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NOTES 1 @ LITERATURE Volume One ee A et ol Re ed ein vers age seman ee THEODOR W. ADORNO epee emer ecient rep sy ROLF THDEMANN ee a Riad Wain The lye Corry A Cited Rar Pere VcslNaqut ono Mery isc Le Galt Hyon My Jaen Nat Ws Won ee COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS New York i ml an) The Essay as Form Devine os what illite, othe ight (Got, Pao 2 in Germany the esis con ame an hybrid, that he Form aso compelling tation, tht is emphasc demands are met only Sntermitenly—all this hasbeen si and censure, often enough, “The cosy foe has aot et, today, travelled the rao independence which Jt ster, poetey, covered long ago; the road of development from = primitive, untreated unity with scene, ethics, and art.”" But sitherdiscmfort with thie station nor cineomfor with the mentality that rai tit by facing off art ts preserve for irtionality, eating knowadge with organized scene, an exladinganthing tit does nt fit chat antithesis ao impure, has changed anything in the prejudice cusomary her in Germany. Even today to prise someone a an rein isenough to kop him out of acacia, Despite the teling insights that Simmel ad the young Lukle, Keser and Benjamin estrus tothe ‘say 25 speculation on specie, culturally pre-formed objec, the ca Gemic guild accepts plosphy only what i clothed ia the digi of ‘the univers and th enduring —and today perhaps the orgiary. Ie ges ‘volved with paticlar eularalareifits only othe eater to which ey aa be used to exemplify univera categories, orto the exten to which the particule becomes trasparent whe seco in terms of them. The stubbornnes with which ths acer survives would be as puzaing #8 the emotion tached t eft were not aby motives range han the nfl memory ofthe lace of culation as culture in whi he ome 1 lara practically unknown. In Germany the es arouses esisace ‘because it evokes inlet! Freedom: Since the failure of an Ealighte ment tha has been lukewarm since Lebais, even under presene-day condions of formal freedom, that igellectalfretdom tas never quite Grveloped but ba always been ready to prelim its subordination to ‘ermal authorities a eal conere. Tae esay, however, docs not et {i domain be preserbed fori Toaead of accomplishing something ‘ienaly or creating something areca, its efforts eect the lei- fore of eile person who has no ques abou taking his inspiration From what others have done before him. Te esa reflects whats loved tnd lated insead of prsating the iad as cretion ex mile on the trode of an unesrainad work ethic. Lack aa ply ar essential ot It Seve aot with Adam and Eve bat with what tats 0 alk about it ays Scns scars t tin that content and stope when Fee Sished rather than when there i ating my. Hace iscsi eval endeavor. Its concep are no derived from fs priniple, nor do they ott ‘ecome ultimate. principles. It interpreatons are aot phialogially efitive and consensus in priciple they are ove-intrpretations— cording tothe mechanized verdict ofthe vigilant nll chat hires oxt fo supiiy as watchdog agus the mind. Out of far of eegaiviy, the subjects efforts to peetate what hides behind the Fea under the ume ofcbjectivity ae branded a8 ireevant. I's muck simpler than thats we are ol. The person who interprets instead of accepting what = [Bea and clsifving itis tmatked with the yellow star of one who qusnders his inteligence in impotent speculation, reading things in ‘there Shere s nothing to interpret. A man with his fer onthe ground Gr ran mith his ead in the cloude-—shose ae the alternatives. But Teting oneself be terrorized by the prokibiton agin ying more than sras ment eight then and there means complying with the fale concep ‘ons tatpeople and things hcbor concerning themselves. Lterprection ‘hen besmes nothing but removing an ovter shell tnd what the author Srened ta, or possibly the individual peycholgical impulses to wich Te phenomenon pints But since ie i xarely posible to determine Ira someone may have thought or Felt a any particular point, nothing {sental is ta be guned through such insights, The author’ impulses are Cingised in the objective bance they mie hold of. In order t be Aiclowd, however, the objective wealth of meanings eocapalated in very intletual phenomenon demands of che recipient the same spon- taney of subjective fntgy tht is castigated inthe mame of ebjcive dlscpline, Nothing can be itepreted out of something that not Snterpreted into it tthe sme time. The criteria for such interpretation se is compatibility with the text and with itself and its power to give s oie to the elements ofthe object in conjunction with one another. In ‘his, the esey has something like an aesthetic sstonomy thi i eal sceused of being simpy derived from art, although ti distinguished from at by its medium, concepts, and by is claim to rath devoid of sestbetc semblance. Lukdes fled to recognize this when he eld the ‘ay an at form in the lever to Leo Popper tat invoduces Soul and Form. But the postive maxim cong which whats writen bout {ar may in no way ay cls toate presentation that iy autonomy of form, is no beter. Here a dhewbere, she general poivis tendency 0 set every possble objex, at an abject of research, ia stark oppoiion | the subject, doesnot go beyond the mere separation of form and content For one can haraly speak of aestctiematers unset, dewd oF resemblance to the ubjest matter, without fling into phils and Tesng touch with the objec priori, In posvie practic, the conten, once fred onthe model ofthe procs seatece supposed tobe net sith respect tots preston, which supposed o be conventional and Tot determined bythe subject. To the asin of sient puriam, every Cepresive impale in the presentation jeoandies an objectivity tht Supposedly laps forth when the subject hasbeen removed. Ie thereby | Jeopardizcs the authenticity of the cbjct, which i all the beter exab Tied the ee eles on support fom he frm, despite the fc that he criterion of form ie whether i delivers the object pare and. without dmicre, Ine llergyt forms ae mere ccidestal atrbtes, the piri of wence and eholarsip [Wiseecha] comes to resemble that of eg ogmatom. Potvin’ ierxponibly sloppy language facies that i documents esponsibility ini objet, std reflection on intelectual mat ters becomes the privilege ofthe minds, ‘None of thes offipring of reentment ae pure flithond, I the ey eines wo begin by driving ealtural works from something underying ther it embrols ite all tuo eagery ia the clr] enerprie promot ing the prominence, succes, and prestige of marketable products. ie tionlzed bigrapite ad all the elated commercial writing tht depend fon them are ot mere prducs of degeneration they are permanent temptation fora form whose supciousness of fale profanity does ao protec it rom turning into slick superfciity. This an be we even in ‘Suine-Beuve, fom whom the geae ofthe moder es derives. In product ie Herbere Euleaberg’s biographical shoves, the German Prototype of Hood of cultural tas aad down to flim sboat Rem ‘rand Toulouse Laure and the Bible, this involvement has promoted ‘ the neutalintion of euhural works to commadtin,« proces that in rece intellectual history has iresieibly taken hold of what the Ensern bo ignominiounly cals “the heritage.” The process i perhapr moe obvious in Stefan Zweig, stho produced sever] sophie esa in ‘is youth ac ended up descending to the payhology of the crestive Sndividal in his book on Bala. This kind of writing doesnot erticiae stetractBundamental concept, aconeeptunl dats, er habit lich, instead, it presupposes them, implicily but bythe same token with all the more eamplity. The refuse of interpretive pychlogy i used with rent categories from the Wetmchonng of the cultural phlisine, categories like "personaly" or “the ievaonl.” Suck iy confuse ‘hemscies with the sme feilton with which the enemies of the exy form confuse it, Foribly separated fom the discipline of scalemie unfreedom, itll freedom itself becomes unfree and serves the secaly preformed neds of ts clientele. respon, sel an sapect ‘all rth that does at exh elf in responsi fo theses que, then justin itl tothe nade of etablished consioumess, bad ny are jist a5 conformist at bad diseratins. Responsibility, however, respects not only authorise and commis, bt al the object al. ‘The emy form, however, ber some responsibility fr the Fact tht the bad esay tells stories abou peopl instead of elucidating the mater at hand, The separntion of scene and scholarship from att irreversible Only the naive of the manufacturer of leratre takes a aie of i he considers himself at Jen an organizational genius aod griods good swore of art down into bad one. With the objection ofthe world in the coure of pogreive demythologization, arta science have sep rtd. A consoutne for which inution and conep, image and ign ‘would be one and the ime—if sich » conciousness ever exited ana be magically restored, adits rettation woul onsute a regres sion to chaos. Such a consiosnes is conceivable only the completion tf the proces of mediation, ax utopia, conceived by the idealist piles hers sine Kant ander the mame of nelle Anchovon, intellectual Innuition, something that broke down whenever atl keowledge ap- pled ti Wherever philsophy imagines that by boring from lteriure it can abolish ‘biscfed thought and it history wha is ‘commonly termed the anthes of subject and bjeet—and even hopes that Being self will speak, in = pe concocted of Parenides ad ungnickl, je sar w turn into a washed-out clare babble, With = Penn cunning tit jsties self ab primordial, refs w honor the obligations ofc ‘ought © which, however, it had sub seriad then i sed concept in its proposisons end judgments. At the ‘ame tim ts aexhetc lement consis merely of watered-down, second hand reminiscences of Holderln or Expressionism, o- perhaps Jageu- i, becuse m9 thooght can etre as absolutely and blindly to Janguage athe notion of a primordial uterane would lead ut believe. From the violence that image and concept thereby do to one another springs the jagon of sthenicy, in which words vibrate with mason ile keeping quiet about what bas moved them. Language’ ambitious Tranmendence of mening ends up ina meaninglanaes which can be sly zal upon by 2 potvim to which one ele superior ope plays ito the hands of positivism through the very epeningleanese it crit ‘Sams, 4 meaninglesnes which one shares by adopting i tkens. Under the apal of such developments, language comes, where tall ars to fr in acholarahip and scence, co ranmble the haadirafts, and the Tevearcher who reas lnguage altogether and, instead of degrading Innguage to 5 mere parsphrae of his numbers ues tbls that nual fey acknowledge the reifcaton of concournes, i the one who Ser ‘onststes,negrtiey, fathflnes to the sete. In hin charts he Ss something like 2 form forthe efition without splogeic borowing from art. To be sare, art hat alwya been so intertwined with the onsinantteodeaces of elighteament that thas made use of scien Sand scholarly Sndings in its techniques since casi antiquity. But ‘quantity Besomes quay. IFteshniqae i made abvolte inthe work oF ‘rf construction becomes tal and eradicate expression, ss poste Sod its motivating Force if art thas claims to be diet sientfc know ge and correct by sens standards itis aaconing a patie ‘manipulation of materials ar devoid of meaning as aly the "Sey" [Being] ofthe philosophy separtments ca be. Tt fratereizing with reieation —agnnst which it as been znd ail the function of whats functions, of rt, to prote, however mute and eifed hat protesx ‘lf ay be ‘But although art and science became separate the couse of history, the appestion berweea them should not be hypostatized. Aversion an ‘nachronisi confiton ofthe two doesnot reader a compartmentalize Cure sicrosnc, Fr all their necniy, those compartments represent Insiuional confirmation of te renunciation ofthe whole truth, The ideals of purity aod tides that ae common tothe eterprine of = ‘veritable piloeopy vere i tere valen an airtight and throughly ’ organized scene, and an aconceptalinutive at, eat the marks oft reprenive order. Acerfete of competency is required ofthe mind s9 that it will noe wanegress upoe offical culture by crossing cltrally confirmed boundary lines. Presupposed in this isthe notion chat all Irnowledge can poeaally be convered to sieace. The epistemologes that disingush prescieac fom scenic consciousness have one snd Il conceived the distinction sll a one of degree. The at tit has gone oo farther thin the mere sturance of eis convert, without Tiving conciousness ever in actuality ving been transformed ito si- vie omciouness, pointe up the preariumes ofthe ranion, ¢ (ualtatvecffeence, The simples reletion onthe life of coscousess ‘Poul reach us eo what a slight exentimsghts, which ae by no means ebitrary hunches, can be fully captared within he net of sence. The ttorkof Marce! Prost, which no more lacking ina sient postive {lemet than Bergeon’ san tempt to expres necemary snd compelling fosihts into human beings and social reltons thet are not madly secommodred within seience and scholarship, despite the fc tht their Chim to objectivity 8 neither diminished nor abandoned toa vague pusibly, The measure of such objectivity in not the veriation of sertios through repeated tezing but rater indvial human experi= face, maintained through hope and disilusonment, Such experience throws ifs obreratons ito rele through confirmation or refutation in the proces of realetion. But its individually symthesized unity, in ‘which the whole neverthles appears, cannot be distributed and reate- {ott under the spate psoas and apparetuses of pycholgy and ‘ecilogy. Under the presure of the sine spirit andi deniers, which are ubigutous, in tet frm, even inthe att, Pou tried, ‘rough a techaigue elf modeled onthe riences, a kindof experimen: ‘al method, to salvage, or prbaperevore, wha uscd te thought of — inthe diye of bourgcis individualism, whe individual conscioasoess sill had confidence in ie and was ot intimidated by ongennational Censorsip-—at the knowledge of & man of experience like the now cin homme de etre, whom Prout conjures up 2 the highest form of ‘he detante, Ie would aot have occured to anyone to dismiss what such man of experince had to say a insignificant, arbitrary, and etna fon the grounds thar it was only his owa and could bat simply be (generalized in sient fchion. Tote of hi dings that lip through the meshes of science most certinly elude cence self. As Green ‘chef, iterally the science of mind, sient scholarship fils to deliver C ‘nha it promises the mind: illuminate ts work fom the inside. The Young writer who wanteto learn what a work of arte, what lingusic Form, srhese quality, and eveaaeshesc technique ae at college will, sully lara abot ther oly haphazardly, ora best recive information| taken readymade fom whatever philosophy is in vogue and more oles ‘bitrarly applied to the content of the works in question. But i he tare to philosophies ashes he is besiged mith sbaract propositions thet te oot relted to the works he wants to understand an do no in fact, ‘present the content hei groping toward. The division of labor in the ‘amor matty, the intellectual world, between at on the one hand and ‘cince and scholarship oo the other, however, isnot wey responsible forall hat it line of demareation cannot be set aside through goodwill snd comprehensive plnning. Rather, ao itll irevorbly madeled fon the domination of nature snd material production abandons the real Tection of the sage it has overcome, 4 stage har promises a futre one, (he ranacendece of rigid relations of produstion; and this ripples ‘ts apis apponch preiely when it comes to it specie abject, Init celaionship to en procedre and its philsopicl ground ing ab mated, the esa, i accordance with idea, draws the fllest conclusions from the ertgue of sytem. Even empiricist theories, which Ne priority to experience ht i open-ended and cannot be eticputed, 1 opposed to Sued conceptual ordering, remsinsyatematic im a hey dal with preconditions for knowlege that are conceived s more a es onsat end develop them in as homogeneous contexts posible, Since ‘Bacon —himself an essayist empiricism has been 25 mucha "metho se rstionalism, In the rai of thoughts virwally the ema alne tha de succenilly ried doubts aboct the absolute privilege of method. ‘The emay allows forthe concioument of onidenty, without expressing it diorys iis radical in i ron-radicainm, ia efaining Fom ay reduction to principle, in it scentuaton of he partial agaist the tl, ints fragmentary characte. ‘Perhaps the great Siar de Motige fl somthing tke his when be ive he writings the wonderfully segs a pte of "Eaay.” The ‘inp mole fhe word tan acroan courte. Te ey iis Ihr owa prod hops which sri ed hist Bebeve th Be bs come oto the ulate: he hat afer al, oo moe to offer tha ‘plato of te poems of thers, or t bao his oe ies, But he itnily nape Hil oth ltt the eee rales of te ‘pon profound work of he intl in fice of Heard eve np ‘with ene men. “The esay dors aot play by the rues of organized wince and theory, cording to which, in Since’ formulation, the order of tings i he Same athe order of des. Because the urea order of concep nit ‘auivalent to what exis, the enay doce aot am at a cloved deductive or inductive structure. I particular, it rebels against the doctrine, deeply rooted since Paw, that what is transient and ephemeral is unworthy of plilosphy—shar old injustice done to the transtory, wheehy it i fondemaed agen inthe concept. The ey recs From the violence in ‘he dogs scording to which thereat ofthe proces of aban, the concept, which, in contrast to the iciviual it grape i temporally Javariant should be granted ontological dignity. The filly that the ‘nd dear, the oder OF dss, isthe rds rerum, the order o things is founded on se imputation of immediacy to something mediated. Ju as something tha io merely factual canoe be cnseved without a concept, because to thik it always already to conceive it, 20 too the purest concep cannot be thought except in relation to fatty Even the con structs of fatsy, presumably Free of time and space, refer if deriva. tively, to individu existence, “This is why the exay refuses to be jimidted by the depraved profundity according to which truth apd history ar incompatible and oppose to one another. If truth hs in fet 2 temporal core, then the fall historical content becomes an itegral ‘moment in it the a posteriori becomes thea prior concretely aad aot ‘merely in general, at Fite and his followers chimed. The relationship to experience —and the ey invents experience with ax mich bance 1 tional theory does mere categores—is the reatinship to all of history. Merely individual experience, which consciousness takes a its int of departure, since it is what is closet i ie mediated by the overafching experienc of historia! humankind. The notin th the later i minted and one’s own experience nmedined is mere wl deception on the pare ofan individatic society and ideology. Hence the emay challenges the notion that what hasbeen peadced sorely Is nota it objec of theory. The disincion between 4 prima pila, ! Sst philrophy, and a mere philwopy of cule tat wool! presi. pose that Srst philsophy and bud upon it—the distinction ued at a ‘thoreticl rationalization fo the abo on the ey ——cannot be salvage, ‘An intelectual mosis operendi that honors the division between the temporal and the atemporal a though i¢ were canonical oe ite author iy. Higher levels of abatracion inven thought with either greater ‘ancity nor metaphysical substance; onthe contrary, the later tends fo eapoite withthe ance ofsbaraction, snd the ea reso compen=| ste for tome ofthat The customary objection that the es is ragmen- tary and contingent itself postulates that tality given, and with the identity of sues and objec, and ama though one were in posesion ofthe whole. The ey, homever, doce ot ryt eek the eral in the transient and dil it ous i tries to render the transient roa. weakness bens witness the very onideniy it had to express. It lo testifies fo at ese of inteation over abet and thereby tothe stop ‘which is locke by the partion ofthe world into the cteral and the transient. Inthe emphatic esay thought dives self of the traitonal iden of rth Tn doings it lo suspends the erations concept of method. Though’ depth depends on how deeply it penetrates its ject, not on the exe © svhich it reduces ito somthing ele, The cay gives this polemical ‘urn by dealing with objects thet would be omidered derivative, without ‘elf pursing their limite derivation. It thinks conjointly aad in Freadom about things tat mec ns fresy chosen objet, Te dos ot inst on somthing beyond meditions—and thse ae the hisorcal ‘medion in which the whole ot is sedimented —but eck the tah content in its objects, il inherently historical, It doesnot sek any Primordial given, thos siting a scialinl [eergualchater) society that, becuse it dave aot tolerate anything that dow oot bear i tmp, tolerates leet of all anything that semis it ofits own iq, amd inevitably cites idzolopial complement the very nature pins has completely eliminated. The esy quily puts an end eo the isin that thought could break cu of the sphere ofthe, culture, 20d move into that of phys, ature. Splloound by what is fied apd acknowledge to be derivative, by ari, it honors nate by confirming tha tno longer exists for human beings. Is alexaadrinism ia response tthe fact, that by thee very essence, ies and nightngales—where the wives et has permite them to survive—make os believe tat life is il Alive. The esay aundoas the royal oad tthe origins, which lads only ‘o what in moet dervaive—Being, the idelogy that duplicates wht slready exit, bt the idea of immediacy, an ides posted inthe meaning of meiation bel, doe net appear completely. For the easy all levels ‘of meintion are immedite unt bgias ore. Just athe ey ects primordia given, 2 it eject dain oft concept. Philoopy has aviv a a throughgoing etique of def- tion fram the mont divergent perspectives—is Kanty ia Hegel, in [Nitache, But scence har never adoped tis eriqu, Wheres the movement tht begins with Kant, a movement agunst the scholastic Fesidus in modern thought, replaces verbal deiitons with an gader= ‘anding of coneegts im terms of the process through which they are produced the incvidual science, in order t prevent the security of their operations from being diurbed, sll iasist on the pre-

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