Identity and Negativity Can Adornos Negative Dialectics save Hegels Speculative Dialectics in the Age of Deconstruction?

Kim, Seong Woo

For Adorno, identity means that a concept corresponds to the matter repressed in it. This identity of a concept and its object signifies subjection to dominant values. He poses the problem of the superiority of subject and the one of the absolute identity for Hegels idealist dialectics. The problem of identity is the biggest in that the question of the superiority of subject can be finally reduced to it because the activity of thought is a function to unify. Why does he criticize the identity? Because it dose not leave over any bit of non-identity. Hegelian dialectics does not bear the minimal trace of non-identity in that the starting point of his logic is not concrete beings but the abstract Being. In this respect, Hegelian dialectics does not free itself from its worship of subject because it is tinted with idealistic biases. Therefore, the critique of identity results in the liberation of subject. This liberation of subject co-occurs with the realization of a society without exploitation of labor. Adorno wants to take not Being but beings or something as the point of departure for his dialectics in order to overcome transcendental philosophy that empathizes the egocentered absolute form. His dialectics differs from Hegelian one in that the former does not aim for the identity in the difference between every object and its concept. It has doubts about the identity, if anything. The logic of true dialectics is one of disassembly. But is the more effective revolutionary ontology in the age of deconstruction not Adornos negative dialectics looking for disassembly but Hegelian one aiming at the concrete universal.

Subject Sphere: Ontology, Logic Key Words: Adorno, Hegel, Heidegger, Negative Dialectics, Speculative Dialectics