Adorno defended Benjamin’s method against phenomenological misreading

Evidence

To interpret his lack of system and of a closed theoretical foundation as sufficient reason to align him with the representatives of ‘intuition,’ eidetic or otherwise … is to overlook what is best in him. It is not his glance as such which lays claim to the unmediated possession of the absolute; rather his manner of seeing, the entire perspective is altered. The technique of enlargement brings the rigid in motion and the dynamic to rest. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 609

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures Adorno’s distinction between Benjamin’s dialectical ‘enlargement’ technique and phenomenology’s intuitionism.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno and Horkheimer criticized Husserl’s phenomenology for denying mediation — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 263