1 - Negative Dialectic as Fate

Summary

[T]he unity of the system derives from unreconcilable violence. Satanically, the world as grasped by the Hegelian system has only now, a hundred and fifty years later, proved itself to be a system in the literal sense, namely that of a radically societalized society.

Adorno

'[T]he unity of the system derives from unreconcilable violence. Satanically, the world as grasped by the Hegelian system has only now, a hundred and fifty years later, proved itself to be a system in the literal sense, namely that of a radically societalized society. Adorno' That Adorno entitled his major work of theoretical philosophy Negative Dialectics is enough, all by itself, to indicate the pervasive nature of the presence of Hegel in his thought. While Hegel is occasionally the object of Adorno's thought, most notably in “World Spirit and Natural History: An Excursion to Hegel,” a chapter of Negative Dialectics, and in Hegel: Three Studies, he is more routinely and emphatically present as its orientation, its method, approach, style, or conatus.