Abstract

Throughout his publications Adorno deploys the concept of ‘riddle-character’ [Rätselcharakter], attributing it to reality as well as to modernist artworks, and likening the activity of philosophy and interpretation to that of riddle-solving. This essay explores the epistemological characteristics of such ‘riddle-work’ in the non-aesthetic context by first interpreting his 1931 inaugural lecture “The Actuality of Philosophy” and distinguishing Adorno’s use of riddle from that of Walter Benjamin. The analysis is then deepened by drawing on thoughts about riddle-solving as a specific kind of cognitive activity by Cora Diamond. It is then argued that Adorno used at least two distinct modes of riddlework in his writings. The ‘disclosive-critical’ mode poses a riddle whose resolution shows that the conceptual framework in which the riddle-question was first posed is in fact flawed or nonsensical; thus this mode can be considered a radical form of immanent criticism. The ‘minimal utopian’ mode in contrast involves both the attitude of the person seeking to solve the riddle and the riddle-character as a determinable, drawing on relevant thoughts by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The essay concludes by suggesting that the cognitive virtues of ‘riddle-work’ make it a form of reasoning that avoids the drawbacks of Habermas-style procedural rationality on the one hand, and Rortystyle disclosure on the other.