Abstract

This article looks at Adorno’s negative dialectics by focusing on the concepts of negativity and utopia. Against later Critical Theory and social theories similarly oriented towards emancipation, which tend to discredit the concept of utopia in favor of an orientation towards pragmatic goals, I want to show that Adorno’s negative dialectics formulates a position that surpasses the antithesis of realism and utopia by presenting us with pragmatic goals while still retaining a strong concept of utopia.