the totally administered society, to resist alternative Future II – the militaris-
tic society, and to promote in theory and praxis alternative Future III – the
right society, inside the wrong one – the extremely antagonistic late capital-
ist society (Adorno 1997d; Flechtheim 1985).
The Notion of Dialectic
According to Horkheimer and Adorno, with the notion of dialectic or deter-
minate negation, Hegel had emphasized an element which differentiated gen-
uine enlightenment from its positivistic and pragmatistic decay (Hegel 1986c;
1986e; Adorno 1997a). However, according to the critical theorists, as Hegel
supposedly made finally known the result of the whole process of the deter-
minate negation – the totality in system and history – after all into the Absolute,
he violated the second and third commandment of the Mosaic Law – the pro-
hibition against making images or naming the Unconditional – as well as
their secularization, i.e., Kant’s taboo against any excursion of the intellect
into the realm of the Intelligible, or the Thing-in-itself, or God, Immortality
and Freedom, and thus fell himself victim to the dialectic of enlightenment
as Marx, Nietzsche and Freud did after him (Kant 1965; Hegel 1986n; Hork-
heimer and Adorno 1969; Horkheimer 1985a; 1990). As the critical theorists
determinately negated Hegel’s philosophy, they preserved its dialectical form –
the process of determinate negation – but uncoupled the latter from the for-
mer ’s idealistic totality in system and history – and in the strictest obedience
to the radicalized second and third commandment of the Decalogue and to
Kant’s prohibition against any penetration of the realm of the Intelligible,
considered its result to be unknown. Thus they rescued themselves from the
dialectic of enlightenment: departing from Hegel they engaged in an open
dialectic, or a determinate negativity (Horkheimer 1985a; Habermas 1987).
Theology and Agnosticism
In Horkheimer ’s and Adorno’s notion of the longing for the entirely Other –
sometimes characterized as non-reified Transcendence, or the Infinite, or the
Absolute, or the Truth, or Perfect Justice, or standpoint of Redemption and
Messianic Light, or Unconditional Love, or simply the Theological – met and
were united with each other, Jewish negative and inverse theology, on the
one hand, and Kantian philosophical agnosticism, on the other (Kant 1965;
Horkheimer 1970; 1985a; Adorno 1970a; 1980). For the critical theorists, in
Toward a Dialectical Sociology of Religion • 79