Adorno admitted the critique’s standpoint versus criticized standpoint was theoretically unclear

Evidence

The text, particularly in the first chapter, describes the process of formalization and instrumentalization of reason as a necessary and irresistible one, in the sense in which Hegel dealt with enlightenment in the Phenomenology. But after that the book only contains a critique of this form of reason. The relationship between the critical point of view and the point of view being criticized has not been made theoretically clear. It often seems as though we were professing objective reason dogmatically' to a certain extent, having previously determined that subjective reason is ineluctable. In reality, two things must be made quite clear: first, that there is no positive solution’ in the sense of providing a philosophy which could simply be contrasted to subjective reason; secondly, that the critique of subjective reason is only possible on a dialectical basis, i.e. by demonstrating the contradictions in its own course of development and transcending it through its own determinate negation. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1392

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEEPTHINKING: Adorno’s own self-diagnosis of the central philosophical weakness of Dialectic of Enlightenment — that the critical standpoint is proclaimed dogmatically rather than derived dialectically — is a pivotal theoretical confession for understanding the whole Frankfurt project.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: did later Frankfurt theory ever concretely work out the determinate-negation model Adorno here admits was ‘an unfulfilled promise’?

Related

• Adorno framed Negative Dialectics as philosophy extending itself from within (similarity 0.87)
• Critique of instrumental reason must proceed dialectically, not by opposing another philosophy (similarity 0.85)
• The Frankfurt School never grounded its critique in language’s truth claims (similarity 0.85)
• Horkheimer and Adorno each deployed Hegelian dialectics toward different ends (similarity 0.85)
• Horkheimer and Adorno claimed their dialectic critique held regardless of Nazism’s existence (similarity 0.84)
• Adorno read Heidegger as expressing dialectical structures undialectically (similarity 0.84)
• Adorno’s negative dialectics shares core moves with Derrida’s deconstruction (similarity 0.83)
• Adorno held that ignoring Western tradition kept Heidegger trapped in metaphysics (similarity 0.83)
• Adorno rejected both positivism and abstract individualism while insisting on nonidentity. (similarity 0.83)
• Adorno saw philosophy as unable to grasp totality yet kept it over social theory (similarity 0.83)
• Critical Theory risked ossifying into a mere counter-programme without empirical grounding (similarity 0.82)
• Adorno’s turn to negative dialectics was impatience, not reasoned choice (similarity 0.82)
• Negative Dialectics remained an unresolved preparation for reflected enlightenment (similarity 0.82)
• Adorno faulted Hegel for treating the bourgeois individual as an irreducible reality (similarity 0.82)
• Adorno attacked positivism for severing logic from the world and knowledge from subjects. (similarity 0.82)