The Origins of Exact Imagination, or the Idea of Modern Life
Keywords:
Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Oswald Spengler, physiognomy, interpretationAbstract
This essay suggests that Theodor Adorno’s so-called physiognomic method of interpretation can be understood as an adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s heterodox scientific method to the realm of social and cultural inquiry. Adorno’s persistent reference to underlying social “essences” and historical “ideas” in his writings shares many similarities with Goethe’s stubbornly metaphysical conception of an “original phenomenon” (Urphänomen) that manifests in natural entities. These similarities are especially surprising considering that Adorno did not appear to have any familiarity with Goethe’s scientific writings and only implicitly alludes to them by way of a single Goethean term throughout his life: “exact imagination.” I present the “origins” of exact imagination in several senses throughout this essay: a detailed explication of the structure of Goethe’s imaginative scientific method; a genealogical sketch of Goethean science from its natural-scientific origins to its role in the historiographic writings of Walter Benjamin and Oswald Spengler, with which Adorno was deeply familiar; and an analysis of how Adorno unwittingly refashioned Goethe's method throughout his career in the interest of disclosing the “idea” of modern life.
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