simply means the formal exclusion of theological or metaphysical presup-
positions (Hegel 1986k:19–29).
Agnosticism and Atheism
For the critical theorists, the totally other is indeed unknowable in its entirety.
In this sense they are – following Kant – agnostics (Küng 1990; 1978). In the
critical-theoretical perspective, the entirely Other does not reveal itself in the
traditional sense. At best, traces of the totally Other may be discovered in
terms of – what Adorno has called – micrology: in the smallest, not yet socially
preformed, most detailed ciphers of nature or society (Adorno 1980:7–12).
Horkheimer practiced such micrology in his aphoristic notes under the title
Duskand Adorno in his Minima Moraliadedicated and devoted to his eight
years older friend and teacher Horkheimer (Adorno 1980). There had been
a methodological atheism at work in the critical theory of society long before
Habermas – the most outstanding member of the second generation of crit-
ical theorists – re-invented and used the name (Habermas 1991). It is true
that once, even Horkheimer and Adorno broke the Third Commandment of
the Mosaic Decalogue: the former named the totally Other perfect justice and
the latter called it unconditional love. But these instances have remained the
exceptions to the rule of agnosticism or methodological atheism. Thus, in
Habermas’s secular view, we may not even get a glimpse of a tip of the
Absolute, or the totally Other in itself (Theunissen 1983; Habermas 1988). The
same must, of course, also be true of the description of the entirely Other in
this essay. But while we can not determine the entirely Other, we can nev-
ertheless certainly describe the longing, or the hope for the Infinite, which
has motivated four generations of critical theorists: the longing that the finitude
of the finite may not be the last word of history; the hope that the murderer
may not triumph over the innocent victim, at least not ultimately. We can
also describe in this essay more concretely what negative, or inverse theol-
ogy, or agnosticism, or methodological atheism is. All this can be done best
ex contrario: that means against the background of Hegel’s dialectical phi-
losophy as well as against the positivism and the fascism which followed it
(Hegel 1986:a–o).
66 • Rudolf J. Siebert