Then every problem confronting philosophy - especially its relationship with the material world would be resolved through the affirmative principle of the negation of the negation which produces an affirmation. In principle', Adorno confirms, 'philosophy can always go astray, which is the sole reason why it can go forward'. In this, the role of language becomes crucial because language is equivalent to the presentation of philosophy's 'unfreedom' as equivalent to the impossibility of conceptualising nonidentity. Were language to cease to be important in philosophy, the latter would 'resemble science'. Adorno's declarative statements in Negative Dialectics need to be read in conjunction with his work in aesthetics and literary criticism.
Subjectivity is reduced to the status of a 'mere object' by exchange-value.
There is thus a desire in Adorno to preserve the sanctity, as it were, of subjectivity embodied in the art object, against the onslaught of the market where value is equated with price. This avant-garde strategy is the point of resistance to reappropriation by the market system. Both can entail the distancing necessary to counter the ephemeral immediacy of consumer pleasure. There is another aspect to the question, however, one that perhaps Adorno forgets. It is that the conceptualising facility itself could become impoverished through a continual rejection of its worth and efficacity.