Thinking the Object: Peirce’s Signs and Adorno’s Constellations

1. Thinking and Its Object

We understand reality through signs and concepts. Signs allow us to investigate events, formulate hypotheses, and communicate findings; concepts enable us to identify objects and establish relations among them. Yet the means through which we understand something also shape what we are able to recognize about it. How, then, can thought work through its representations while remaining responsive to the reality they are intended to disclose?

Charles Sanders Peirce and Theodor W. Adorno approach this problem from different philosophical traditions. Peirce examines how signs participate in reasoning and scientific inquiry, while Adorno investigates the limitations of conceptual identification. Their respective notions of marshalling of signs and constellation of concepts offer a way to explore a common concern: how the relations among the elements of thought contribute to understanding an object. Their approaches nevertheless differ in emphasis. Peirce focuses on the investigation of truth, whereas Adorno examines how conceptual thought can obscure the particularity of what it seeks to comprehend.

2. Peirce: Signs in the Investigation of Reality

Peirce distinguishes three modes of signification according to how a sign relates to its object. An icon signifies through a quality or resemblance, as a diagram can represent the relations within a structure. An index signifies through an actual connection, as smoke may indicate fire. A symbol signifies through a rule or habit, as words generally do within a language. These categories help explain how different kinds of signs contribute to the process of understanding, although they need not function in isolation from one another.

Scientific inquiry illustrates their relevance. A chemist investigating an unknown substance may observe its behaviour, measure its properties, represent relations in a diagram, and formulate a hypothesis using symbolic formulas. Observations provide evidence, diagrams help articulate relations, and formulas express possible accounts of the substance’s composition. The chemist must coordinate these resources to determine which explanation best accounts for the available evidence.

Peirce describes this activity as the marshalling of signs: “the art of reasoning is the art of marshalling such signs, and of finding out the truth” (Peirce, 1998, p. 10). Reasoning involves arranging signs so that they contribute to an inquiry, enabling the investigator to draw inferences and assess explanations. A formula may express a possible relationship, for instance, but its usefulness depends on whether the proposed relationship accords with experimental results. Further observations may support the hypothesis or require its revision.

The significance of this process lies in its orientation toward the object under investigation. The organization of signs does not guarantee a true conclusion, since an inference may be logically valid even when its premises are mistaken. Rather, inquiry allows claims to be tested against evidence and corrected when they prove inadequate. Peirce’s account thus connects the coordination of signs with an ongoing investigation in which the properties and behaviour of the object provide grounds for assessing our conclusions.

3. Adorno: Concepts and the Non-Identical Object

Adorno approaches the relationship between thought and reality through the problem of conceptual identification. Concepts allow us to recognize objects by identifying their properties and placing them within general categories. Yet the characteristics of a particular object may not be fully expressed by the category under which it falls. The difficulty arises when thought treats its conceptual determination as an exhaustive account of what the object is.

In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno examine the historical separation of sign and image. The sign becomes associated with formalization, calculation, and the administration of objects, while the image retains a connection with expression and mimesis. This distinction belongs to their broader critique of enlightenment, in which the drive to make the world intelligible increasingly privileges what can be classified, measured, and controlled. As rationality becomes organized around these operations, dimensions of experience that resist them risk being marginalized.

Mimesis introduces a different way of thinking about our relation to objects. It points toward a responsiveness to their particularity that cannot be adequately captured by classification and conceptual subsumption alone. This does not imply access to reality outside all mediation. Rather, it raises the question of whether thought can acknowledge dimensions of its objects that its established categories leave unexpressed.

A related concern underlies Adorno’s concept of non-identity: the object exceeds the determinations through which thought identifies it. Non-identity does not designate an unknowable remainder wholly beyond understanding. It names the discrepancy between a particular object and the conceptual identity assigned to it. Concepts remain indispensable to thought, but their usefulness does not justify treating them as complete accounts of their objects.

Adorno’s concept of constellation responds to this difficulty. Instead of relying on a single concept to define an object, thought brings several concepts into relation around it. As Adorno writes:

“By themselves, constellations represent from without what the concept has cut away within: the ‘more’ which the concept is equally desirous and incapable of being” (Adorno, 1973, p. 162).

A constellation allows relations among concepts to disclose aspects of an object that an isolated determination leaves obscure. Its purpose is to develop a more differentiated understanding of the particular, rather than to produce a final definition by accumulating conceptual descriptions. The resulting configuration keeps thought attentive to the difference between its categories and the object those categories seek to comprehend.

4. From Marshalling to Constellation

Peirce’s marshalling of signs and Adorno’s constellation both direct attention to the relations through which thought develops an understanding of its object. Their significance becomes clearer, however, when we consider the different tasks those relations perform.

For Peirce, signs are coordinated within an inquiry directed toward truth. Their different functions enable investigators to formulate claims, draw inferences, and examine explanations against evidence. The organization of signs contributes to knowledge by making reasoning more systematic and its conclusions open to assessment. The object is what the inquiry seeks to understand and about which it attempts to establish something true.

Adorno’s constellation addresses the limitations of conceptual determination. Relations among concepts can illuminate aspects of an object that remain obscured when it is approached through a single category. This gives constellation a critical role: it enables thought to examine how its own conceptual operations shape what becomes intelligible. An account may be internally coherent and still overlook significant features of its object because of the categories through which it has been constructed.

The distinction extends to the purposes of their respective approaches. Peirce emphasizes the investigation and revision of claims, while Adorno examines the discrepancy between an object and the conceptual identity assigned to it. His critique also draws attention to the historical and social conditions that shape prevailing forms of intelligibility. Where Peirce investigates how reasoning can establish truth, Adorno asks how the organization of thought may restrict what can be recognized in the first place.

Read together, their approaches illuminate two dimensions of the relationship between thought and reality. The marshalling of signs matters because it enables inquiry to establish and test claims about an object; the constellation of concepts matters because it can reveal aspects of that object obscured by established determinations. In both cases, understanding depends on how the elements of thought are related to one another and to what they seek to comprehend. Yet the purposes of these relations remain distinct: Peirce develops an account of inquiry, while Adorno places the limits of conceptual thought under critical scrutiny.

5. Conclusion

Peirce and Adorno offer two distinct perspectives on how thought can remain responsive to its object. Peirce shows how the coordination of signs contributes to inquiry and the assessment of claims about reality. Adorno demonstrates how relations among concepts can make visible aspects of an object that conceptual identification leaves out.

Their comparison draws attention to a tension inherent in understanding: thought needs forms of mediation to make objects intelligible, yet those forms can also limit what it recognizes. Examining how signs and concepts are organized therefore helps us understand both how knowledge develops and why the objects of thought may continue to demand more than any single account can provide.

References

Adorno, T. W. (1973). Negative dialectics (E. B. Ashton, Trans.). Seabury Press.

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments (E. Jephcott, Trans.; G. S. Noerr, Ed.). Stanford University Press.

Peirce, C. S. (1998). What is a sign? In The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings (1893–1913) (Vol. 2, pp. 4–10). Indiana University Press.