NEGATIVE DIALECTICS (1)

[Alex Emil Kentsis]

On Wed, 4 Mar 1998 bj.mail@earthling.net wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> > (2) "Once upon a time, compared with sense perception and every kind of
> > external experience, it was felt to be the very opposite of naivete; now
> it
> > has objectively grown as naive in its turn as the seedy scholars speaking
> on
> > subjective isolation seemed to Goethe ..." (3)
> >
> 
> 
> I don't also know to which seedy scholars Goethe referred, but I'm wondering
> if the translation of the last part is accurate. In original, it sounds:
> 
> "... wie Goethe schon vor hundertfuenfzig Jahren die kuemmerlichen
> Kandidaten empfand, die subjektiv an der Spekulation sich guetlich taten."
> 
> So, Adorno didn't say: "scholars speaking on subjective isolation" but:
> "scholars subjectively making use of [or profiting by] speculation" (sorry
> for the grammar, eventually).

i am reading this out of context, but from what i know of goethe, he was
most likely referring to schelling and fichte, schelling predominantly. it
is schelling who largely introduced goethe to kant (in spite of the fact
that goethe read the first critique), and it was from schelling that
goethe's ideas about speculative and intuitive knowledge developed.

-alex.