Thought-Factory.net Philosophical Conversations Public Opinion philosophy.com Junk for code
hegel
"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
RECENT ENTRIES
SEARCH
ARCHIVES
Library
Links - weblogs
Links - Political Rationalities
Links - Resources: Philosophy
Public Discussion
Resources
Cafe Philosophy
Philosophy Centres
Links - Resources: Other
Links - Web Connections
Other
www.thought-factory.net
'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

The essay « Previous | |Next »
February 20, 2003

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 11:59 PM | | Comments (0)
Comments