Comments on Macdonald, What Would Be Different

Iain Macdonald suggests that, in spite of their differences, Adorno and Heidegger are alike in advancing what he calls critiques of actuality and “models of redemptive possibility.” I argue that that similarity is superficial in light of the difference between their conceptions of actuality and possibility. For Adorno, as for the metaphysical tradition since Aristotle, possibility and necessity are defined in terms of actuality. The privileging of actuality, Heidegger maintains, foregrounds entities and obscures the question of being.