Adorno´s Misinterpretation of Absolute Idealism

FERREIRO, HÉCTOR

Das Fortleben der Klassischen Deutschen Philosophie in der Kritischen Theorie

Königshausen & Neumann

Lugar: Würzburg; Año: 2023; p. 17 - 29

Adorno´s critique of absolute idealism is beset with considerable hermeneutical weaknesses. Adorno does not fail to notice, however, that Hegel addressed and tried to solve many of the open questions of transcendental idealism. For example, Adorno recognizes that Hegel criticized Kant and Fichte precisely because both endorsed an in the last analysis formal conception of subjectivity. Hegel unceasingly stressed instead the importance of the intrinsic unity between subject and object. Further, Adorno acknowledges that Hegel rejected the pure identity of the I as the starting point of the System and claimed that the different conceptions of reality developed by the human mind are based on the successive contradictions of the objects with their own concepts ?for Adorno this is the reason why Hegel could expound his philosophy starting from the thoughts of the subject in the Phenomenology of Spirit and from the determinations of the object in the Science of Logic. Adorno accepts, finally, that, although Hegel characterizes subjectivity as absolute, in his philosophy objectivity plays a decisive role. Adorno explicitly recognizes that the attempt to develop dialectics from both sides, that is, from the subject and from the object, is a step forward of Hegel with respect to the previous idealists. With Hegel, states Adorno, idealism reaches its maximum strength and its highest elevation. But despite having acknowledged the advantages of Hegel´s approach, Adorno still maintains, however, that absolute idealism relies, in the last analysis, on the radicalization of transcendental idealism, as a further expansion of its basic principle. Although Hegel disagreed with transcendental idealism, he did not abandon, according to Adorno, its main project of deriving all determinacy from subjective thought; he did not contest thus the pre-eminence of the subject. Even though Adorno recognizes the value of many of the solutions that Hegel offers for solving the theoretical tensions inside transcendental idealism, he thinks that those solutions do not really resolve these tensions ?in Adorno´s eyes they can simply not be solved within the idealistic paradigm. It is not unfair to say, however, that in practice Adorno misunderstands Hegel´s absolute idealism as a heterodox attempt to further develop in a divergent way Fichte´s philosophical program (especially as it is presented in the Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre). Adorno´s alleged ?immanent? critique of absolute idealism rests indeed on a strongly debatable interpretation of Hegel´s approach to precisely solve those problematic claims of Kant´s and Fichte´s variants of idealism that Adorno himself deems untenable.