Anotace:
This study explores the fundamental traits of Adorno’s conceptual understanding of modernity. In Czech sociology, there has not been a serious discussion of Adorno’s seminal oeuvre, this article aims to fill that gap. The aim is to reconstruct the very basis of Adorno’s sociological method: firstly, the essay turns its attention to the historically specific mode of subsumption of human action to the conceptual totality of class domination. In this process, an individual adopts a positive identity within which its suppressed, ontologically negative complement – its dynamic non-identity, persists. Secondly, the study deals with Adorno’s derivation of the concept of social essence. In this respect, he draws on Marx’s Capital, but Adorno’s critical reading introduces an important conceptual innovation: under the conditions of Keynesianism, Adorno challenges the validity of Marx’s theorization of law-like objectivity of value and replaces it with the concept of exchange as the universal model of social activity. However, the study argues that Adorno’s reconstruction of Marx’s critique of political economy has reified Keynesian management of the capitalist economy.