From experience to mediation: a minimum transition in Theodor Adorno

Abstract

Due to the naturalization of the protagonism of the concept of experience in the interpretation of Theodor Adorno's dialectic, this article intends to elucidate some lines of displacement from the category of experience to the category of mediation, from the critical appropriation of this category of Hegel's thought by Adorno; because, since all experience is mediated, mediation presents itself as a condition for the realization of the experience and, for this reason, mediation is established as a privileged instance in the process of knowledge in the scope of the subject and object relationship, given that defines itself as a cause and condition for the organization of experience. Fundamentally, the proposal is to demonstrate that both Hegelian and Adornian dialectics - despite their idiosyncrasies - have in mediation their motivic aspect of determining the subjective and the objective. Therefore, the concept of mediation will be presented as a transversal and reciprocal component that, at the same time that it brings together, distinguishes the related aspects, making dialectics a procedure, within which mediation becomes a condition and fundamental for the development and the determination of the concepts circumscribed in a given context or situation. In this sense, mediation will emerge as the structuring agent of experience, a fact that justifies its priority in relation to experience, as described by Hegel.