, then the social game is anything but rational—it is rigged. A social theory that seeks to avoid the identitarian trap and its counterpart, social conformism, must always keep this question in focus: Does the incarnation of an ethical substance guarantee that subjects will recognize in their experiences the grounds of the ethical substance’s highest ideals?

IV. A post-Hegelianism without Hegel?

Adorno conceptualizes his dialectical model as a process of concept-object adjustment, which he traces back to Hegel. We have seen that the adjustment thesis gives rise to two interpretations in Hegel’s case: affirmative and negative, each with strong and weak variants. Which of the two versions of the negative model should we attribute to Adorno? And does it offer a convincing alternative to an identitarian model of dialectic?

Adorno’s bleak assessments of capitalist societies undoubtedly align with the austere version of the negative model alluded to above. Adorno argues that capitalist societies are pervaded by an ‘instrumental reason’ which subordinates every aspect of social life to the rationality of exchange, transforming social interactions into asymmetrical power relations (Horkheimer and Adorno Reference Horkheimer, Adorno and Noerr2002: 8). A heteronomous system of norms and laws replaces Hegel’s Sittlichkeit with a self-perpetuating ‘Spirit’ that compels agents to abide by the rules of an implacable ‘social functionalism’ (ND: 280). In the ‘ultracondensed web of a universally socialized society’ (ND: 267) the threat of social exclusion and a skewed need for social stability reduce to silence those ‘unreduced’ or ‘non-identical’ experiences which afford glimpses of a different life but at the price of a misalignment with the normative expectations of society (Adorno Reference Adorno2001: 24, 397). In those dire conditions, our adverse experiences might give voice to some form of emancipatory interest. But the latter will hardly find a home in the ‘total functional context’ of society (ND: 343).

Given the bleakness of his diagnoses, Adorno’s assertion that we may not know what the absolute good is but are well aware of what the inhuman entails is striking (Adorno Reference Adorno2000: 175). In a social context where language, as Adorno explains, has become a reified system of signs disconnected from experience and focused on communicating what is already known (ND: 41), it is hard to fathom how subjects could begin to address the root causes of their suffering beyond the interpretive frameworks imposed by society. As Adorno states, quoting Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, ‘Woe speaks: “go”’ (ND: 203). Yet, this vital imperative is unlikely to resonate in a social theory that severs all connection between the corporeal source of our emancipatory interest and the social institutions which provide that interest with a conceptual and normative context. Adverse experiences do possess a cognitive power according to Adorno (ND: 18) because the psychological and somatic injuries they cause can activate our self-preservation instinct, establishing a rational basis for morally contesting the status quo (Adorno Reference Adorno2000: 146). But Adorno’s social diagnoses are so bleak that they seem to rule out the possibility of thematizing the social truth of our adverse experiences, for instance, when we point to discrepancies between social ideals and their finite realizations. After all, the adverse experiences Adorno has in mind occur in a social context of which subjects are conscious, especially when they bear the weight of its contradictions. Where, if at all, can an empirically motivated knowledge of those contradictions be found within a total ‘context of delusion’ (Verblendungsammenhang) (ND: 406)?

Interestingly, the perceived bleakness of Adorno’s social theory may be less a product of inflated pessimism than the outcome of a misapplication of the adjustment thesis about dialectical knowledge. Adorno’s critique of Hegel offers an important lesson in this regard. Had Adorno identified the real sources of Hegel’s identitarian misgivings—the conflation of dialectical standpoints and the theoretical hijacking of our emancipatory interest—he might have seen in the social formations of Western capitalism more than a Hegelian Spirit ‘ironically borne out in practice’ (ND: 23). To be sure, Adorno might be right to detect in the social fabric of capitalism the same urge to eliminate every particle of difference that he identifies in Hegel’s thought. After all, social life and theoretical discourses can be shaped by common prejudices. One of them is the idea that the existing conditions enabling human agency, and the idea of a rational organization of society, exhaust the range of experiences that subjects can recognize as fulfilling their sense of agency and their conception of social ideals. For all that, an ‘ontology of the false state of things’ is not the only way of rejecting the oppressive nature and the conformism inherent in an identitarian dialectic, nor the only way of diagnosing the states of affairs that reflect it.

A weak model of negativism can accomplish both of these tasks without denying its addressees the capacity to give some life to their emancipatory interest within a dysfunctional society. This is because a weak negativism applies the adjustment thesis about dialectical knowledge without ratifying the finite achievements of human agency or social reason, yet without abandoning the notion of an indissoluble, reflexive link between the existence of social ideals (however flawed) and first-person experiences. By neglecting that link, an austere negativism loses sight of its addressee’s emancipatory interest and ends up making the same, though inverse, mistake as Hegel. An absolute idealism assumes that the finite realizations of reason and human agency will eventually lead to their epistemic and moral validation by subjects. An austere negativism makes the inverse assumption by describing a social organization where such validation would lack any conceptual and normative basis. The upshot is a vision of society where social norms not only block any attempt to overcome their constraining power but also strip that quest of the relevance it can have for agents.

A weak negativism avoids these mistakes by staying true to a core intuition of dialectical thought: dialectical knowledge can extract tangible expressions of our emancipatory interests from social life and use them as foundations for social criticism, yet without confining these expressions to their current historical context or predicting the possibility or impossibility of their future realizations. A weak negativism can thus answer ‘no’ to the question of whether overcoming the position of understanding is a concrete possibility within a given social context. Yet, it does not have to renounce the idea that overcoming that position is an imperative through which agents themselves maintain a reflexive relationship to their experience despite, and to some extent, by virtue of its adversity. Likewise, a social diagnosis does not lose its critical edge by depicting social life as a place where adverse experiences generate, and co-exist, alongside emancipatory interests, even if the social context is not hospitable to their realization. A weak negativism only stresses the relevance of these interests for agents, and their normative force, in the process of identifying what blocks them.

Furthermore, an austere negativism proceeds erroneously by asserting that the reduction of experience to socially imposed norms will necessarily relegate our emancipatory interest to ‘non-socialized’ spheres of experience, such as philosophical reflection (ND: 13), aesthetic experience (O’Connor Reference O’Connor2013: 150) and the pre-conceptual experience of suffering (ND: 203). This error stems from a misunderstanding of the adjustment thesis and a failure to articulate the two perspectives of a dialectical theory of experience. An austere negativism errs twice by making the knowledge of social adversity an exclusive domain of theoretical reflexion and by denying its addressees the capacity to express their emancipatory interest within the texture of social life. A weak negativism succeeds precisely where an austere negativism fails. It neither abandons the emancipatory interest of its addressees, nor prejudges its possible expressions: it establishes the force field where its expressions emerge along with their obstacles.