“He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest. While he gropingly forms his own life in the frail image of a true existence, he should never forget its frailty, nor how little the image is a substitute for real life…..the detached observer is as much entangled as the active participant; the only advantage of the former is his insight into his entanglement, and the infinitesimal freedom that lies in knowledge as such. His own distance from business at large is a luxury which only that business confers. That is why the very withdrawal bears features of that which it negates. It is forced to develop a coldness indistinguishable from that of the bourgeois”
Theodor Adorno
“Minima Moralia: Reflections On a Damaged Life’ 1951
Part One 1944 P. 26
Trans. E.F.N. Jephcott
4 comments:
I'm busted! Now what? Pour a cup of tea and read Adorno?
Sorry - was in a bad mood shouldn't have inflicted...
No way out - relax and enjoy!
You sure read circles around me. All these German philosophers, so famous, so influential, so utterly alien, their arguments unknowable to the likes of me. I did Wikipedia around a little bit, but I can't get traction. Benjamin, Habermaus(?), Husserl, Heidigger, Hegel, Marx, Ayer: it's like reading invisible ink. Or it's like a meeting in a room with a locked door. I can't get in!
"Some sets, such as the set of all teacups, are not members of themselves. Other sets, such as the set of all non-teacups, are members of themselves."
Got it?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/
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