헤겔 변증법에 대한 아도르노의 비판은 정당한가? — 동일성 개념과 부정 개념을 중심으로

Abstract

Adorno defines his own dialectic as negative dialectic, and criticizes on this standpoint Hegel‘s dialectic as positive one. This essay elucidates at first the meaning of Adorno’s negative dialectic and examines whether Hegel‘s dialectic is a positive dialectic or not. It comes to light that Hegel’s dialectic is also a negative dialectic, but only in the phase of “synthesis” where the ultimate affirmation could be acquired. Adorno‘s criticism on the concept of identity relates a inevitable phenomenon accompanied by the process of conceptualization in epistemoloy and logic, while his criticism on Hegel’s conception of identity is derived from the ontological-epistemological difference between Adorno and Hegel. But even in this case, the identity on which Hegel puts his stress is not a non-differential, abstract identity but a speculative identity where their differences are mediated. Adorno's failure in understanding the concept of negation is that he regards the positive proposition as ‘+’, negative proposition as ‘−’, and negation of negation as — by calculating it ‘(−) × (−)‘ — ‘+’. Such a misunderstanding proves that he misconstrues the relations between thesis and antithesis, between synthesis and antithesis as logical contradictions, but not contrarities. Unlike a popular misunderstanding of Hegel‘s dialectical process of thinking, it proceeds not in a simple triad. A triad should be understood just as a expression of abbreviation. The so-called stage of synthesis in Hegel’s dialectical process of thinking is the one that can be achieved not in three times, but in the ultimate process.