Adorno

344 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional

Adorno conceived his aphorisms as model analyses of the contem-
porary world by a meticulous observer; they are microcosmic case
studies that disclose the overwhelming power of social structures, the
superficial nature of both human relations and the practices of daily
living. Knowledge was supposed to flow from the contradictory form
of the argument. The aphoristic mode of reflection did not keep to any
truth criterion of adequacy, nor did Adorno accept the law of non-
contradiction. Instead, what is ‘essential to his way of thinking is an
element of exaggeration, of over-shooting the objects, of freeing itself
from the deadweight of the factual, so that instead of merely reprodu-
cing being, thought can, at once rigorous and free, determine it.’^72 By
formulating antitheses Adorno wished to convict the extremes of their
one-sidedness. ‘Dialectical thinking... advances by way of extremes...,
driving thoughts with the utmost consequentiality to the point where
they turn back on themselves.’^73 By shedding light on both sides not just
of one coin, but of all the coins in play, reading the book generated a
kind of provocative surplus of meanings that compels the reader to take
stock. As Kracauer suggested in his enthusiastic letter, what the reader
understands at first glance is subsequently questioned. This is why he
remarks in part III, in the section entitled ‘Monograms’, that ‘True
thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves.’^74
Minima Moralia is a major work precisely from an epistemological
standpoint, as Jürgen Habermas observed in an article in the Frank-
furter Allgemeine Zeitung on the occasion of Adorno’s sixtieth birthday
in 1963.^75 And in fact, Adorno’s social criticism often took the form of
reflections in miniature, triggered by a kind of linguistic analysis.

The phrase ‘Kommt überhaupt gar nicht in Frage’ [‘It’s completely

and utterly out of the question’], which probably came into use in

Berlin in the 1920s, is already potentially Hitler’s seizure of power.

For it pretends that private will, founded sometimes on real rights

but usually on mere effrontery, directly represents an objective

necessity that admits of no disagreement. At bottom, it is the

refusal of a bankrupt negotiator to pay the other a farthing, in the

proud awareness that there is nothing more to be got out of him.

The crooked lawyer’s dodge is brazenly inflated to heroic stead-

fastness: the linguistic formula for usurpation. This bluff defines

equally the success and the collapse of National Socialism.^76

His polished style enabled him to articulate what the age of total com-
munication had done to culture and language. It explains, too, why even
Thomas Mann could be fascinated by these ingenious aphorisms, a col-
lection of vivid scenes taken from such apparently unassuming or remote
subjects as the fate of Snow White, the sadness of the frog prince,
the happiness of the three hares, scenes that for the most part treated
motifs drawn from Adorno’s visual memory, furnished in part with