Abstract

This chapter offers an innovative “thetic”, approach to Theodor W. Adorno's essay by revisiting the much-discussed concept of parataxis that Adorno first developed in his confrontation with Friedrich Hölderlin's poetry and with Martin Heidegger's ontological interpretation of it. The philosophical theme that pervades Hölderlin's late hymns—if there is one, and if it can be distinguished from the “metaphysical” or Heideggerian theme of being—is what Adorno calls “an allegorical history of nature”. Later in “Parataxis” Adorno will describe this theme as resistance to the will to dominate nature, resistance to the compulsion to Naturbeherrschung. However, here Adorno also rejoins the scorned Heidegger, whose resistance to the essence of technology arises from his analysis of the will-to-will that expresses itself preeminently in the drive to subdue beings as a whole.