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nism in which the individual decays.²⁵ A diminished opportunity of differentiation or, to be morę Precise, of individualization, gives rise to regression, primitivism and barbarianism in culture.²⁶ The antago-nism between society and the individual constantly increases, leading to a greater ascendance of society based on domination and oppres-sion. This is clearly evident in Adorno’s commentary on his own af-firmation that totality was false. »’Totality is false’ not only because the thesis on totality is false, but also because of the highly exaggerat-ed principle of domination (Herrschaft). The idea of positivity, which claims that the superior constraint of spirit which understands will vanquish everything in its way, gives a phantasmal account of expe-rience of superior compulsion which is found in everything that exists as a result of its obsession with domination. This is the truth in He-gel’s untruth«.²⁷

This antagonism between the individual and society, which implies society’s compulsive and destructive domination, Adorno transformed from a historical-sociological proposition into the central problem of his »negative dialectics«. (A similar view of the individual’s position in contemporary society was already in the 'thirties in the focus of epochal experience of virtually the entire first generation of the fol-lowers of this school of thought.) Adorno’s most generalized ob jection to the latter-day dialectical thought is that it magnified and extolled the value and imPortance of that which is generał, i. e. of society, at the expense of the particular, i. e. the individual. »The recent history of spirit was Sisyphus’s apologetic job to eliminate by way of thought the negative side of that which is general«.²⁸ In fact, however, it is the idea »on the primacy of the generał in the dialectics of generał and of particular that is index falsi«.²⁰ In the dialectics of identity of the generał and particular, the particular should have just as much right as the generał.³⁰ In contrast to this historically determined predo-minance of the generał, which the concepts of traditional dialectics reflect and duplicate, Adorno supports the principle of delving into particularity, which is not restricted by any philosophy. Connected with this is his side remark about the correctness of Benjamin’s idea that induction should be saved.³¹ In opposing the predominance of society, as the universal which is increasingly becoming total, over the individual, there are hints of a »micrological« approach to »negative dialectics«, as a last refuge of the concrete man before the overwhelm-ing paramountcy of total society.³² Adorno’s concept of dialectics merits a very careful analysis. Ali we wanted to demonstrate here is the notion of basie social contradictions expressed in it, which is at the

“ Ibid., pp. 47—48.

*• Ibid., pp. 34, 36. Horkheimcr previous!y outlined similar ideas in his book The Eclipse of Reason.

*^T Th. W. Adorno, Drei Studien zu Hegel, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M., 1963, p. 104.

¹⁸ Th. W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, p. 319.

” Ibid., p. 309.

»• Ibid., p. 321.

^,ł Ibid., p. 296.

« Ibid., pp. 397-398.

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