Surplus time: Adorno’s Negative Dialectics and the problem of time

This thesis explores the concept of time as it appears, explicitly and implicitly, in Theodor W. Adorno’s Negative Dialectics, focusing on the epistemic and socio-historical frameworks of his philosophy in relation to the history of the philosophy of time. While Adorno briefly gestures toward the philosophically received duality of time in Negative Dialectics, he does not develop a sustained treatment of the topic. Drawing on the history of philosophical articulations of temporal duality, this study investigates how Adorno implicitly engages with the question of time through his broader philosophical discourses. Methodologically, the thesis employs conceptual analysis through a close reading of Negative Dialectics as well as interpretations provided by other scholars of the idea of negative dialectic, with particular attention to key categories such as subject–object mediation, totality and ontology. By examining the major historical forms of temporal duality—especially in Kant, Hegel, and Marx, on the one hand, and Bergson, Heidegger, Benjamin, on the other—it is argued that the dominant temporal frameworks of each epoch are themselves historically constructed and critically challenged by philosophers seeking a more authentic conception of time. The central argument of the thesis is that Adorno’s philosophy offers the resources for a negative dialectical critique of time, and that this critique can be extended beyond his own writings. This thesis is organized in three main parts. The first develops a critical reconstruction of selected elements of Negative Dialectics, with particular attention to the conceptual framework underlying Adorno’s approach. The second turns to the history of the philosophy of time, investigating its dualities and examining how various traditions have articulated tensions in their historical encounter with the concept of time. Finally, the third part returns to Adorno’s Negative Dialectics in light of the findings of the preceding analyses, offering an account of Adorno’s concept of time and its broader philosophical implications. The study proposes that the notion of surplus-time, as a negative dialecticization of temporal form that emerges within the valorization of capital, stands as a repressed possibility against the ontologically reified temporality of a socially false totality.