This devastating polemical critique of the existentialist philosophy of Martin Heidegger is a monumental study in Adorno's effort to apply qualitative analysis to the content and impact of cultural phenomena.

Aristotle considered the plot the most important element in tragedy. By μῦθυς--from which our word "myth" comes--he meant an imitation of action--of action in the "real world," that is. Here, as elsewhere in Greek literary criticism, "imitation" does not mean simply "exact reproduction." To what extent it may mean something like "symbolic," or otherwise "oblique," representation, is hard to determine. It will be enough, for our purposes, to think of "imitation" as exact reproduction with allowance made simply for the transference--always (...) radically transforming--into another medium: from life into art. What, then, did Aristotle mean by "action"? The noun πρᾶξις takes us back to the verb πράττω. Action meant a "doing" to Aristotle, rather as poetry meant to him a "making." Such a "doing," then, is a time-crossing event, in fact an event whose nature is closely involved with its temporal status. Such an event has a personal agent, or vehicle, and transacts with other persons, or more generally, with the "other." In fact, the notion of a transaction is especially fitting to describe action, for that notion emphasizes the dialogue-like structure of action, which always involves its agent with "the world," whether of people or of things. Plot, for Aristotle, was the turning of such action into art. (shrink)

The author attempts to encompass the self, or a self, that, while at some times appears to be his own, at other times not, thus encompassing and continually morphing. It is a mixture of poetry and prose.

Roger Garaudy, the Hellenic tradition, and imaginative space.--Kazantzakis' making of God.--Existentialism and language.--The argument of water.--Literature as ikonic language.--Literature and morality.

Being part of a culture seems, on the face of it, empirically describable, and verifiable. But in fact that kind of participation is not so easy to characterize. Our existence as members of a culture is given to us fleetingly, and in awarenesses tightly locked to the awareness of the other, who is not our culture. Being part of aculture therefore is part of knowing yourself as limited. But to what are you limited? You are limited to being a presence (...) other than that of the other that you are defined off against. It is thus worth noting that being of a culture is a fleetingly given awareness of a condition in which your not being something else is what defines you. The logical consequence of this structural situation is that you, or I, exist foremost as a site, rather than as a substance, in our occupying a post within culture. (shrink)

The essay hypothesizes a norm condition of stasis—the mood of sentient peace occupied on a quiet porch. From there the psyche is drawn upward by concept, into the benign/abstract world or downward into the pre-verbal which links us with prespeech man/woman. Is there any default position in this map of the positions of consciousness?

"Die Tat" concerns the effort to recapture a particular memory. In searching to recover that memory trace the writer discovers that the memory datum itself diffuses and breaks up into the present remembering action of the one who remembers. The essay anatomizes that process of diffusion, and tries to come up with a definition of memory.

Among the casualties of the rush to relativism is a central tenet of classical thought: that great works of literature are great in and of themselves and not because of the needs and values of their time. This “canon-based view,” supply taken for granted by Johnson, Arnold, Pope, and Eliot, has long since been shown the door by views ranging from Marxism to today’s cultural studies. These views hold that the great works become great because of the values and concerns (...) of their own times, and they remain effectual, if they do, because of the ways they speak to their times’ concerns. There are no transhistorical values and concerns, though of course there is a past to culture and its works continue their indirect .. (shrink)

I work every day in the Cornell College Library. Usually on the ground floor level, where the fast computers are. The other day I took an early afternoon break, and went up to the second floor reading room to get a copy of The Times and relax. As I passed through the reading room I saw a Japanese student sitting at the long reading table, studying his physics text. He was sitting up straight; the hard back book was standing vertical (...) in front of him on the table, three feet away. The room was pretty silent and the boy was concentrating. I got my paper and took it back to the lower level to read. I read for twenty minutes, then returned to my computer, where I worked for an hour and a half. I finished my online teaching for the day, I packed up my stuff, climbed back up the stairs to the reading room, crossed the room to exit. At that point, tired and stretching, I usually don’t observe much. But this time I noticed the same Japanese student. He was still in the same position, sitting upright looking at his book, balancing it firmly in both hands. He seemed still to be in the same position of attention: nothing had changed, I felt, except the design on the page: a different graph of a different color. I went out through the main door of the Library, and went home. (shrink)

This essay illustrates senses in which linear time can be proven to be non existent. Yet, as the essay agrees, the practical use of linear time, as an organizational principle in life, is unquestionable. Do we live a lie by relying on the non existent to undergird our lives? Or is lie a misleading, and naïve, word for our solution to this state of affairs?

The two essays included here are parts of a longer study of temporality, and the genesis of the “religious.” The first part, “Multiple Nows,” depicts a universe in which a present to past relation is establishable from any and every point in consciousness. The resulting perspective differs from that offered by the linear timeline of chronological history. Remembering where I put my glasses is an historicizing act, as fully as is remembering when the Battle of Zama was fought or who (...) won there. On this alternate view of temporality the genesis of the historical perspective is the historicizing subject. The second essay, “The History of a House,” places the observer before an historical structure, then asks where the historicity in the structure is. We discover that the historicity is put there by the observer/subject. This discovery resembles our earlier discovery that historicity is generated by an infinite sequence of nows. The two essays converge on a description of historical cognition as subject-generated. (shrink)

The two essays included here are parts of a longer study of temporality, and the genesis of the “religious.” The first part, “Multiple Nows,” depicts a universe in which a present to past relation is establishable from any and every point in consciousness. The resulting perspective differs from that offered by the linear timeline of chronological history. Remembering where I put my glasses is an historicizing act, as fully as is remembering when the Battle of Zama was fought or who (...) won there. On this alternate view of temporality the genesis of the historical perspective is the historicizing subject. The second essay, “The History of a House,” places the observer before an historical structure, then asks where the historicity in the structure is. We discover that the historicity is put there by the observer/subject. This discovery resembles our earlier discovery that historicity is generated by an infinite sequence of nows. The two essays converge on a description of historical cognition as subject-generated. (shrink)