Enigma, Semblance, and Natural Beauty in Adorno's Epistemological Aesthetics

"The poverty of the participants in Endgame is the poverty of philosophy."

—Theodor Adorno (1991b, 253)

In this article, I argue that crucial to understanding Adorno's Aesthetic Theory (1997) is the philosophy he outlines in Negative Dialectics (1973).¹ Negative Dialectics is less an actual negative dialectics, in my view, than a call for such a philosophy—a call for which Aesthetic Theory may be seen as a response. Adorno's theory of art emphasizes the inherent role of subjectivity in the encounter with the enigmatic art object, and indicates the epistemological importance of semblance (Schein). Art promotes a model different from that of a knowing subject who apprehends objects through concepts. Adorno's Aesthetic Theory invokes the possibility of a non-dominative, or at least a less dominative, relationship between subject and object. Adorno pursues this through his original suggestion that art imitates natural beauty. Natural beauty inherently involves a subjective encounter but simultaneously insists upon the objective moment in such subjective experience. Similarly, art draws subject and object closer without allowing either to be conflated into the other. Adorno suggests that just as natural beauty is the model for art, so aesthetics provides a model for philosophy.

Adorno's Aesthetic Theory advances an epistemology—one that is a logical continuity to Negative Dialectics. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno rejects any positive dialectic and asserts that restlessness should characterize philosophy. Thought should not come to rest, but should instead continually negate itself. In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno makes clear that works of art are far too enigmatic ever to let thought, or interpretation, come to rest. The semblance quality of art relentlessly impels thinking, and art's enigmatic quality prevents thought from settling. This is especially the case with modern art. Adorno's aesthetics suggests another way of knowing, one that engages in the negative dialectics that Negative Dialectics demands.

The final Aesthetic Theory was to be dedicated to Samuel Beckett; however, for the most part I think the salience of Beckett's work, not only for Adorno's aesthetics but also for his later philosophy in general, has been underestimated. Throughout this article, in addition to discussing Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory, I shall address Adorno's essay "Trying to Understand Endgame." I consider this essay emblematic of Adorno's aesthetic theory and his philosophical project because in it Adorno both uses his aesthetic and philosophical theory to illuminate Endgame and sees Endgame as expressing his aesthetic and philosophical ideas.²

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In Negative Dialectics, Adorno criticizes Hegel for having betrayed dialectical thinking by permitting it to come to rest and allowing an—always premature—closure of system and world, concept and object. Adorno challenges the Hegelian notion of an affirmative dialectic, the idea of achieving something positive through the negation of a negation. This is not to say that idealist philosophy should resign, only that dialectics should as much as possible avoid congealing, should continuously negate itself and its conceptions. Against Hegel's "affirmative" or "positive" dialectic that culminates in absolute knowledge and the reconciliation of reason and society, Adorno maintains: "It lies in the definition of negative dialectics that it will not come to rest in itself, as if it were total. This is its form of hope" (1973, 406). Dialectics must be open-ended. It is neither method nor reality. Dialectics is not a system or even an approach to the world; neither is it any contradiction inherent in objects—for discrepancy is a relation perceived by subjects. Thought is propelled by a world that eludes conceptualization. Thought should not come to rest, Adorno argues, for it would then betray all those things whose present form betrays their own potential.

Throughout Negative Dialectics, Adorno attacks "identity theory" and depicts Hegel as the archetypal "identity theorist" who presents an apparent—but actually false and extorted—reconciliation between subject and object. The object is only encapsulated by the subject insofar as it is compressed into a prescribed concept. Adorno indicts the Hegelian concept for being coercive and accuses Hegel of claiming to extract from the object that which is...