BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

The Concept of Mediation in Hegel and Adorno

Brian O'Connor

Given its centrality to the intellectual thought processes through which the great structures of
logic, nature, and spirit are unfolded it is clear that mediation is vital to the very possibility of
Hegel's encyclopaedic philosophy. Yet Hegel gives little specific explanation of the concept of
mediation. Surprisingly, it has been the subject of even less attention by scholars of Hegel.
Nevertheless it is casually used in discussions of Hegel and post-Hegelian philosophy as though
its meaning were simple and straightforward. In these discussions mediation is the thesis that
meanings are not atomic in that the independence of something is inseparable from its relation to
something else. Hence being is mediated by nothing, the particular by the universal, the
individual by society. But does Hegel ever explain mediation in a way which justifies such use
of the concept? The same easy employment of mediation is found in Theodor Adorno whose
works are replete with the use of this concept and, indeed, acknowledgements of its Hegelian
origin. But the concept of mediation in Adorno's negative dialectic is operative in an entirely
different context from that of Hegel. How, it might be asked, can a concept be so adaptable? I
want to argue that mediation is, in fact, an equivocal term which in both Hegel and Adomo
covers a variety of entirely different conceptual relations. Furthermore, as propounded by both
Hegel and Adomo it lacks the rigour which could allow the particular conclusions which the
concept allegedly facilitates.

1 Hegel on Mediation

In Hegel mediation explains, in effect, why the properties of certain objects are such as to allow
us to move beyond an initial one-dimensional conceptualization. For that reason it might be seen
as essential to the possibility of transition. Anyone familiar with the Science of Logic in
particular will readily appreciate how important that property must be in Hegel's unfolding of
certain concepts. If we pay close attention, however, to the way in which Hegel explicitly uses
mediation we find a variety of different senses, not all of which contribute to the general
function of transition, just mentioned. I want to look at the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical
Sciences to which Hegel himself refers us in the "Doctrine of Being" section of the Science of
Logic for a preliminary discussion of the concept of mediation.1 It seems to me that Hegel's
exposition of the concept of mediation gives rise to four different versions of mediation. This is
problematical given that Hegel presents mediation as a unified intellectual phenomenon. I name
those versions as follows:
(i) Elevation Thesis: mediation is the intellectual mechanism by which we proceed from
contingency to necessity;
(K) Transcendental Thesis: the process of knowledge cannot be coherently explained
without reference to a non-immediate element (and that element is mediation);
(iii) Contentual Thesis: the possibility of content is determined by the form of
judgement, and that must include mediation;

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 BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

(iv) Genetic Thesis: since a necessary precondition of any fact is its historical production
it is, in this sense, mediated.
Despite the associations that some of these ideas might suggest I do not want to read
Hegel as a Kantian of some type. I want, rather, to look at these different theses in the contexts
in which they occur without, if possible, making any deeper claims as to what sort of position in
general we can ascribe to the Logic.

(i) Elevation Thesis

The elevation thesis explains how we can allegedly adjust our attitude to a given content and
move from an understanding of it as contingent to an understanding of it as necessary. Hegel
does not explore this idea abstractly. Rather this idea arises in the context of his critique of a
particular philosophical position. The context of that discussion is therefore important. Hegel
establishes the elevation thesis in argument with romantic irrationalism in the form of F. H.
Jacobi, who, in particular, holds the position that an exclusively immediate knowledge of God is
possible. It is the absolute uniqueness of God, as understood by Jacobi, which leads him to this
conclusion. God cannot be known through the conceptualist apparatus that Kant had outlined for
cognition in general. Rather, God must be known in a wholly non-conceptual way since
concepts are epistemic only when applied to sensuous particularities or serving as general
abstractions. The idea is that only if conceptualization can be somehow eluded is a knowledge of
God possible. And since Jacobi, like Hegel, holds that knowledge of God is indeed attainable he
offers the thesis of immediate knowing. In the course of his discussion of Jacobi's position
Hegel uncovers what he takes to be fatal incoherences in the thesis of immediate knowing. Yet,
significantly, Hegel has designated this position the "Third Position of Thought towards
Objectivity" (Driite Stellung des Gedankens zur Objektivitdt) thereby according it a pre-
eminence over the previous two positions, (1) naive correspondence and (2) empiricism and
critical philosophy. Hegel indicates that the pre-eminence of the third position — that of
immediate knowing — can be appreciated because it alone has preserved "the absolute
inseparability of the thought of God from his being" (EL §51).2
Jacobi's contemporary recasting of the ontological argument places him, in Hegel's
view, above Kant who famously rejects all arguments for the existence of God. Kant repudiates
these arguments in line with the general commitments of his critical philosophy, commitments
which Hegel rejects. The discussion of Kant takes place within the section, "Second Position of
Thought towards Objectivity".3 Since his concern is with the Absolute — rather than simple
epistemology — Hegel, not unexpectedly, provides a specific examination of Kant's criticism of
the arguments for the existence of God. The reason for this is clearly that Kant's criticisms
reveal his attitude to the Absolute. The essence of Kant's position is that necessary existence
cannot be deduced from contingent being. Furthermore, valid judgements are possible only in
the realm of contingent being thus excluding valid judgements with respect to the Absolute. If
Kant is correct then Hegel's philosophy is conclusively misconceived, so naturally Hegel tries to
show that, in fact, there is an intelligible way of making the intellectual transition from
contingency to necessity. The way in which Hegel shows this, as we shall see, is by means of

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 BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

some strange presuppositions which, to put it gently, are extremely difficult to follow. It is at
this point in the Encyclopaedia that Hegel first uses the concept of mediation. He notes that
"thinking the empirical world essentially means altering its empirical form, and transforming it
into something universal" (EL §50). This is not the specialized activity of philosophy, but an
ineradicable characteristic of human thought. So when the empirical world is thought, or
becomes the object of reflection, it is no longer merely empirical but indeed an object of
thought. Hegel describes this thinking as a negative activity which brings out "the inner import
of what is perceived" (EL §50). He claims that the negative moment involves the reflective
transformation of the material into the spiritual. In this way the material is allegedly mediated
into the spiritual: that is, the being of the world can be explained only as the necessary being of
God. By itself, or independently of God, the world is only contingent being. The idea, then, is
that the world is mediated through God in the sense that the world achieves its significance only
by reference to its truth in God: "This elevation (Erhebung) of the spirit means that although
being certainly does pertain to the world, it is only semblance, not genuine beirig, not absolute
truth; for, on the contrary, the truth is beyond that appearance, in God alone, and only God is
genuine being" (EL §50). On the other side the existence of God is mediated through the world,
in the sense that we must pass to his existence from the contingency of things. However, the
passage from world to God is anything but one of interdependence. If it were, then the existence
of God would be "grounded and dependent. This allows Hegel to conclude that "while this
elevation is a passage and mediation (Vermittlung), it is also the sublating of the passage
(Ubergang) and the mediation since that through which God could seem to be mediated, i.e. the
world, is, on the contrary, shown up as what is null and void. It is only the nullity of the being of
the world that is the bond of the elevation; so that what does mediate vanishes, and in this
mediation, the mediation itself is sublated" (EL §50). The world, understood as independent
being, is superseded by God whose existence is the nullification of the independent existence of
the world.
The sense in which mediation is intended in this context is crucial to Hegel's ultimate
programme. It is a mechanism of reflection which allows us to see that an object — in this case
the world — is not independent, and reflection forces us to move to its further condition.
Mediation is thus, to use Hegel's word, an elevation, not a lateral implication. Furthermore, and
precisely because it is an elevating move, it must eventually end when a certain satisfactory
position has been attained: in that way it sublates itself — it becomes what it is through the
negation of the prior stages of mediation. (The motion of mediation resembles the triadic
structure in which dialectic negates a given judgement and transforms itself into something
beyond that judgement.) It is worth noting that the criteria of this sublation are not specified with
the result that we do not know what conditions of satisfaction Hegel requires. That is to say,
when is a sublation not just a negation? The major difficulty with this account of mediation is
that it appears to be a custom built concept serving the process of justifying a certain traditional
theological conception of being. The philosophical enterprise of finding conditions, which Hegel
takes to be quite natural, becomes, willy nilly, a moment of thinking the Absolute.

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(ii) Transcendental Thesis

In the "Third Position of Thought towards Objectivity" Hegel attempts to offer a further
refinement of the concept of mediation (EL §62). Mediation, Hegel suggests, is a quality of
anything comprehended through categories: "these categories are restricted determinations,
forms of what is conditioned, dependent, and mediated". So a mediated object is not unlimited
(it is restricted), not absolute (it is conditioned), and not independent. Categories, Hegel goes on
to say, are synonyms of concepts. So to comprehend — to think through concepts — is to grasp
an object (Gegenstand) "in the form of something conditioned and mediated". Mediation has the
property, like concepts, of determining an object and in that sense mediation is a formal quality.
Hegel adds to this transcendental implication when he asserts that mediation is not a dispensable
middle point standing between the object and the subject. It seems, in fact, that the object is
rationally unavailable except through mediation. Hegel makes a further claim when he argues
that explanation and comprehension are matters of movement from a particular mediation to
another particular mediation. We might put this simply by saying that knowledge is ineluctably
conceptual. Gathering these thoughts together we can see that two claims are thereby made: that
(a) we cannot know an object except conceptually, and (b) that what we can know about objects
depends on what mediations are entailed, rather than what we can directly claim of the object. In
making these two claims Hegel is obviously committed to a conceptualism. His position is that
the conceptual possibilities of an object determine the knowledge that we might achieve.
Mediation is thus no middle point — as concepts or ideas are in realist representationalism —
between the judging subject and the indifferent object.
Hegel presents this position transcendentally. He demonstrates that if we do not explain
knowledge as containing mediation then our language falls into incoherence. This, he contends,
is precisely what happens in Jacobi. Hegel argues for the ineluctability of mediation by
exploring Jacobi's attempt to exploit an antithetical meaning of reason and to make it equivalent
to faith: "since mediated knowledge is supposed to be restricted simply to a finite content, it
follows that reason is immediate knowing, faith" (EL §63). Hegel's criticism of this is especially
acute. What he wants to do, in effect, is to show that Jacobi's distinctions are necessarily bogus
in that they incoherently claim a realm of thought in which mediation might not be operative. In
particular Hegel questions the use of terms for the psychological dispositions that we allegedly
have when we attain this immediate knowledge of God. For instance, Jacobi opposes knowing to
believing, and yet also claims that believing is immediate knowing. What is the difference
between these two senses of knowing? Jacobi, according to Hegel, never explains. Another
instance of this confusion centres around Jacobi's idea of intuiting. Jacobi opposes intuiting to
thinking (since the latter seems to be suggestive of finitude). But what else is intuiting other than
thinking? Surely intuiting has to be an intellectual process. If this is the case then, to finish
Hegel's argument, intuiting must also contain mediation. It is interesting to note that this
important argument has nothing to say about the Absolute. Instead mediation is presented purely
in the context of a necessary structure of knowledge.

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 BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

(Hi) Contentual Thesis

We have already seen that the elevation thesis is explicated in the context of our knowledge of
God. This context is also operative for the contentual thesis. In the contentual thesis Hegel
argues that immediate knowing is one-sided in that it fails to include the mediated element of
knowledge. As something one-sided its very form allegedly reduces its content to one-sidedness
and ultimately to abstraction. That is to say, the content is necessarily deformed into a uni-
dimensionality. As such it is an abstraction from the concreteness of the original and is thereby
false representation. What Hegel is pointing out here is the now familiar idea that a method pre-
determines the possibility of the content. Since immediate knowing excludes mediation, its
objects are objects that themselves contain no mediation. If we were to concede that the objects
were internally mediated then we would already have admitted to a form of knowing that is
different in kind from immediate knowing.
The contentual thesis introduces two new ideas: the one just stated that (a) form
determines contentual possibility, and (b) that a content can have mediational structure. What (b)
means is that there are objects in which we discern diversity in unity; a substance, as traditional
metaphysics would term it. Hegel wants to allow this as otherwise the philosophical account of
content would, contrary to certain experiences, always be discrete and atomic. When knowledge
of God is considered, however, we discover what a mistake this is since, as Hegel claims, God
can "only be called spirit inasmuch as he is known (gewufif) as inwardly mediating himself with
himself. Only in this way is he concrete, living and spirit; and that is just why the knowing of
God as spirit contains mediation within it" (EL §74). In other words God, as he is known to us,
is not a lifeless abstraction, and that entails that this knowledge is not reducible to the one-
sidedness of immediacy. Knowledge of God, then, is always mediation. In this way Hegel offers
a complex thesis: in so far as a thing is inherently mediational, it must be known through
mediation. Mediation is both the property of the object and knowledge: knowledge, as it were,
moulds itself to the object by its own processes of mediation.
We should note that in pursuing this model of mediation Hegel is proposing a theory
designed to make possible knowledge of God and of the Absolute. Consequently this theory has
no interest in particularity since particularity, as we have yet to see, cannot be known as
inwardly mediating contents. This is a crucial step of the theory. In its abstraction immediate
knowing relates the particular instance to itself. That is, since it is one-sided it takes the
immediate particular to be related to itself alone. But this will not work even for particulars,
Hegel argues, since "the particular is precisely the relating of itself to another outside it". The
case of God, however, is rather special. Since all knowing contains mediation we might think
that God is mediated "to another outside it". But that is not so. God, apparently, is not a
particular. As the polemical argument has put it: he is reduced to particularity by immediate
knowing, so a method which is not reductive will allow God to be known as a concrete
universal. The result of this is that Hegel is required to explain mediation in a different context.
The Aristotelian formulation that we have already seen is used to explain the nature of God: "as
inwardly mediating himself with himself. So Hegel has to provide an explanation of mediation
in which the content — in this case God — is not "the relating of itself to another outside it". As

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Hegel himself explains it: "But a content can only be recognized as what is true inasmuch as it is
not mediated with an other, i.e., is not finite, so that it mediates itself with itself, and is in this
way both mediation and immediate self-relation all in one". What Hegel seems to be saying here
is that when we judge the truth of our knowledge of God it cannot be a matter of referring the
content to conditions outside God. That procedure is applicable to particularity. God, however, is
unique. The experience of God is immediate in that we do not infer it, but it is mediated in the
sense that it is the experience of a unity in diversity, not a flat particular. So the function of
mediation as we see it here is entirely that of explaining the way in which God can be known.
The argument relies on an unusual sense of the isomorphism of God and knowledge, and, more
fundamentally, on an agreed notion of God.

(iv) Genetic Thesis

Hegel, as we have seen, argues that the doctrine of immediate knowing adopts an "excluding
posture" (EL §64) in that it holds that mediation is not only insufficient for knowledge of the
Absolute, but should be abandoned. Thus far, the discussion of mediation is related in various
ways to the question of the knowability of the Absolute. By means of three examples (EL §66),
however, Hegel makes a strikingly different claim to the effect that the genesis of a thing or a
state of affairs is its mediation. The senses in which that genesis can be explained are all,
apparently, inclusive within what we might understand as the genetic mediation. Examples are
of course unusual in Hegel's logic. They are all the more perplexing here in that the examples he
provides give rise to an understanding of mediation which is quite at odds with cognition of the
Absolute. Furthermore, the examples are internally problematic, as we shall see, in that they fail
to distinguish genesis from validity.
The first example in which we find the genetic thesis examines the case of mathematical
knowledge. A mathematician may have sophisticated answers to mathematical problems
immediately available, though that sophistication is the product of long education. In that sense
the immediacy is apparently inseparable from the conditions that produced it. What mediation
does not explain here, however, is the truth status of the uttered mathematical proposition,
merely the extra-mathematical and empirical conditions that in a particular sense made it
possible. The mathematician's knowledge and her education are obviously not disconnected, but
what are we to make of the connection? The validity or otherwise of those proofs that the
mathematician may effortlessly and immediately produce cannot be validated by recounting the
process through which the mathematician has come to be a mathematician. It would, of course,
be rather odd were the mathematician to claim that these proofs were known to her
independently of education. But even so, their invalidity could not simply be assumed. (It might
be said that mediation refers to the process which, to pursue the instance, normally produces a
mathematician, though that is to apply an interpretation to Hegel's words which is far from
obvious.)
The second example provided by Hegel is that of the parent as offspring. He notes that
"the seed and the parents are an immediate, originating existence with regard to the children,
etc., which are the offspring. But, for all that the seed and the parents (in virtue of their just

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 BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

transcendental thesis tends to support Hegel's conclusion in that it demonstrates the difficulties
that a position has in expressing itself once mediation has been excluded. Insofar as it is
effective against Jacobi who represents immediate knowing, Hegel's claim can be deemed
reasonable. The contentual thesis once again looks like a custom built thesis designed to
facilitate expression of the Absolute. We ourselves cannot apply the findings of that thesis to
other phenomena because of what Hegel has said about particularity. So once again we must
accept a controversial pre-condition. Finally, the genetic thesis certainly allows for the
interdependence of immediacy and mediation. But the drawback is that it does so in a context
which is both artificial and internally problematic.

2 Adorno on Mediation

Although Adorno regards Hegel's metaphysical project as inimical to the true task of
philosophy, that of accounting for particularity, he nevertheless borrows several concepts from
Hegel in order precisely to do philosophical justice to particularity. Mediation is the concept
most central to his philosophy. Adorno attempts to reconstruct what he understands by
mediation within the post-metaphysical requirements of contemporary thought. He employs the
concept of mediation in two ways: first, as a solution to the subject-object problem and, second,
as a conceptualism which is close to what we have seen in Hegel (particularly the contentual
thesis). There is immediately something odd about two such claims being made in the name of
the same concept. The subject-object question is one of epistemology and invariably returns to
philosophy because of the ineradicable idea that there is an independent object which concepts
grasp in some way. Conceptualism, however, is a position which looks only at the internal
relations of concepts. I shall briefly examine both of Adomo's employments of mediation and
assess the compatibility of his claims.

(i) Subject-Object Mediation

Adorno holds that the concepts of subject and object cannot be established as though
independent of each other. He also contends that the subject-object theories which have emerged
from representationalism (empiricism and idealism) fundamentally misconstrue the nature of
experience. Unlike certain other philosophers, however, he does not go on to claim that the
subject-object enterprise is fundamentally misguided and should simply be abandoned. He
argues, rather, that the available subject-object models lead to difficulties. In contrast to
representationalism's various subject-object models Adorno opts for a model, based on some
kind of reciprocity, which he terms mediation. It is clear that Adomo believes this concept to be
essentially Hegelian.4 Mediation is expected to carry a heavy burden in Adomo's philosophy. It
sometimes seems to be proposed as a solution to virtually every problem in modem philosophy.
It seems to me that mediation conflates, rather than synthesizes, two very different claims: first,
a materialist claim about the priority of non-conceptuality and second, an idealist claim about the
conceptual nature of experience. The result is that we find two competing strands of thought
which ultimately prevent Adorno from resolving what he sees as the various problems of
representationalism.

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Even this brief characterization of Adorno's subject-object enterprise alerts us to an

entirely different set of concerns to those that give rise to Hegel's concept of mediation. What,
we might ask, allows Adorno to employ the concept? The way in which I have identified the
different tendencies of Hegel's concept of mediation is a possible starting point. First, the
elevation thesis clearly cannot fit the programme conceived by Adorno. He proposes a subject-
object theory whereas the elevation thesis is designed to get us from contingency to necessity.
The same difficulty might be noted of the contentual thesis since Hegel demonstrates the thesis
by showing that a particular content, God, must be known in a particular way. However Adorno
emends it for his own purposes. He takes it to be applicable to all possible objects, not simply
God. Hence all objects, all particulars, contain mediation. (Adorno, as a result of a deflationary
reading of Hegel's metaphysics, makes virtually no effective distinction between dialectic and
mediation.) The genetic thesis is simply unsuitable as an act of knowledge. That leaves the
transcendental thesis which, given some reconstruction of Adorno's position, is the place from
which his concept of mediation originally derives. Of course, the general context needs to be
abandoned, but that still leaves, in Adomo's view, a fruitful framework.
The exact nature of subject-object mediation — at least as Adomo intends it — is at best
obscure. Mediation does not name a purely logical relationship. That is to say, the very idea of a
subject or of an object does not immediately entail the other. A logical relation remains logical
and does not apply to the epistemological issues of the subject-object relationship Adomo is
attempting to describe. Mediation, for Adorno, involves wider claims about the sort of thing an
object must be understood as and how that object affects concepts and the users of those
concepts, subjects. In this light, mediation appears to be a causal relationship. Traditionally
causal theories have reduced epistemology to two options, and these options are based on
relationships of subordination. These are the options, as Fichte put it, of "whether the
independence of the thing should be sacrificed to the independence of the self, or, conversely,
the independence of the self to that of the thing".5 What Adorno appears to attempt is a
conflation of the two strands of representationalism: the subject engenders the object in the sense
that the meanings of objects are not independent of humans; however the object occasions the
subject in the sense that as an experiencing and thinking entity the subject must respond to the
object. The object, in this way, provides the environment in which the subject is realized. In this
respect Adorno identifies the subject as the "how" and the object as the "what" of the
mediational process (ND 183).6 That is — to use Adorno's terminology — the subject mediates
the object through concepts, whereas the object mediates the subject though meaning. In effect, a
subject becomes a subject, and an object an object by virtue of the respective and reciprocal act
of meaning constitution. As Adorno himself puts it, subject and object "constitute (konstituieren)
one another as much as — by virtue of such constitution — they depart from one another" (ND
174). In essence, this thesis preserves the subject-object relation in a way which is quite distinct
from empiricist and idealist models of that relation. This is most evident in the role that Adomo
gives to the object. Unlike the unilinear as opposed to reciprocal or mediational causal theories,
Adorno's version sees objects as neither the effect of an individual's ideas (idealism), nor as
inherently meaningful (realism). Rather, the object is independently meaningful in just the sense
that it is not reducible to an individual. Its meaning is, as the metaphor puts it, its "sedimented

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history" (ND 163). That, of course, does not put it beyond the subject since the object is
explicable in terms of meaning. It is in this context that Adorno offers the thesis of the priority of
the object. This thesis provides the possibility of a regeneration of the epistemological
programme which hitherto, in Adorno's view, has proceeded along exclusively subjectivist or
objective lines: "Subjectivity changes its quality in a context which it is unable to evolve on its
own. Due to the inequality inherent in the concept of mediation, the subject enters into the object
altogether differently from the way the object enters into the subject. An object can be thought
only by a subject but always remains something other than the subject (ND 183, my italics).
Adorno's way of stating the reason for the object's priority is that the object must be given
priority in mediation since it is mediated according to its own concept (that is, according to what
it is) (SO 502), whilst the subject must "adjust" and unfold according to the object (M> 138).
And here we come to the central issue: if the object is mediated according to its own concept,
then it is mediated according to what it is itself. It must therefore be more than sense data
awaiting description, a qualitatively different act. But because it is mediated it is brought to
knowledge through consciousness. From this it appears that Adorno sees the object as
conceptually independent (as opposed to independent of concepts). There is no need to see the
object as a material thing waiting to be sucked in by thought. Rather consciousness adjusts to the
object precisely as a conceptual given.
This leads to the question: does Adorno not thereby fall into a conceptualism which need
not touch or include the idea of a material given? An avowed idealist, Michael Oakeshott, puts
the conceptualist position succinctly: "The notion that thought requires raw material, a datum
which is not itself judgement, and the consequent eagerness to discover its character, may be
traced to the fact that in experience, so far as we can recollect, we find ourselves always
manipulating some material independent of the actual process of manipulation. But it is false to
infer from this that what is manipulated is not itself judgement".7 As John McDowell has made
clear: either we concede a given or we posit the priority of concepts.8 The implications of either
are unattractive. Yet Adorno uses the idea of mediation somehow to encompass both.
Conflations are, of course, notoriously volatile. Some questions have to be asked about the idea
of reciprocity that is being presented in the thesis of mediation. Adorno, as we have seen,
maintains that there is an asymmetry in this process. What his theory needs to show is that
mediation is not simply an equivocal term which covers two operations of different species. Yet
no justification is to be found. The effect in Adomo's work is that the respective processes of
object mediation and subject mediation do not amount to reciprocity. Furthermore, both could
exist without reference to the other. Mediation therefore remains fundamentally equivocal in that
it is a cover term for two different operations corresponding to two different relationships.
Object mediation is nothing more that Adomo's attempt at materialism; subject mediation is his
attempt at idealism. At no point does Adorno offer a satisfying account of a possible synthetic
relationship between these such as to permit him to use mediation in the way he does.

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fii| Conceptual Mediation

Adomo provides an account of the relations between concepts, relations which he terms
mediation. The idea is simple enough. Adomo claims that no concept can be essentially
unmediated, and that feature of concepts in some way undermines any foundationalist
hypostatization of any concept: "The first of the philosophers makes a total claim: it is
unmediated and immediate"9; "The doctrine that everything is mediated, even supporting
immediacy, is irreconcilable with the urge to 'reduction' ...".10 For Adomo concept mediation
entails that the incompleteness of concepts necessitates other concepts. This latter is a Hegelian
idea, corresponding, as already noted, to part of the contentual thesis. But the self-generated
conceptualism of which Hegel is accused by Adomo is replaced by a conceptualism apparently
guided solely by the subjective response to objectivity. This alone, Adomo thinks, is sufficient
to avoid an abstract conceptualism. In his logic Hegel insists that mediation is the rational way
of understanding the relations between the concepts that underpin our world: "one of the
determinations has truth only through its mediation by the other" (EL §70). This idea of truth
does not refer to any non-conceptual state-of-affairs (the idea that our knowledge is grounded in
ontological states-of-affairs which are not directly accessible to us). At a crucial point, indeed,
Hegel makes clear that the concept of mediation can have nothing to do with objects in any
ontological sense: "With regard to the equally immediate consciousness of the existence of
external things, this is nothing else than sensible consciousness; that we have a consciousness of
this kind is the least of all cognitions. All that is of interest here is to know that this immediate
knowing of the being of external things is deception and error, and that there is no truth in the
sensible as such, but that the being of these external things is rather something-contingent,
something that passes away, or a semblance; they are essentially this: to have only an existence
that is separable from their concept, or their essence" (EL §76). This may seem to be the kind of
position that Adomo takes as evidence of an unfettered idealism. Curiously, Adomo himself
uses similar language without, it seems, regarding himself as the proponent of an abstract
conceptualism. In his discussion of constellations Adomo seems to get at something which
sounds like this. The theory of constellations reads like a conceptual coherentism, not unlike the
one espoused by Oakeshott. It is the idea that although experience is ultimately conceptual no
single concept can adequately express the totality of experience. In this regard Adomo claims
that the "determinable flaw (bestimmbare Fehler) in every concept makes it necessary to cite
others" (ND 53). The idea of a determinable flaw in concepts is rather strange. If it is a merely
rhetorical way of saying that concepts are incomplete then we have thereby no reason to commit
ourselves to materialism. That is, truth is the result of an adequate arrangement of concepts.
Further comments on constellations suggest just this: "as a constellation, theoretical thought
circles the concept it would like to unseal, hoping that it might open like the lock of a well-
guarded safe-deposit box" (ND 163). The emphasis of this idea is the conceptual basis of
knowledge. In this respect, at least, Adomo offers a conceptualism which simply fails to cohere
with the specifically anti-idealist materialism he espouses in subject-object mediation.

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Adomo's concept of mediation is essentially ambiguous. Rather than providing a

synthetic account of subject-object mediation he provides two competing strands which are
misleadingly named under the one idea. The fear of a vulgar materialism drives Adorno towards
an idealism that is at odds with the materialism he really wants to offer. Furthermore, his
conceptual mediation cannot fit with the reciprocity claim of subject-object mediation. It is clear
enough, too, that his epistemological employment of mediation has no obvious parallel in
Hegel's philosophy. Of Hegel himself we might note that what I designate as the transcendental
thesis appears more congenial to contemporary philosophical tastes. But from what we have seen
of its exposition Hegel's intentions for the concept of mediation are fundamentally cast within
his concerns with the Absolute. As such the concept of mediation is conceived by its original
author in a variety of competing forms for purposes quite the contrary of those to which it is put
by Adorno.
Brian O'Connor
University College Dublin

1 G. W. F. Hegel, Science ofLogic, trans. A. V. Miller (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1969), p. 68.
2 EL = G. W. F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting,
and H. S. Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991).
3 Kant for a number of reasons is held to have offered a theory deficient in its ability to
understand the Absolute. First, Kant's investigation of the structure of perception sets
out to account for only the subjective components of perception. However the range of
what is subjective is extended to all elements of perception. The result is that objectivity
is collapsed into subjectivity since nothing can be posited as other than the empirical
subject except by the subject (EL §41). Thus the empty forms of the categories are
determined by a content which, in the form of intuition, is "equally itself merely
subjective" (EL §43). Second, Hegel turns Kant's critique of Aristotle against Kant
himself and argues that the categories are haphazardly taken from traditional logic, rather
than deduced: deduction alone making them suitable philosophical concepts (EL §42).
Third, because the categories are determined only through sensibility they cannot be
employed to explain "the Absolute, which is not given in perception" (EL §44). It is
interesting to note that there is a whole subsequent tradition of philosophy which takes its
lead from Hegel's critique of Kant. That is, it follows Hegel in rejecting an
overdeterminate category thinking. At the same time, however, it is even less enchanted
by the motivations behind Hegel's critique, namely, the need for a philosophy which can
rationally express the Absolute. Clearly some strange transformation has taken place.
4
"There is nothing that is not mediated, and yet, as Hegel emphasised, mediation must
always refer to some mediated thing, without which there would be no mediation" (ND
171, emended).
5 J. G. Fichte, The Science of Knowledge, trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), p.14.
6 ND = Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London: Routledge,
1973).
7 Michael Oakeshott, Experience and its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1933), p. 19.

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8 Cf. John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
1996), Lecture I.
9 Theodor W. Adomo, Against Epistemology: A Metacritique, trans. Willis Domingo
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), p. 7.
10 Ibid., p. 4.

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