The thesis of the priority of the object, essential to Adorno's non dogmatic materialism, is analyzed in its constitutive elements, as a criticism of idealism which is present mainly at the works Dialectic of enlightenment and Negative dialectic. As a criticism of idealism, particularly on the relationships between reason and experience as first developed from Kant to Hegel, the thesis is based on Lukács, Benjamin, and Horkheimer contributions and is embedded on the perspectives of Marx and Nietzsche. With its disruption of symmetry between subject and object, the thesis of the priority of the object reveals the frailty of Habermas assertion, in his Philosophical discourse of modernity, of Adorno's and Horkheimer's skepticism towards reason. The present author argues that, in opposition to this claim, Adorno and Horkheimer contributed, with their new way of relating historical material and theoretical approach, to the analysis of the problem of reification in its relations to objectivity - as the non-identical - within the realm of reason, and not outside of it.
Adorno; Materialism; Negative dialectic; Priority of the object; Critical Theory