Thought as the Negative: A Commentary on Adorno's Negative Dialectics

"To think, is, already in itself, and above all particular content, negation, resistance against what is imposed on it... If ideology encourages thought more than ever to wax in positivity, then it slyly registers the fact that precisely this would be contrary to thinking and that it requires the friendly word of advice from social authority, in order to accustom it to positivity. The effort which is implied in the concept of thinking itself, as the counterpart to the passive intuition, is already negative, the rejection of the overweening demand of bowing to everything immediate." Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Introduction, Portrayal [Darstellung] pg. 29-31, Translation Dennis Redmond 2001

Adorno is here dealing with the presuppositions which make up the substance of thought. The effort which comes before thought has already committed itself to a particular disposition regarding its investigation of conceptual and material content. That is to say, it launches out in an attempt at understanding (not merely validating what appears). Thought, as a form of resistance, has already assumed to itself the value of negativity against the facade of the positive. We say facade because the positive imposes itself on the subject, it demands validation for its appearance-summary-of-reality, and always on its own terms.

Controlling the conditions that control the quality of thought is the secret to rendering thought powerless. Ideology knows this intuitively. What thought knows intuitively is the tyranny and danger of the positive.     
 
The fact that ideology "encourages thought to positivity" (it would be difficult to evidence examples of ideology encouraging its own self-negation through an exercise of the negative) is itself proof of the nature of thought (i.e. negativity). And here we can almost think of it as the antithesis to ideology, which amounts to a form of control through the proliferation of mindlessness; ideology is a culture of mindlessness.

That ideology cannot establish its own commands to positivity, because it lacks the tool of thinking, because it's contrary to the procedure of thought, is the reason why ideology must make use of authority. How then is positivity, which is intellectually stultifying, injected into culture, into the individual: by means of authority, both blunt and sly. This means thwarting the qualitative nature of education. Through this process of intellectual weakening and oppression the masses are deprived of the ability to think, zero development and zero realization, only the automated, mindless self, is allowed to exist. Obedience, passed off as intelligence and moral accomplishment, becomes the atmosphere that results from educational deprivation. Dialectical consciousness, taught liberally among the masses, is the only guarantee for a qualitative democracy. It alone should be the emphasis of revolution.

The desire which motivates the effort for thought is precisely a desire for freedom. "Passive intuition" is the enemy of freedom insofar as it lacks dialectical reflection on all it feels itself to comprehend. What appears, though crude and incomplete, echos in our psyche as totality. Passive intuition lacks the resources to emancipate itself from the tyranny and error of the immediate. It's only when thought inserts itself between the blades of consciousness that the self is liberated from the error of its own impressions and automations.

To move in the direction of thought is to call on the value of the negative to save one from the tyranny of the positive. But this is precisely the tyranny we cannot detect; the positive does not present itself as the enemy, it reflects no peril, it's only when we probe beyond the surface that we discover its oppression as a form of subconscious stupidity, as a form of bondage, fallaciously interpreted as freedom.

The fact that we resist the negative so vehemently is partly motivated from a psychological need and craving for power, for social validation. The positive offers a swift but shallow reward, and yet, it cannot stand on its own feet. In material reality it takes the form of authoritarian assertion, rootless slogans, precisely because more thoughtful articulation, intellectual resistance, would shatter its image. If the subject wants to retain the power he inherits from this facade, he must not allow it to be cross examined. Thought is the enemy of the self without substance, a demon to those who fear the face of reality, a light to those whose power comes from darkness.

Passage through the turmoil of thought, against the fabrication of administered reality, while it destroys the comfort generated by the social matrix of artificial being, it offers hope in the probability of solutions, most specifically, human suffering caused by social ignorance, precisely because it deals with reality as opposed to suppressing it behind a wall of wishful projections (the legacy of idealism). The monological world of the positive cannot pass through contradiction, it cannot extend itself beyond its own assertions (which amount to fairy-tale-yearning-delusions seeking relief at any cost), any hope it finds is a lie it manufactures for itself in the name of comfort. To stand against comfort is both the discipline and integrity of the thinker. At first sight this seems counterproductive, self obliterating, but eventually one learns to create light in the darkness, one learns to see where confusion has sabotaged quality, one gains the ability to self correct (one learns where not to place one's emphasis); one learns how to use thought against the horrors and blunders of stupidity, but above all, if there is hope to be found, one learns not only to see it, to locate it within the context of material existence, but also to produce it. Thought is not in and of itself totality, it is not magic, but it is the closest thing we have to magic, and further, it's the only tool we possess which can truly offer a probability of quality, the only tool which carries the promise of transcendence.

Let this serve as the summary for Negative Dialectics: man cannot see himself by looking in the mirror.

Appearance, more often than not, serves to mask reality, to insulate us from its horror, to protect us from the thing our psyche fears. We are fragile creatures floating on a hostile sphere in the middle of space. And yet we face no greater danger than the danger we pose to ourselves. "Fear not the beast of the field, fear the beast in man!" If our problems will be corrected they must be corrected at the same point they're generated, man's stupidity, is psychological.

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