Adorno’s Philopolemology

Abstract

This article argues that the polemic(al) plays a crucial mediating role in Adorno’s philosophy. As a theoretical category, it describes the resistance to thought which inevitably frustrates attempts to reconstruct the world in the image of reason. As a political and rhetorical strategy, it contributes in large measure to Adorno’s self-understanding as a public intellectual in post-war Germany. The article attempts to chart the interrelationship and interdependence of these two aspects through a reading of ‘Parataxis’, Adorno’s 1963 speech on Hölderlin. This speech suggests that art instantiates a polemic which first comes to be activated through the (polemical) speaking engagement of the philosopher.