The Kantian origin of Adorno's concept of metaphysical experience

Abstract

Metaphysical experience is one of the most obscure concepts in Adorno's Negative Dialectics. The obscurity stems partly from the way in which metaphysical experience is antinomic. To describe the antinomic character of metaphysical experience, Adorno situates it in relation to Kant's first Critique. He distinguishes two conceptions of antinomy in the first Critique: first, the explicit conception of antinomy that the transcendental dialectic exposes and resolves; and second, the implicit conception of antinomy that remains insoluble and structures the first Critique and Adorno's own concept of metaphysical experience. Yet Adorno does not clarify what he means by the antinomic structure of the first Critique and how this structure underlies his own concept of metaphysical experience. Nor does the scholarship on Adorno. This article reconstructs Adorno's response to these questions, and, in so doing, demonstrates the Kantian origin of Adorno's concept of metaphysical experience in Negative Dialectics.