Aphorism is the form suited to a vanishing subject

Evidence

Dialectical theory, abhorring anything isolated, cannot admit aphorisms as such. In the most lenient instance they might, to use a term from the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind , be tolerated as ‘conversation’. But the time for that is past. Nevertheless, this book forgets neither the system’s claim to totality, which would suffer nothing to remain outside it, nor that it remonstrates against this claim. … If today the subject is vanishing, aphorisms take upon themselves the duty ‘to consider the evanescent itself as essential’. They insist, in opposition to Hegel’s practice and yet in accordance with his thought, on negativity: ‘The life of the mind only attains its truth when discovering itself in absolute desolation. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 10

Categorization

• DEFINE: Adorno’s own justification for the aphoristic form as against Hegelian systematicity — form follows historical condition, not aesthetic preference.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the aphorism is required precisely because the subject (its traditional vehicle) is vanishing operates on two levels at once: formal (why fragmentary writing) and historical (why the subject cannot be totalized).
• XREF: connects to: Aphorisms dwell within the subject that systematic philosophy abandons; A philosophy can exist implicitly inside practical aphorisms; Man has no substance but is constituted as a disappearing subject of habit (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• A philosophy can exist implicitly inside practical aphorisms #expands (0.90)