Infinite was the entirely Other of man and society and history. It is precisely
through its determinate negation, or turning upside down, or turning inside
out, or concrete inversion that the critical theorists – like Marx had done
before – preserved in their social theory the Hegelian philosophy: even some
of its positive theology in the form of their other, or negative, or inverse
cipher and semblance theology (Marx 1961; Hegel 1986e; Horkheimer 1985a;
Adorno 1970a). While Hegel’s and Marx’s philosophy and Horkheimer ’s and
Adorno’s critical theory of society were radical, in the sense of penetrating
to the very roots of things, i.e., to the originally theological dialectical notion,
the structural functionalists stay, like all other positivists, consciously, inten-
tionally and purposively at the surface of social reality, using entirely sub-
jective concepts, and are thus continually engaged in the harmonization of
the fundamental contradictions of civil society and, thereby, in its stabiliza-
tion and normalization, no matter how unjust its conditions may be (Hegel
1986f, 1986g; Horkheimer 1985a).
Structure of Thoughts
While the Frankfurt School’s critical theory of society is admittedly unsystem-
atic, it is nevertheless a very methodological and rather organized body of
ideas, or structure of thoughts and categories, or connection of knowledge
related to alternative Future III – the truth of human society (Horkheimer
1988a; 1988b; 1988c; Löwenthal 1989; Arato and Gebhardt 1982; Jay 1981).
While contrary to all forms of positivism, the critical theory of society tran-
scends facticity in terms of relational notions, for example, the antagonistic
totality of civil society, it is nevertheless derived from the study of a large
number of psychological, social and cultural facts and data, relating partic-
ularly to traditional and modern civil society: the relational essence of society
as exchange or commodity society, which overshoots facticity, is nevertheless
real only in its particular data (Adorno 1993; Schmidt 1981). The critical theory
of society is not only the result of the study of psychological, social and cultural
phenomena, but it is also to some extent the result of the exercise of the dialec-
tical method and imagination: of radical negative dialectics (Adorno 1997a).
It includes in itself the knowledge of several social sciences, particularly psy-
chology and sociology, and artistic, religious and philosophical forms, derived
from such study of facts and from such dialectical method and imagination.
Toward a Dialectical Sociology of Religion • 81