“The indifference of consciousness to metaphysical questions—questions that have by no means been laid to rest by satisfaction in this world—is hardly a matter of indifference to metaphysics itself… Hidden in it is a horror that would take men’s breath away if they did not repress it. We might be tempted to speculate… whether the turn in evolutionary history that gave the human species its open consciousness and thus an awareness of death… does not contradict a continuing animal constitution which prohibits men to bear that consciousness…

“Vis-à-vis theology, metaphysics is not just a historically later stage… Subjectively liberated experience and metaphysical experience converge in humanity… Signs that not everything is futile come from sympathy with the human, from the self-reflection of the subject’s natural side…

“The metaphysical interests of men would require that their material ones be fully looked after. While their material interests are shrouded from them, they live under Maya’s veil. What is must be changeable if it is not to be at all.”

Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics