Reality, Thought, and Language: Marx, Engels, and Adorno
We understand reality through concepts, distinctions, and definitions. These enable us to identify objects, interpret events, and communicate our understanding to others. Yet the fact that we interact with the world through such means does not establish that the world is exhausted by them. What we understand about an object cannot simply be assumed to be identical with what the object is. At the same time, we cannot step outside every form of human thought to compare our understanding with reality from a completely independent standpoint.
This difficulty acquires a particular significance from a materialist perspective. If human consciousness develops within material and historical conditions, how should we understand its relation to a reality that does not depend entirely on it? The problem concerns not only the origins of thought but also the conditions under which thought can claim to know something beyond itself.
Language offers a way into this problem because it belongs to the social development and articulation of human consciousness. Our understanding of reality takes shape through historically developed forms of expression and conceptual distinctions. The question, then, is how material reality, thought, and language are related: how reality becomes intelligible through historically and socially mediated forms of thought, and how these forms can remain answerable to an object that they do not simply constitute or exhaust.
Marx and Engels situate consciousness and language within the practical relations of human life. Adorno asks how thought can know objects through historically developed concepts that cannot fully capture what they address. My central claim is that these approaches illuminate complementary dimensions of a single problem: thought and language develop within material and social conditions, yet knowledge must remain answerable to objects that exceed our conceptual accounts. Adorno’s notion of constellation suggests how concepts can be brought into relation to develop a more adequate understanding without claiming to provide a final account of the object.
2. Marx and Engels: Material Life and Consciousness
In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels begin their account of history with actual human beings, their material conditions of existence, and the activities through which they sustain their lives. Human beings must produce the means of subsistence, respond to needs, reproduce themselves, and establish relations with one another. These activities provide the practical conditions within which their institutions, ideas, and forms of consciousness develop.
The order of the argument is significant. After considering four aspects of the fundamental historical relations, Marx and Engels write:
Jetzt erst, nachdem wir bereits vier Momente, vier Seiten der ursprünglichen, geschichtlichen Verhältnisse betrachtet haben, finden wir, daß der Mensch auch „Bewußtsein“ hat.
“Only now, after having considered four moments, four aspects of the primary historical relationships, do we find that man also possesses ‘consciousness’” (Marx & Engels, 1976, p. 44).
The passage places consciousness within an account of human existence that is already material and social. The four aspects concern the production of the means of subsistence, the emergence of new needs, the reproduction of human beings, and social intercourse. Consciousness cannot be treated as an independent starting point, detached from the activities and relations through which people produce their lives.
This argument changes how ideas must be explained. Rather than treating consciousness as a self-sufficient source of historical change, Marx and Engels ask us to understand it in relation to the people who think, the conditions in which they live, and the social relations in which their thinking takes shape. Their approach does not require every idea to be interpreted as a direct reflection of economic circumstances; it requires ideas to be studied within the historical life from which they emerge.
Engels’s account of human evolution offers a complementary perspective. In The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, he writes:
Arbeit zuerst, nach und dann mit ihr die Sprache.
“First labour, after it and then with it, speech” (Engels, 1987, p. 453).
Engels gives labour an initial priority in human development, while his subsequent account describes the interconnected development of the brain, the senses, speech, and collective activity. As these capacities develop, they also contribute to further changes in human life. The sequence therefore points towards an evolving relationship rather than a simple, one-directional causal chain.
This framework establishes the material and historical conditions for the emergence of language. The next step is to examine how Marx and Engels describe its place within consciousness itself.
3. Language as Practical and Social Consciousness
Marx and Engels develop their account of language in the same passage of The German Ideology:
Die Sprache ist so alt wie das Bewußtsein – die Sprache ist das praktische, auch für andre Menschen existierende, also auch für mich selbst erst existierende wirkliche Bewußtsein, und die Sprache entsteht, wie das Bewußtsein, erst aus dem Bedürfnis, der Notdurft des Verkehrs mit andern Menschen.
Their published English translation reads:
“Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well, and only therefore does it also exist for me; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men” (Marx & Engels, 1976, p. 44).
The opening claim that language is “as old as consciousness” challenges the idea that language appears only after consciousness has developed as a private, self-contained faculty. Marx and Engels are not presenting a detailed theory of the biological emergence of language, nor do they claim that every form of thought requires explicit verbal expression. Their concern is with consciousness as it exists in human life, where relations with others belong to the conditions under which individuals become conscious of themselves and their surroundings.
The expression “practical, real consciousness” locates this relationship in actual human activity. Consciousness cannot be adequately understood as an inward realm isolated from the world in which people act. Language belongs to the practical life through which human beings articulate their experience and establish relations with others.
The social dimension becomes explicit when Marx and Engels explain that language exists “for other men” and, for that reason, exists for the individual as well. Language arises from the need for Verkehr with other human beings. The German term can mean intercourse, interaction, or social relations; in this context, it directs attention to the relations through which human beings live and act together. Language is therefore more than a useful means of communication between individuals whose consciousness is already fully formed. Social relations are implicated in the very existence of human consciousness.
This does not entail that language creates material reality or that the world is merely a product of social agreement. Rather, consciousness develops within material and social relations, and language belongs to the practical conditions under which the world becomes intelligible to human beings. People do not first form a fully independent understanding of reality and then translate it into words; their understanding develops within shared activities in which experience is articulated, communicated, and interpreted.
Marx and Engels thus situate consciousness and language within the historical organisation of human life. Adorno takes up a related but distinct question: how can thought assess the adequacy of the concepts through which it understands its objects?
4. Adorno: Language, History, and Expression
In “Theses on the Language of the Philosopher,” Adorno examines how philosophy articulates its concerns through language that already carries a history of meanings and uses (Adorno, 2007, pp. 35–40). Philosophical language is inherited rather than invented anew by each thinker. Its words and distinctions have developed within intellectual traditions, and these histories affect how philosophical problems can be formulated.
A philosopher may seek to rethink freedom, reason, nature, or subjectivity, yet must begin with terms whose established meanings already shape the discussion. The philosopher’s intention alone cannot determine everything a word means or every implication it carries. Philosophical reflection therefore involves working critically with the language through which it proceeds.
Adorno’s concern is not simply that words sometimes fail to convey a thought clearly. Philosophical expression belongs to the process of thinking itself: the language in which a problem is formulated can influence which distinctions appear relevant and how an object is conceptualised. Language is thus part of philosophical inquiry rather than an external instrument used to communicate a thought already complete.
Philip Hogh’s Communication and Expression: Adorno’s Philosophy of Language provides a systematic interpretation of these issues, examining the relationship between language, meaning, communication, and expression in Adorno’s work (Hogh, 2017). His study helps clarify why the successful communication of a thought cannot by itself establish the adequacy of the understanding it expresses. Philosophical inquiry must also examine the conceptual assumptions through which its objects become intelligible.
The historical character of language therefore raises a question about the adequacy of philosophical concepts. If thought approaches objects through inherited forms of expression and conceptualisation, how can it avoid treating its own determinations as a complete account of what those objects are? Adorno develops this problem through his critique of identity-thinking.
5. The Object and the Limits of Conceptual Thought
In Negative Dialectics, Adorno challenges identity-thinking: the tendency to treat an object as fully determined by the concept under which it is understood. Conceptual thought is indispensable to knowledge because it allows us to identify objects, distinguish features, establish relations, and make judgements. The problem arises when identifying something through a concept is taken to provide a complete account of what it is.
A concept brings an object under a general determination, but the particular may possess characteristics, relations, or a history that this determination does not adequately capture. Adorno’s notion of non-identity names the discrepancy between an object and its conceptual determination. It does not imply that knowledge is impossible; rather, it requires thought to recognise that a conceptual account, however useful, cannot automatically be equated with the object itself.
Adorno’s emphasis on the priority of the object develops this argument. The object is not simply a passive product of the subject’s conceptual activity. The knowing subject is itself part of the world it seeks to understand, and its ways of thinking cannot establish the object’s nature by their own authority. In the section “The Object’s Preponderance,” Adorno challenges the philosophical tendency to give the subject unconditional precedence over the object (Adorno, 1973, pp. 183–186).
Although this problem is closely connected with language, non-identity cannot be reduced to a linguistic phenomenon. Historically inherited concepts shape how thought approaches its objects, but the issue is whether those concepts do justice to what they seek to understand. This calls for critical reflection on conceptual determinations rather than the abandonment of concepts or the assumption that reality could be known through entirely unmediated access.
Adorno’s concept of constellation offers a way of responding to this difficulty. Rather than attempting to capture an object through a single definition, thought brings different concepts into relation so that their combined determinations illuminate aspects that no individual concept adequately expresses. Adorno connects this approach with language, suggesting that an object can be illuminated more adequately through the relations among concepts arranged around it than through isolated definitions (Adorno, 1973, pp. 162–166). Constellation does not eliminate the difference between concept and object or provide an exhaustive representation of reality. It makes conceptual thought more responsive to its object by organising concepts in ways that reveal connections and aspects that would otherwise remain obscure.
6. What Language Makes Possible
The relation between reality, thought, and language involves both the conditions under which knowledge becomes possible and the limits of what it can claim.
Marx and Engels explain why consciousness and language must be understood within the material and social relations of human life. Adorno adds an epistemological and methodological dimension: the historical and conceptual conditions that make knowledge possible do not guarantee that our understanding is adequate. His critique of identity-thinking identifies this problem, while constellation offers a way to address it through the critical organisation of concepts.
Taken together, these perspectives suggest that knowledge is neither a passive reproduction of reality nor a self-contained construction of thought. It is a historically situated process in which language enables thought to articulate and examine its understanding of reality, while objects remain more than any single conceptual account of them can establish. Constellation makes this tension productive by bringing concepts into relation, allowing thought to develop a more adequate understanding without claiming that a final definition can exhaust its object.
The task, then, is not to eliminate mediation, but to examine how it works and keep our concepts responsive to the reality they seek to understand.
References
Adorno, T. W. (1973). Negative dialectics (E. B. Ashton, Trans.). Seabury Press. (Original work published 1966)
Adorno, T. W. (2007). Theses on the language of the philosopher (S. Gandesha & M. K. Palamarek, Trans.). In D. A. Burke, C. J. Campbell, K. Kiloh, M. K. Palamarek, & J. Short (Eds.), Adorno and the need in thinking: New critical essays (pp. 35–40). University of Toronto Press.
Engels, F. (1987). The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man. In Marx & Engels collected works (Vol. 25, pp. 452–464). Lawrence & Wishart. (Original work published 1876)
Hogh, P. (2017). Communication and expression: Adorno’s philosophy of language (A. Hofstätter, Trans.). Rowman & Littlefield International. (Original work published 2015)
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1976). The German ideology. In Marx & Engels collected works (Vol. 5, pp. 19–539). Lawrence & Wishart.
Comments
Post a Comment