As Adorno aimed to produce a dialectical thought which did not 'positivise' in any way, science in general was treated with the greatest suspicion, if not contempt. Science in Adorno's philosophy would even be the form of thought he most opposed given that, like positivism in general, it is seen to be absolutely dependent on the logic of identity. Philosophy has allowed itself to be terrorised by science, Adorno claims. But philosophical truth does not equal scientific truth, and philosophy should not shy away from this. For Adorno, the world of appearance, as for Plato before him, is a world of images and mere semblances, a world of relativism and, most of all, of reification.
Commodities hide the truth of their illusory nature.
They serve to titillate 'the reified consciousness' which is 'a moment in the totality of the reified world'. Moreover, by contrast with recent French thought, ideology still plays an important part in Adorno's analyses of social conditions, even if, as he shows in Prisms , the analysis of ideology can no longer rely on the 'transcendent' method, where the critic claims to be detached from the milieu being analysed. The difference between 'essence' and 'appearance' entails the ideological effect of reification. For behind the reified appearances, lies the truth of the 'phantasmagoria' of commodity production. People adapt to these conditions rather than oppose them.