Adorno’s models test whether concept can reach the nonconceptual

Evidence

The models' presented in the third part of the book were intended to show whether the demand for a reflected enlightenment, the demand to transcend the concept by way of the concept’, to reach the nonconceptual' through the concept, for full, unreduced experience in the medium of conceptual reflection’ had really been met. The models were also intended to show whether it was possible to distinguish plausibly in this way between the disfigured shape of what ought to be lovedthat which merited the predominance of the object in the positive senseand heteronomy, the domination of functional interrelations in society that people had ceased to recognizethat which embodied the predominance of the object in the negative sense. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2551

The general sections of the book offered what Habermas called an exercise in waiting' within the confines of a critique of reason that turned identitarian thought's own weapons against it, but did not dare attempt an escape from it. … The models’ presented in the third part of the book were intended to show whether the demand for a reflected enlightenment, the demand to transcend the concept by way of the concept', to reach the nonconceptual’ through the concept, for full, unreduced experience in the medium of conceptual reflection' had really been met. … The concept of a model, of exemplary thought, represented an effort to grasp the system of the false totality in an anti-systematic way, putting limits to this system in specific cases, limits characterized by their degree of disfigurement and resistance of the other’and an effort, at the same time, to release the `coherence of the non-identical’ within the other. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 637

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Adorno’s distinction between ‘predominance of the object’ in its positive (that which merits love) versus negative (heteronomous domination) senses.
• XREF: The ‘reach the nonconceptual through the concept’ formula echoes the core of Adorno’s immanent critique developed in Dialectic of Enlightenment, already covered in earlier chapters. — connects to: Fidelity to systematic thought in a fragmented epoch requires deliberate unsystematicity — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 110; Adorno aimed to make subjects receptive to the rationality of objects — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2260; Adorno’s theory denies audiences relative autonomy of consciousness
• DEEPTHINKING: The idea that concepts must be turned against themselves to grasp what escapes them is a genuinely demanding, hard-to-condense philosophical maneuver.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2551; Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 637

Broader Connections

• Adorno aimed to make subjects receptive to the rationality of objects #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2260
• Adorno’s theory denies audiences relative autonomy of consciousness #complicates (0.72)