I have always thought that this statement by Adorno on the philosophical significance of the essay made a lot of good sense. It is a tough read but it is worth working through slowly.
Adorno says:
"The essay does not play by the rules of organized science and theory, according to which, in Spinoza's formulation, the order of things is the same as the order of ideas. Because the unbroken order of concepts is not equivalent to what exists, the essay does not aim at a closed deductive or inductive structure. In particular, it rebels agains the doctrine, deeply rooted since Plato, that what is transient and ephemeral is unworthy of philosophy---the old injustice done to the transitory, whereby it is condemned again in the concept. The essay recoils from the violence in the dogma according to which the result of the process of abstraction, the concept, which, in contrast to the individual it grasps, is temporally invariant, should be granted ontological dignity."
Adorno, 'The essay as Form' in Notes on Literature, (vol. 1, p. 10).
Hurrah for the transitory and the ephemeral. Focusing on the fragmentary and the contingent is a step away from the royal road to science.
Three cheers for weblogging.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 20, 2003 11:59 PM | TrackBack