Walter Benjamin’s “Secret Germany”

Abstract

“It is peculiar [eigen] to philosophical writing that at each turn of phrase it should confront anew the question of representation.” Thus begins the “Epistemo-Critical Preface” to Walter Benjamin’s study of German Baroque drama. “In its final form,” it goes on,

it will, to be sure, be doctrine. But it does not lie within the power of mere thought to impart to it such finality. [… ] The part of method in philosophical projects is not reducible to their didactic organization. Which is to say that an esoteric element is peculiar to them that they are unable to discard, forbidden to deny, and that it would be their ruin to extol.¹

Everything he said sounded as if it came from a mysterious place [Geheimnis]. But its power derived from its self evidence.

— T. W. Adorno