Adorno held that paranoid interpretation is more productive than complacent common sense.

Evidence

On reaching his destination, he immediately repeated his ceterum censeo': My basic view is that we should concentrate our efforts over therethe danger of breaking down here, in every sense, is very serious, and the thought doesn’t leave me for a moment … And if one is faced with a choice between a paranoid fantasy about paranoid reality and the stupidity of healthy common sense, paranoia is still more productive.’ — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1950

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A dense inversion: Adorno ranks paranoid interpretation above ‘healthy common sense’ as a cognitive stance toward paranoid reality — this reverses the standard epistemic hierarchy and is a crystallized dialectical move.
• XREF: Echoes the paranoid reading position that later literary theory (e.g., Sedgwick’s ‘paranoid reading’) debates. — connects to: Adorno’s dense style is a deliberate intransigence against cheap readability — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 18

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s dense style is a deliberate intransigence against cheap readability #qualifies (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 18