The notion that Adorno's thinking is theoretically driven while ‘intuition [Anschauung] plays a relatively subordinate role’ (Geuss 2005: 50) is familiar. Judging by writings such as Dialectic of Enlightenment, Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory, it is evident too. A shift of attention to Adorno's sociological output will not lead to an out-and-out refutation of this judgement. Yet it motivates a closer look at the issue. Adorno's work on the problems and potentials of sociological examinations of exchange society deals with their empirical as well as their theoretical dimension. Both dimensions came into view towards the end of the previous chapter. Before returning to theoretical interpretation in the next chapter, it is necessary to explore the rough terrain that is the empirical domain of Adorno's sociology.

Saturated sociology

Sociological investigations of exchange society, Adorno insists, require factual material drawn from empirical observation. The contention that he is ‘not a proponent of empirical research’ (Hagens 2006: 228) is problematic. It is true, as Chapter 3 will explain, that Adorno considers insights established by observations of social life untrustworthy. He calls direct encounters with the empirical world primary – basic, initial – reactions (CM 221, SDE 52–3) and the products of empirical observation ‘primary material’ (SSi 511) or ‘simple social material’ (IS 85). Nonetheless, Adorno's sociologico-methodological work from the 1950s and 1960s raises an explicit demand for sociological material.