"Atonal" Philosophy Against "identity"

As a core person of Frankfurt School,Theodor Adorno is an important link to study the development situation of the whole Western Marxism.In face of the new situation appear as a result of capitalist society development as well as the tragedies occur during the social development of human being such as the Second World War,Adorno started to rethink about the causes behind these problems,and Negative Dialectics is the conclusion and result of his reflection.Analyzing Negative Dialectics could best reflect and summarize that the concept of Adorno thought is “atonity”.As a musical aesthete,Adorno desired to design an atonal philosophy to be opposed to the “identity” principle in the traditional western metaphysics.Adorno believed that it was such identity principle that caused human beings to be bound to the coercive society today and resulted in various disasters to them.Beyond that,under this principle,the enlightened western society was replaced under new myth governance,and the enlightening reason became a new myth.Therefore,Adorno intended to break the old identity system and reestablish an atonal philosophy featured by non-identity.First of all,he focused on dialectic of Hegel for the criticism,considering that though the Hegel’s dialectics mode of“negation of negation” seemed to be negated twice,but its final propose was to pursue affirmation,this represented a coercive “identity”,and “absolute negation” must be used to be opposed to “negation of negation”.After that,Adorno reconstructed Marxist dialectics to criticize the traditional metaphysical mode of thought in the criticism method of “negativity”,and he was determined to restore liberty and liberation of humankind.Adorno’s such atonal philosophy was supported by “star cluster” theory,he thought that the philosophical ideas should not be restricted under the identical system,instead,they should be independent but unable to be separated,just like the star cluster in the sky.From the ideological level,Adorno’s Negative Dialectics was very profound,it inspected the inherent malady in the Capitalist social ideology field with sharp eyes,and its “negativity” criticism inherited the criticalness and the revolutionary tradition of Marxist dialectics.However,though Adorno was very profound in the ideological level,he was opposed to practice,disregarded the reality,and considered that it was insufficient to overturn the Capitalism with proletariat at this time so as to still compromise to the reality of Capitalism society where he was located,this was the place where he disjointed with Marxist dialectic.