Antinomic normativity: Negative dialectics,moral skepticism,and the problem of the normative foundations of critique

Abstract

This article attempts to determine Adorno’s stance concerning two opposing positions in the relationship between critique and normativity. Although he rejects the demand to account for the normative foundations of critique, his negative dialectics does not fall back on the alternative of skepticism about normativity, of which it is often accused. I illustrate this problem by recovering the skeptical objections advanced by Justin Evans. Next, I turn to the young Hegel’s interpretation of the positive relationship between his speculative dialectics and skepticism to pose the question of what relationship now exists between negative dialectics and skepticism. The answer is outlined based on a reading of Minima Moralia under the interpretative key of the idea of real normative antinomies.