Suppressing the affective origins of thought yields intellectual sterility

Evidence

But if the impulses are not at once preserved and surpassed in the thought which has escaped their sway, then there will be no knowledge at all, and the thought that murders the wish that fathered it will be overtaken by the revenge of stupidity. Memory is tabooed as unpredictable, unreliable, irrational. The resulting intellectual asthma, which culminates in the dissolution of the historical dimension of consciousness, leads directly to a depreciation of the synthetic apperception which, according to Kant, cannot be divorced from ‘reproduction in imagination’, from recollection. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 150

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: The phrase ‘revenge of stupidity’ and ‘intellectual asthma’ are signature Adorno images of damaged cognition — connects to the ‘pathic stupidity’ motif across Part Two.

Related

• Thought divorced from emotion destroys the impulse that nourishes it (similarity 0.83)