On Adorno's Rejection of Identity in Negative Dialectics

Abstract

Adorno hoped to see the irrational and real social reality beneath the veil through the rational world. He paid close attention to the reification phenomenon that binds people and the desolation of human beings as subjects. He proposed constructing a constellation-style communication model to guide human beings to awaken themselves, pursue active reconciliation, respect the value of life as subjects and individual differences, so as to achieve harmony where differences and struggles exist but there is no hierarchy or harm. However, the harmonious state of the constellation-style communication model is not operable in real life, and even contradicts the logic of collapse and the principle of non-identity it advocates. The negative dialectics constructed by Adorno seems to aim to reveal the potential metaphysical attributes of dialectics, but in the end, negative dialectics still collapsed on itself. Nevertheless, this does not mean that negative dialectics is meaningless. He inherited Marxist dialectics to criticize the metaphysical thinking mode of Hegel and traditional dialectics. At the same time, although negative dialectics moved towards metaphysics in its negation, the process of this analysis and criticism also brilliantly presented the essential characteristics of criticism and revolution of Marxist dialectics.