Introduction

“Meditations on Metaphysics,” in which Adorno's most famous discussion of Auschwitz takes place, is the third of three models that make up the final part of Negative Dialectics; the other two models being “Freedom: On the Metacritique of Practical Reason” and “World Spirit and Natural History: An Excursion to Hegel.” Models, themselves composed of aphoristic fragments, are another of the forms of writing Adorno identifies as a critical successor to the system. The term itself is appropriated from Schöenberg. Adorno describes models in The Philosophy of Modern Music thusly:

This description makes models sound akin to Hegelian Aufhebung, sublation as canceling and preserving since here too an original concept is shown to be “dynamically” or internally related to what originally appears as heterogeneous to it. So, again, Kant's notion of freedom is shown to require the very somatic and causal moment it is originally designed to escape.