Status Updates From Negative Dialectics

"Dialectics, according to its literal meaning language as the organ of thought, would be the attempt to critically rescue the rhetorical moment: to have the thing and the expression approach one another almost to the point of non-differentiability."

You cannot have contradiction without there first being a force creating unity; this force stimulates the dialectic. Identity is not identical with itself, as the contradiction at the bottom of putting things together is that the things being put together at first aren't together. The attempt to close the contradiction looks like identity. But, covertly, identity is always dialectic.

This is a dark and weighty text, even by Adorno standards, and it’s going to take some time to sort through and wrap my head around. Challenge accepted. His ideas are as complex as they are rewarding to absorb, and it takes a brave philosopher to engage in a dialectic of his own philosophical school.