ABSTRACT
This section identifies two different and conflicting views in Negative Dialectics, representing realist and idealist tendencies in Adorno’s work. I consider them sequentially, in the process comparing and contrasting Adorno’s standpoint with Bhaskar’s. My argument will be that Bhaskar and Adorno have much in common, but that Adorno’s strong realist dimension is not pushed far enough, and that in ultimately decisive ways, he reverts to an idealist standpoint. The predominant character of his negative dialectics thus becomes its compromise irrealist form. The realist side of his thought is summarised in his insistence on what he calls ‘the preponderance of the object’ (Adorno, 1973, p 183), the idealist side in his view of the dominance of ‘the concept’ in shaping social life. My strategy will be to highlight first the realist aspects of Adorno’s philosophy, then its idealist side.
