Adorno

A Theory Devoured by Thought 447

response to Dahrendorf, but also with one eye on the political actionism
of the student movement, he said that he was fully aware that ‘the call
for the unity of theory and practice can easily lead to a kind of cen-
sorship of theory by practice.’ To demand of thought that it give proof
of its utility was itself the mark of instrumental rationality. He insisted,
much as he had done before in Negative Dialectics, that theoretical
reflection was the basis of practice. At the same time, he had no doubt
that ‘the actual life of individual human beings’ stood in need of change.^196
But if we set aside the nature of the social totality as incomprehensible
because it is too general, then effective intervention is an illusion. Adorno
declared that the priority to be given to the criticism of domination was
to be explained by the progressive advance of authoritarian structures
in every aspect of society. The objection that his views were too utopian
was not new. He countered it here by pointing out that the regulative
idea of a society that was better organized meant nothing more or less
than a society ‘in which the many could live in security and peace with
one another’.^197