Can We Know a World We Do Not Create? Kant’s Copernican Revolution and Adorno’s Axial Turn

1. The Fundamental Question

If the world exists independently of our minds, how can we know it? Everything we understand passes through our capacities to perceive, distinguish, and interpret. Yet we expect our judgments to tell us something about a reality that does not depend entirely on these capacities. How can thought know a world it does not create?

In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Friedrich Engels identifies the relationship between thought and being as the fundamental question of philosophy. He distinguishes between the priority of thought or nature and the possibility of knowing the real world. Although these problems are connected, accepting that nature exists independently of consciousness does not explain how our judgments can provide objective knowledge of it.

Immanuel Kant and Theodor W. Adorno approach this difficulty from different directions. Kant investigates the conditions that make objective knowledge possible, while Adorno questions whether those conditions can fully account for the objects we seek to understand. Their approaches bring a tension into focus: knowledge depends on the activity of thought, yet its objects cannot simply be equated with the conditions under which we know them.

2. The World and the Conditions of Knowing It

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant proposes that we reconsider how knowledge relates to its objects. Rather than assuming that the mind simply receives the world as it exists independently of us, he asks whether objects, insofar as we can experience them, must conform to the conditions of our cognition. This Copernican turn shifts attention towards the capacities that make experience and objective judgment possible.

Kant distinguishes between sensibility, through which objects are given to us in intuition, and understanding, through which we think them by means of concepts. Neither can produce knowledge independently of the other. Sensible intuition provides what is given, while concepts enable us to identify objects and make judgments about them. Impressions alone do not amount to knowledge of an object, just as concepts without sensible content cannot provide theoretical knowledge of objects.

This account does not mean that individuals invent the world according to their wishes. Kant investigates the conditions of experience that make objective knowledge possible, rather than the private beliefs of particular individuals. His distinction between appearances and things in themselves establishes the limits of theoretical knowledge. Appearances are not illusions; they are objects as we can experience them under the conditions of human cognition. We cannot, however, claim theoretical knowledge of things considered independently of those conditions.

Kant thus explains how the subject's contribution makes objective knowledge possible without implying that the subject freely determines everything it knows. His account raises a further question: how should we understand the subject's authority to establish the conditions of knowledge when the knowing subject itself belongs to the reality it seeks to comprehend?

3. When the Knower Becomes Part of the World

Adorno's idea of the priority of the object brings this question to the centre of critical philosophy. Human beings have bodies, depend on material conditions, and develop within particular histories. Their capacities to perceive and think are themselves part of the reality they seek to understand. The subject cannot therefore be treated as the ultimate ground of knowledge without examining its dependence on conditions it has neither chosen nor produced in their entirety.

This criticism requires a distinction. Kant's transcendental subject is not simply the empirical individual with a particular body and personal history; it refers to the conditions under which experience and knowledge are possible. Adorno's challenge concerns the philosophical priority accorded to the subject when those conditions are considered apart from the subject's dependence on the object. Thought arises within a reality that it can interpret but never wholly establish on its own.

In the preface to Negative Dialectics, Adorno describes his project as an attempt, through critical self-reflection, to give the Copernican revolution an “axial turn.” Rather than abandoning Kant's critical examination of knowledge, Adorno turns that examination towards the limits of the subject's authority. Thought must reflect on its own activity while recognizing that the object places demands on it that its concepts cannot settle in advance.

The priority of the object is therefore not a simple reversal in which matter replaces thought as an unquestionable first principle. It requires us to examine how conceptual understanding responds to what it seeks to comprehend. The difficulty becomes concrete when we consider how a concept can identify an object correctly while still failing to capture its particular character.

4. When a Concept Gets It Right—and Still Falls Short

Calling a painting a portrait identifies the kind of work we are looking at, but the category alone cannot explain its distinctive character. This gap between conceptual identification and the particular object is central to Adorno’s idea of non-identity: what something is cannot be fully exhausted by the concept under which we understand it.

Adorno’s idea of constellation offers a way to explore what a single classification leaves unresolved. Rather than relying on one concept to define an object, constellative thinking brings together different determinations and examines how their relationships illuminate aspects of the work. The aim is to develop an interpretation grounded in the object itself, allowing its particular features to qualify and sometimes challenge the concepts through which we initially approach it.

Consider a portrait whose sitter initially appears confident and self-assured. The upright posture, direct gaze, and controlled expression suggest authority, an impression reinforced by the composition and lighting. Yet closer examination complicates this reading. The contrast between light and shadow, the arrangement of the figure within the pictorial space, and variations in the handling of paint may introduce tensions into the sitter’s apparent composure. The formal pose, costume, and setting evoke conventions associated with social status and authority, although the painting need not simply confirm the image they establish. While the sharply defined face emphasizes the sitter’s composure, looser brushwork elsewhere draws attention to the material surface and the process through which the figure is represented. These features do not necessarily reveal a hidden psychological truth; rather, they make the sitter’s apparent self-assurance less straightforward than it first seemed. The interpretation changes as we consider how the painting’s formal, material, and historical dimensions qualify one another.

The example illustrates how constellative thinking can deepen conceptual understanding. The sitter’s expression, the composition, the handling of paint, and the conventions of portraiture acquire significance through their interplay, allowing each to modify how we understand the others. Non-identity identifies the limits of conceptual identification, while constellation provides a way to respond to them without abandoning concepts altogether. The resulting interpretation becomes more differentiated, although it does not exhaust the work’s meaning. This raises a further question: how can we justify one interpretation as better than another?

5. Can We Know More Than Our Concepts Allow?

If interpretations can change as we attend more closely to an object, how can we judge that one interpretation is better than another? A new reading of a painting may account for features that an earlier account overlooked, yet it too relies on concepts and assumptions. We cannot simply step outside thought to compare our interpretation with reality as it exists independently of every form of mediation.

Adorno's critical approach nevertheless offers grounds for distinguishing more adequate interpretations from less adequate ones. We can examine contradictions within an account, attend to features its categories cannot explain, and question the assumptions that shape its understanding of the object. An interpretation becomes open to revision when it cannot adequately account for what it claims to explain. By contrast, an account that protects its categories against every challenge undermines its own capacity for critical inquiry.

These criteria do not guarantee a definitive description of reality. They allow us to make reasoned comparisons between interpretations according to their explanatory power, their responsiveness to relevant features, and their willingness to revise assumptions when difficulties arise. Objectivity need not require a standpoint outside all mediation; it can involve the capacity of our judgments to answer to what they seek to understand, including features that challenge their initial assumptions.

Kant explains why knowledge depends on the conditions through which we experience and think about objects; Adorno asks us to recognize that those conditions do not exhaust the objects themselves. Their approaches suggest that objectivity requires both the conceptual activity through which reality becomes intelligible and a critical openness to what that activity cannot fully determine. We can know a world we do not create because our interpretations remain answerable to a reality that can challenge the concepts through which we understand it.

References

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

Engels, F. (1970). Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy. Progress Publishers.

Kant, I. (1998). Critique of pure reason (P. Guyer & A. W. Wood, Trans. & Eds.). Cambridge University Press.