Adorno’s theory aimed to grasp the whole to recover what it suppressed

Evidence

A few months before, he had remarked during the positivist dispute' at the German Sociological Society's Tübingen meeting: Sociology’s abandonment of a critical theory of society is resignatory: one no longer dares to conceive of the whole since one must despair of changing it.’ … The point of Adorno’s programme for a theory of society always seemed to have been: to think through the evil whole for the sake of its suppressed differences, to grasp the antagonistic system for the sake of the variety it had distorted. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2389

Categorization

• DEFINE: Encapsulates the Frankfurt School’s distinctive totalizing impulse — theory of the whole serving emancipatory difference — which distinguishes it from both positivism and postmodern fragmentation.
• XREF: Sharpens the later Habermas critique that Critical Theory’s totalizing view broke down; connects to the ‘totalizing’ vs ‘difference’ tensions in subsequent continental theory. — connects to: Adorno posited a subterranean history of suppressed possibilities beside manifest history. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1388; Adorno treated all phenomena as evidence bearing on humanity’s fate — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2183; Adorno saw philosophy as unable to grasp totality yet kept it over social theory — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2532

Broader Connections

• Adorno saw philosophy as unable to grasp totality yet kept it over social theory #qualifies (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2532