In a skilled thinker the polemic is implicit to the exposition. This also means a skilled reader can draw it out even though it is not explicitly stated. This is exactly the case with the work of Adorno. He does not make so many sweeping, generalized assertions because he is trying to look profound, but because his conclusions are the result of a profound polemical process. Thought that asserts itself without the power of an implicit polemic is merely posturing toward the appearance of its own credibility and power. A skilled thinker is not likely to express himself in the form of polemics, but will communicate in premises that implicitly contain polemical depth (consider the prose of Nietzsche). This is because a skilled thinker has already gone through the polemical process in his mind, it is not necessary for him to write in terms of polemics. This means the thought of polemical thinkers is essentially written for skilled readers, for those who can discern how the premises are supported and sustained, for those who can connect the dots. However, when a thinker is legitimately challenged in his thought, it is not enough to merely assert that his polemic is implicit, there are times when external challenges force him to manifest what is implicit. Sometimes this will result in the negation of his polemic, at other times, it will result in its vindication and strengthening.
The reason implicit polemic is and must be a valid form is because life is exceedingly short, and life is the standard and criteria of itself. Intelligence demands profundity through concision if possible. A thinker with a strong implicit polemic is a thinker capable of forming powerful premises, and this is his value as a thinker. He saves us time, he helps us to get to the heart of the issue, helps us to avoid much irrelevance and unnecessary intellectual labor. He does this by articulating the conclusions of his thought in propositional form, though it is a form that presupposes a powerful polemic.
While it's true that a thinker could attempt to feign this form, it's not true that such posturing would be capable of producing depth at a dialectical level, further, such posturing would be obliterated the moment the external form was challenged at the level of its polemical depth. No thinker should pretend to have quality or depth, we must be honest and allow the power of thought to lead us where it drives us as it shines light on intelligence. The question then is how to obtain a form of thought that contains a powerful polemical depth? (I want to put this in the swiftest possible form, so here then is an example of a simple premise that implicitly contains a powerful polemic): the answer is to learn how to think about things dialectically!
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