The Arcades Project - Operi

Idleness seeks to avoid any sort of tie to the idler's line of work, and ultimately to
the labor process in general. That distinguishes it from leisure. [m3,!]
I.(.AlI religious, metaphysical, historical ideas are, in the last analysis, merely
preparations derived from the great experiences of the past-representations of
the experience." Wilhelm Dilthey, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (Leipzig and
=
1-1
r ,
Berlin, 1929), p. 198. [m3,2]
Closely connected with the shattering of long experience is the shattering of
juridical certitudes. "In the liberalist period, economic predominance was gener­
ally associated with legal ownership of the means of production . ... But after the
development of technology in the last century had led to a rapidly increasing
concentration . . . of capital, the legal owners were largely excluded from . . .
management. . . . Once the legal owners are cut off from the real productive
process ... , their horizon narrows ; . .. and finally the share which they still have
in industry due to ownership ... comes to seem socially useless . ... The idea of
a right with a fixed content, and independent of society at large, loses its impor­
tance." We finally arrive at "the loss of all rights with a determined content, a loss
. . . given its fullest form in the authoritarian state." Max Horkheimer, "Tradi­
tionelle lmd Kritische Theorie," Zeitschrzji for Sozia!forschung, no. 2 (1937),
pp. 285-28Z Compare Horkheimer, "Bemerkungen zur philosophischen An­
thropologie;' Zeitschriflfor Sozia!forschung, no. 1 (1935), p. 12." [m3,3]
"The authentic Held of operations for the vivid chronicle of what is happening is
the documentary account of immediate experience, reportage. It is directly aimed
at the event, and it holds fast to the experience. This presupposes that. the event
also becomes an immediate experience for the journalist reporting on it. ... The
capacity for huving an experience is therefore a precondition . . . of good . . .
professional work." Dovif'at, "".F'ormen und Wirkungsgesetze des Stils in
del' Zeitung," Deutsche Presse, July 22, 1939 (Berlin), p. 285. [m3,4]
Apropos of the idler: the archaic image of ships in Baudelaire. [m3,S]
The stringent work ethic and moral doctrine of Calvinism, it may be said, is most
intimately related to the development of the vita contemplativa. It sought to build
a dam to stem the melting of time into idleness, once such time was frozen in
contemplation. [m3a,!]
On the feuilleton. It was a matter of injecting experience-as it were, intrave­
nously-with the poison of sensation; that is to say, highlighting within ordinary
experience the character of immediate experience.7 To this end, the experience of
the big-city dweller presented itself. The feuilletonist turns this to account. He
renders the city strange to its inhabitants. He is thus one of the first technicians
called up by the heightened need for immediate expelences. (The same need is