What Is Philosophy Still Good For? Adorno and the Division of Intellectual Labour

Abstract

What is philosophy's task in a world where the sciences have developed increasingly specialised fields of knowledge? In his 1931 lecture The Actuality of Philosophy, Theodor W. Adorno draws a distinction between their characteristic activities: “the idea of science (Wissenschaft) is research; that of philosophy is interpretation” (Adorno, 1977, p. 126). Philosophy should neither provide the foundations of scientific inquiry nor compete with the sciences on their own terms. Its task is to work with the knowledge they produce, arranging its elements in changing constellations that bring otherwise obscure relationships into view. Since no conceptual arrangement can fully exhaust its object, these interpretations must remain open to revision. Adorno thus understands philosophy as an ongoing activity of interpretation through which specialised knowledge acquires new intelligibility.

1. The Question of Philosophy

Physics investigates the natural world, biology studies living organisms, sociology examines social relations, and psychology investigates mental processes. Each discipline has developed its own concepts, methods, and standards of evidence, enabling it to pursue questions with increasing precision. This division of intellectual labour has produced an extraordinary expansion of knowledge, yet it also raises a question about the place of philosophy in an increasingly specialised intellectual landscape. If the sciences have established their own fields of inquiry, what remains for philosophy to do?

Theodor W. Adorno takes this question seriously. In his 1931 inaugural lecture, The Actuality of Philosophy, he formulates a distinction that provides a starting point for his answer: “The idea of science (Wissenschaft) is research; that of philosophy is interpretation” (Adorno, 1977, p. 127). Understanding what this means requires examining how the modern division of knowledge emerged and how it transformed philosophy’s intellectual position.

2. The Historical Division of Knowledge

The present organisation of knowledge is the outcome of a long historical development. In Aristotle, for example, investigations into living beings, political communities, natural processes, and the conditions of reasoning appear within a philosophical framework that does not correspond to the boundaries of contemporary academic disciplines. This does not mean that ancient inquiry lacked distinctions between different subjects or forms of investigation. Rather, the institutional and methodological divisions familiar today had not yet taken their modern shape.

Over subsequent centuries, experimental methods and mathematical approaches to nature transformed the ways in which knowledge was produced. The development of scientific institutions and specialised professional training further contributed to this process, particularly from the eighteenth century onwards. During the nineteenth century, many fields acquired increasingly distinct objects, procedures, and institutional identities. This differentiation made possible substantial advances in the precision and scope of research.

The resulting division of intellectual labour has proved extraordinarily productive. It has also changed the conditions under which philosophy can claim a place within the organisation of knowledge. As individual disciplines acquire their own methods and areas of competence, philosophy can no longer assume that its task consists in providing a general account of everything they investigate.

3. The Crisis of Philosophy’s Role

The growing specialisation of knowledge presents philosophy with two tempting possibilities. Simon Jarvis’s account of Adorno helps distinguish them. The first is to become a kind of science of the sciences. Philosophy would establish the foundations of scientific knowledge, examine the validity of its methods, and justify the procedures employed by different disciplines. It might thereby retain a seemingly superior position, but at the cost of reducing its activity to the examination of the conditions under which scientific knowledge is possible. Questions about knowledge remain important, yet they cannot exhaust the range of philosophical inquiry (Jarvis, 1998).

The opposite response would be for philosophers to reclaim the subject matters of the sciences and compete with them on their own terms. Such an undertaking risks dilettantism, since philosophical ambition cannot replace the specialised training and methodological competence required to investigate particular objects. Jarvis connects this concern with Max Weber’s warnings about intellectual work that disregards the demands of specialised research (Jarvis, 1998).

Adorno also recognises that philosophy has become implicated in the very division of labour that threatens its purpose. In Why Still Philosophy?, he observes that philosophy has established itself as “a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content” (Adorno, 1962/1998, p. 6). He also challenges positivism for taking as its standard of truth “the contingently given division of labor” (p. 10). Philosophy thus risks accepting the boundaries of specialised knowledge as the limits of its own activity. How, then, can it remain engaged with the substantive questions of the sciences without becoming either their foundation or another specialised discipline?

4. Philosophy as Interpretation

Adorno’s answer begins by reaffirming philosophy’s dependence on specialised knowledge. The sciences provide the concrete materials through which philosophical problems acquire substance. Philosophy cannot simply withdraw from them, accept their results as finished, and contemplate them from a safe distance. As Adorno insists, philosophical problems remain bound to the most specific questions of the individual sciences (Adorno, 1977, p. 126).

The distinction between scientific and philosophical activity therefore concerns what each does with the material it encounters. Adorno contrasts the sciences’ tendency to treat their findings, at least their deepest and most fundamental ones, as settled with philosophy’s readiness to regard even its first finding as “a sign that needs unriddling” (1977, p. 127). Philosophy does not take the results of research as self-explanatory. It asks what they reveal about the objects under investigation and what relationships or processes become visible when they are considered alongside other elements of knowledge. Its task is therefore not to replace scientific research or provide a more general account of its results, but to interpret their significance. The difference lies in the mode of inquiry, not in a higher degree of generality or abstraction.

This is what Adorno means when he describes philosophy as interpretation. It does not merely collect scientific findings into a comprehensive system, nor does it impose an abstract meaning upon them. It seeks to make their relationships intelligible by constructing configurations from the materials of inquiry. Adorno’s comparison between philosophical interpretation and the solution of a riddle provides a more concrete account of this procedure.

5. How Changing Constellations Work

A riddle consists of separate elements whose relationship is initially unclear. Its solution emerges when these elements are brought together in a configuration that makes their connection recognisable. Adorno describes this process as bringing “the singular and dispersed elements of the question” into different groupings until they form a figure from which a solution can emerge (1977, p. 127). Philosophy proceeds in a comparable way. It takes elements received from the sciences and arranges them in what Adorno calls “changing constellations” or, in more scientific terms, “changing trial combinations” (p. 127).

The elements themselves need not be new; they may already be familiar from separate investigations. What changes is their arrangement and, consequently, the relationships that become visible. A constellation allows thought to recognise connections that are difficult to perceive when each element is considered within the limits of its established disciplinary context. The resulting figure can be read as an answer, while the original question is transformed in the process.

The fact that these constellations are changing is essential. No single arrangement provides a universal formula for understanding every object. Each problem requires its own interpretive construction, and a configuration that illuminates one aspect may leave others unexplored. Philosophy must therefore be prepared to rearrange its materials and try different combinations. Its interpretations remain open to revision because they depend on the particular questions and objects with which they engage.

This flexibility does not make interpretation arbitrary. The relationships established within a constellation must respond to the material under investigation. Adorno explicitly rejects the idea that philosophy should search for a second, secret world behind appearances. Its task, he writes, is “to interpret unintentional reality” by constructing figures from its apparently isolated elements (1977, p. 127). The interpretive imagination must therefore remain answerable to the material: Adorno describes it as an “exact fantasy” that abides strictly within what the sciences present to it, extending beyond those materials only through their arrangement (p. 131). The philosopher does not freely invent connections but constructs a figure whose adequacy depends on the elements it brings together.

Adorno illustrates this procedure through a thought experiment involving Marx’s analysis of bourgeois society. He imagines grouping elements of a social analysis so that they form a figure he calls the commodity structure. The historical figure of the commodity and of exchange value might then illuminate the form of a social reality that remains difficult to grasp through more abstract questions about the relation between appearance and the thing in itself (Adorno, 1977, p. 128). The point is not to derive every social phenomenon from a single economic category. Rather, the example shows how a constructed configuration can make the historical organisation of reality more intelligible. Adorno explicitly presents it as a thought experiment, intended to indicate the direction of philosophical interpretation rather than to provide a completed empirical analysis.

6. Why Constellations Must Remain Open

The provisional character of philosophical interpretation becomes clearer in Negative Dialectics. There Adorno argues that “objects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainder” (Adorno, 1966/1973, p. 5). Concepts are necessary for identifying and understanding objects, yet they cannot exhaust everything those objects are. Their characteristics, relations, and histories may exceed the categories through which thought initially approaches them.

Adorno’s concept of non-identity (Nichtidentität) names this discrepancy between an object and its conceptual determination. Its relevance here is straightforward: no conceptual configuration can be regarded as definitive. An arrangement may disclose significant relationships while leaving other aspects unexplored, making further interpretation necessary. The 1931 lecture already presents philosophy as an activity of interpretation through changing constellations; Negative Dialectics, published in 1966, develops the epistemological critique of conceptual identification that helps explain why such interpretations must remain open. This is a development within Adorno’s approach, not a reason to attribute the mature theory of non-identity retrospectively to his earlier lecture.

7. What Philosophy Can Still Do

What, then, is the place of philosophy in a world of specialised knowledge? Adorno’s answer is that philosophy remains necessary as an activity of interpretation. Scientific research produces indispensable knowledge, but the accumulation of specialised findings does not automatically make visible the historical processes, conceptual assumptions, and relationships connecting their objects.

Philosophy works with these findings, arranging them in constellations that allow such connections to emerge. Its task requires familiarity with the sciences and respect for their achievements, while preserving the freedom to question established frameworks and construct new ways of understanding their materials. Its place is neither above the sciences nor in competition with them. It lies in the interpretive work through which specialised knowledge can become intelligible in new ways. The distinction Adorno drew in 1931 remains the guiding thought: science investigates; philosophy interprets.

References

Adorno, T. W. (1973). Negative dialectics (E. B. Ashton, Trans.). Seabury Press. (Original work published 1966)

Adorno, T. W. (1977). The actuality of philosophy (B. Snow, Trans.). Telos, (31), 120–133.

Adorno, T. W. (1998). Why still philosophy? In H. W. Pickford (Trans.), Critical models: Interventions and catchwords (pp. 5–18). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1962)

Jarvis, S. (1998). Adorno: A critical introduction. Polity Press.