Philosophy must adopt barbarism’s own brutal style to oppose barbarism exactly

Evidence

The style of the theory will become simpler. But this is only because the style will expose simplicity, consciously making simplicity a reflection of the process of barbarization. The style will assimilate itself to the racketeers in the strength of its hatred, and thus become their opposite. Its logic will become as summary as their justice, as crude as their lies, as unscrupulous as their agentsand in this contradiction to barbarism it will become specific, exact and scrupulous … When philosophy omits the subordinate clause relativizing the mutilation of humanity, it will grant to horror the absoluteness which follows from that. The finest nuance of desire is sacred to philosophy. But in its lack of detailed description of the apparatus, the absence of syntactic links giving the why, when and wherefore of the disaster, there becomes eloquent in philosophy the night of despair in which one victim is the same as any other. Science reaches for statistics; but, for the understanding, one concentration camp is enough. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1328

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is Horkheimer’s definitive statement of what critical theory’s style should be — a definitional core of the Frankfurt School aesthetic.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that theory must mirror the racketeer’s logic — summary, crude, unscrupulous — to become exact and scrupulous is a dense, paradox-laden formulation of how oppositional writing must adapt its form to its object.
• XREF: Connects directly to Adorno’s later writings on the style of critical writing — particularly ‘the essay as form’ and his claims about writing against the cultural industry in its own hardened idiom. — connects to: A philosophy matching the horror of barbarism must abandon explanatory causal detail; Civility and barbarity constitute each other rather than oppose each other; Philosophical style itself can be judged unfree and dictatorial — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 609 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s fragmented aphoristic style was itself a philosophical position against system #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 834
• Civility and barbarity constitute each other rather than oppose each other #complicates (0.82)
• Mass philosophy must start from common sense and take polemical form #qualifies (0.78) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1506
• Critique of instrumental reason must proceed dialectically, not by opposing another philosophy #complicates (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1392
• Philosophical style itself can be judged unfree and dictatorial #qualifies (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 609