Philosophy in the sense of Adorno means closely linking the lines of tradition of dialectics and critique. This connection has so far primarily followed Hegel's directives, resulting in a profile of a distinctly negative dialectic being shaped by identity thinking and treated in research as a flawed copy of the positive-speculative dialectic. In contrast, this work proposes to view this profile from Kant's perspective: by illuminating the fundamental aspects of Adorno's interpretation of Kant, the systematic significance for Adorno's 'antisystem' should come to the fore. The thesis is that negative dialectics is only possible as a boundary-conceptual reflection on the epistemological claims of traditional dialectics.