Table Of ContentONTOLOGY AND DIALECTICS
ONTOLOGY AND
DIALECTICS
1960/61
Theodor W. Adorno
Edited by Rolf Tiedemann
Translated by Nicholas Walker
polity
First published in German as Ontologie und Dialektik (1960/61), © Suhrkamp Verlag,
Frankfurt am Main, 2002
This English edition © Polity Press, 2019
The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International –
Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a
joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the
collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969, author.
Title: Ontology and dialectics : 1960/61 / Theodor W. Adorno.
Other titles: Ontologie und Dialektik, 1960-61. English
Description: English edition. | Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA, USA : Polity Press,
[2018] | Originally published: Ontologie und Dialektik, 1960-61. Frankfurt am
Main : Suhrkamp, 2002. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018010019 (print) | LCCN 2018021553 (ebook) | ISBN
9780745694900 (Epub) | ISBN 9780745693125 | ISBN 9780745679464 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Ontology. | Dialectic.
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CONTENTS
Editor’s Foreword xi
Lecture 1: ‘what being really is’ 1
Against the philosophy of standpoints and philosophical
world-views; the meaning of rigour in philosophy and the
positive sciences • The plan of these lectures; immanent
critique • ‘What being really is’; ontology as structural
interconnection • The doctrine of being contra idealism and
methodology • The concept of meaning; the being of beings;
the meaning of being • Being and essence • Categorial
intuition versus abstraction
Lecture 2: on ontological difference 10
The structure of being and being itself; regional ontologies
and fundamental ontology • On the problem of ontological
difference (I) • Ontic questions and ontological questions •
Questions concerning the meaning of being • Question of
origin as petitio principii • Circular reasoning (I) • Critique
of origins • Circular reasoning (II) • Fusion of mysticism
and the claim to rationality • Historical dimension
of ‘the question of being’
Lecture 3: history of the concept of being 21
Circular reasoning (III) • The unreflected ‘question of
being’ • Being in the pre-Socratics, in Plato and
vi contents
Aristotle • Experience of being is not ‘prior’; being as
product of abstraction • Being and thought in Parmenides;
abstraction and vital powers not distinguished for archaic
thought; the most ancient not the truest • Philosophy and
the particular sciences; dialectic of enlightenment; residual
character of being • Two kinds of truth
Lecture 4: being and language (I) 32
Prehistory of the new ontologies: Franz Brentano; ontology
as counter-Enlightenment • A double front against realism
and conceptualism • Fundamental ontology as hermeneutics;
being and language; nominalist critique of language •
Analysis of the concept of being; positivism and language •
Conceptuality as domination of nature; inadequacy of
concept and thing; thing in itself and being • Functional
understanding of concepts; double sense of being as concept
and anti-concept
Lecture 5: being and language (II) 42
Ambiguity of the concept of being (I) • Arbitrariness in
concept formation; Kant versus Spinoza • Ambiguity of the
concept of being (II) • Ambiguity of the concept of being
(III) • Subjectivity as constitutive for ontology • Substantial
character of language; borrowing from theology • On the
analysis of language; obligations regarding linguistic
form • The wavering character of being
Lecture 6: separating being and beings 52
Examples from antiquity; on Aristotle’s terminology; the
priority of the tode ti • Genesis and validity; Heidegger’s
being as third possibility; on Heidegger’s concept of origin •
Archaic dimension of Heidegger’s ontology; against genetic
explanation; phenomenology and history • Phenomenological
method; red and redness; the inference to being-in-itself in
Scheler and Heidegger • Husserl’s return to transcendentalism
Lecture 7: mind in relation to beings 63
‘Priority’ as petitio principii • Critique of the possibility
of ontology; on Cartesian dualism • Phenomenological
reduction of the subject; objectivity of the second level;
contents vii
shutting out beings • Philosophical compulsion for
cleanliness • Allergy towards beings; an aura borrowed
from theology; the story of Snow White • Ontology as
counterpart to nominalism and positivism
Lecture 8: ontologizing the ontic (I) 73
The subject–object division not permanent; fundamental
ontology and the loss of tradition; the ‘unintelligibility’ of
Heidegger • Oblivion of the numinous; material stuff and
abstraction in the pre-Socratics • Ontology or dialectics;
‘being’ as ‘the wholly other’ • Critique as differentiation;
original non-differentiation; Heidegger’s
anti-intellectualism • Against postponement • Heidegger’s
trick: ontologizing the ontic
Lecture 9: ontologizing the ontic (II) 84
Conceptualizing the non-conceptual; philosophy of being
and idealism, Heidegger and Hegel • Ontologizing
existence • Spurious appeal of the new; fascination through
ignorance • Subreption of the nominalized verb ‘being’ •
Dasein as being and a being • ‘Be who you are!’ • Eidetic
science and ontology • Subjectivity as the site of being
Lecture 10: ontological need 95
Heidegger and Kant; Kant’s ultimate intention •
Heidegger’s thought as the site of being; a diminished
concept of subject: absence of labour and
spontaneity • Initial observations on the ontological
need • A sociological interjection • The ‘elevated tone’;
Heidegger’s language and Adorno’s great-grandfather;
fundamental ontology as index of a lack
Lecture 11: the abdication of philosophy 106
On the sociology of the ontological need • Philosophy and
society; distracting effect of Marxism; the relevance of
morality • Philosophy and the natural sciences; philosophy
and art • Kant’s abdication before God, freedom and
immortality • The ‘resurrection of metaphysics’; impotence
of philosophy in the face of the essential • Schelling,
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche
viii contents
Lecture 12: the relation to kierkegaard 118
Science versus philosophy; accepted heresies • An
anti-academic academy • Licensed audacity • Relation to
Kierkegaard • ‘Subjectivity is truth’ • History of the concept
of ontology
Lecture 13: critique of subjectivism 130
The anti-subjectivism of modern ontology • The problem
of relativism (I); how questions vanish • The problem of
relativism (II); ‘to the things themselves’ • Transcendental
subjectivism and egoity • The acosmism of post-Kantian
idealism; the unreason of the world • The crisis of
subjectivity and the development of cosmology • Critique
of the domination of nature; fundamental ontology and
dialectical materialism; changes in the concept of reason
Lecture 14: hypostasizing the question 141
The crucial role of subjectivity in Heidegger’s early thought;
Heidegger and Lukács • Need and truth; question and
answer • The philosophical structure of the question;
hypostasis of the question in Heidegger • The question as
surrogate answer; the mechanism of subreption • The
ideology of ‘man’
Lecture 15: time, being, meaning 151
‘Man’, ‘tradition’, ‘life’: indices of loss • Philosophy of
existence and philosophy of life • Labour and the
consciousness of time; phenomenology of ‘wisdom’; loss
of historical continuity, America • Antiques business and
abstract time; ontologizing the concept of substance • Time
and being as complementary concepts; disenchantment of the
world and the creation of meaning • Raiding poetry
Lecture 16: ontology and society 162
Heidegger’s archaic language; feigned origins; primordial
history and petit bourgeois mentality • Social
presuppositions of ontology • Ontology as philosophical
neo-classicism • Impossibility of ontology today •
Heidegger’s strategy; sympathy with barbarism •
Phenomenological caprice • ‘Project’
