The Arcades Project - Operi

The dialectical image is that form of the historical object which satisfies Goethe's
requirements for the object of analysis: to exhibit a genuine synthesis. It is the
primal phenomenon of history. [N9a,4]
The enshrinement or apologia is meant to cover up the revolutionary moments
io the occurrence of history. At heart, it seeks the establishment of a contiouity. It
sets store only by those elements of a work that have already emerged and played
a part in its reception. The places where tradition breaks off-hence its peaks and
crags, which offer footing to one who would cross over them-it misses.
[N9a,S]
Historical materialism must renounce the epic element io history. It blasts the
epoch out of the reified "continuity of history." But it also explodes the homogeneity
of the epoch, ioterspersiog it with ruins-that is, with the present. [N9a,6]
In every true work of art there is a place where, for one who renloves there, it
blows cool like the wiod of a coming dawn. From tlns it follows that art, which
has often been considered refractory to every relation with progress, can provide
its true definition. Progress has its seat not io the continuity of elapsiog tio,e but
io its interferences-where the truly new makes itself felt for tl,e first time, witll
the sobriety of dawn. [N9a,7]
For the materialist historian, every epoch with which he occupies himself is only
prehistory for the epoch he himself must live io. And so, for him, there can be no
appearance of repetition io history, sioce precisely those moments io tl,e course
of history which matter most to him, by virtue of their index as "fore-history,"
become moments of the present day and change their specific character accordiog
to the catastrophic or triumphant nature of that day. [N9a,8]
Scientific progress-like histOlcal progress-is io each instance merely the first
step, never the second, third, or n + I-supposiog that these latter ever belonged
not just to the workshop of science but to its corpus. That, however, is not io fact
the case; for every stage in the dialectical process (like every stage io tl,e process
of history itself), conditioned as it always is by every stage precediog, bllligs ioto
play a fundamentally new tendency, which necessitates a fundamentally new
treatment. The dialectical method is thus distinguished by the fact that, io leading
to new objects, it develops new methods, just as form io art is distioguished by
the fact that it develops new forms io delioeatiog new contents. It is only from
without that a work of art has one and only one form, that a dialectical treatise has
one and only one method. [NIO,l]
Defmitions of basic historical concepts: Catastrophe-to have nnssed the opportulnty.
Critical moment-the status quo tlneatens to be preserved. Progress-the
first revolutionary measure taken. [NIO,2]