The mataphysics of Adorno?

I have already written about the similarity of two philosophical directions that are usually portrayed as not only distinct but opposite: the critical theory of the Frankfurt school and Heidegger's resurrection of metaphysics. My intent is not to show that these two systems actually are one and the same, but to highlight the differences by showing how the systems follow diverging trajectories from the same starting points. In a previous post I have already quoted from Adorno's reply to Popper that sparked of the so-called positivism debate, but there is another part in Adorno's speech that is quite interesting, the part where he argues that theory can not be reduced to a set of testable hypotheses:

Facts are not the ultimate point in society, at which cognizance can find a foothold, because cognizance itself is mediated by society. Not all theorems are hypotheses; theory is the telos, not a tool of sociology.

What is interesting is the use of the word "telos", borrowed from metaphysics, and the context it was used in suggests that Adorno used it intentionally. If we first turn to the notion of telos, it is - broadly speaking - the goal that a given phenomenon is moving towards because of its own inner logic. The "self-realization of Spirit" in Hegel might be one such example, or in Aristotle the movement of matter towards form, or in Marxist eschatology the second coming of communism, the end of history as the necessary result of that very history. If we translate Adorno into Heideggerian, his argument goes something like this: by virtue of his being-in-the-world, man is called upon by being to uncover truth (truth as unconcealment is a formulation that both Heidegger and Adorno used) and put himself in the service of being. For Adorno then though must be critical not by choice, but because of its ontological position. Ironically it would seem the base of critical thought is built on the uncritical, the matter-of-fact of metaphysics. But is it really that simple?

The main difference, and it is a fundamental one, is in the way Adorno and Heidegger think about being. The very formulation Sein indicates that Heidegger - somewhat in Platonist manner - still envisioned an abstract Being beyond all concrete being. This can be seen in his idea of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit): for him things can become part of history only because they have an inherent characteristic, that is historicity. It is not the fact that they are part of history that makes them historical, quite the opposite: that they are part of history only proves that they posess the inherent characteristic of historicity that allowed them to manifest themselves in history in the first place. The obvious logical problem with a notion of being abstracted from all being, of historicity abstracted of all history, is that - as structuralism has taught us - every being of something implies a not being of something else and vice versa. Only concretely can the two - being and not being - be distinguished. A purely abstract being must therefore also be a purely abstract not being. We see that an idea of a purely abstract being is utterly useless. Heidegger grounds society and history in something beyond themselves, abstract being and an equally abstract historicity, supplies them with a base that curtails change. Adorno on the other hand sees change as the very essence of history - that is to say history as a process of change has no base outside itself. It is the dialectics of history that are its driving force. His position is as much a critique of Heideggerian metaphysics as it is a critique of Kantian epistemology, as can be seen from the following quote:

The matter, the object of social cognizance is not free of normative content [Sollensfreies], it is not merely being there [Daseiendes] - this it becomes only by the workings of abstraction. Values do not exist beyond it on a horizon of ideas.