Adorno

442 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional

As early as the lecture course on ‘Philosophy and Sociology’ of 1960,^173
Adorno had stressed repeatedly that sociology was dependent on philo-
sophy if it aspired to be anything more than mere technique. On the
other hand, even though philosophy is opposed to sociology by nature,
it needs the spur of the empirical. Since sociology essentially refers
to the object world, a mode of thought that fails to penetrate the objects
is a mere copy. Enlightenment, which formerly belonged to philo-
sophy, has now gone over to sociology, which discloses what exists
as something that has become what it is. In contrast, philosophy is
nothing but a theory of science, and Adorno criticized it as being
pre-scientific since it accepts science without question, even though the
interrogation of science is its true task.^174 In order not to succumb to the
power of an object arising simply from too close a proximity, distance
must be guaranteed by the use of concepts, concepts that are in con-
stant motion.
In these lectures, Adorno compared the situation of social science
researchers with that of a cameraman who constantly changes his vant-
age point, looking at things at first from close to and then in a larger
context, seeing them as a whole from a distance.^175 Although the discurs-
ive rationality of concepts has its validity in sociology, science begins
at the moment when you enter the open spaces and surrender to your
own unregimented experience. Dialectics is nothing but the attempt to
experience things without methodological and conceptual restrictions.^176
Theory in the social sciences must take its cue from this. If sociology
claims to be the theory of society, it must confront social conditions
with the reason that is inherent in them. We must constantly inquire
whether society lives up to the claims of its own rationality. A theory
of society must be able to come to terms with the fact that its object
is determined by an amalgam of rationality and irrationality. As for
Adorno’s own concrete analysis of contemporary society, he was con-
cerned about three main features: the socially integrating effects of
the culture industry, the individual’s loss of autonomy and identity
and, finally, the anonymous mechanism regulating a society based on
exchange.
Adorno had thought of his introduction to The Positivist Dispute in
German Sociology as a key text for his conception of sociology. In the
same way, he regarded the paper with which he opened the Conference
of the German Sociologists in Frankfurt in April 1968 as crucial for the
diagnostic content of his social theory. The link with the present came
directly from the question in his title: ‘Late Capitalism or Industrial
Society?’. As president of the German sociologists, he had chosen this
theme for the conference not least because it was the 150th anniversary
of the birth of Karl Marx. The topic was of burning interest to pro-
fessional sociologists, and also to the growing number of students in
this discipline. For this was a year of radical change both politically
and socially, and people were agitated by such questions as whether