Theodor W. Adorno 
Lectures on Negative Dialectics 
Fragments of a Lecture Course 1965/1966

This volume comprises one of the key lecture courses leading up to
the publication in 1966 of Adorno’s major work, Negative
Dialectics. These lectures focus on developing the concepts
critical to the introductory section of that book. They show Adorno
as an embattled philosopher defining his own methodology among the
prevailing trends of the time. As a critical theorist, he
repudiated the worn-out Marxist stereotypes still dominant in the
Soviet bloc – he specifically addresses his remarks to
students who had escaped from the East in the period leading up to
the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Influenced as he was by
the empirical schools of thought he had encountered in the United
States, he nevertheless continued to resist what he saw as their
surrender to scientific and mathematical abstraction. However,
their influence was potent enough to prevent him from reverting to
the traditional idealisms still prevalent in Germany, or to their
latest manifestations in the shape of the new ontology of Heidegger
and his disciples. Instead, he attempts to define, perhaps more
simply and fully than in the final published version, a
‘negative’, i.e. critical, approach to philosophy. Permeating
the whole book is Adorno’s sense of the overwhelming power of
totalizing, dominating systems in the post-Auschwitz world.
Intellectual negativity, therefore, commits him to the stubborn
defence of individuals – both facts and people – who
stubbornly refuse to become integrated into ‘the administered
world’.

These lectures reveal Adorno to be a lively and engaging
lecturer. He makes serious demands on his listeners but always
manages to enliven his arguments with observations on philosophers
and writers such as Proust and Brecht and comments on current
events. Heavy intellectual artillery is combined with a concern for
his students’ progress.

Table of Content

Translator’s Note

Editor’s Foreword

Lectures One to Ten

Lecture One: The Concept of Contradiction

Lecture Two: The Negation of Negation

Lecture Three: Whether negative dialectics is possible

Lecture Four: Whether philosophy is possible without system

Lecture Five: Theory and practice

Lecture Six: Being, Nothing, Concept

Lecture Seven: ‘Attempted breakouts’

Lecture Eight: The concept of intellectual experience

Lecture Nine: The element of speculation

Lecture Ten: Philosophy and ‘depth’

Lectures Eleven to Twenty-Five: Negative Dialectics

Additional Notes

Appendix: The Theory of Intellectual Experience

Bibliographical Sources

About the author

Theodor Adorno was a member of the Frankfurt School.