Heine and Critical Theory by Willi Goetschel

Author:Willi Goetschel
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

But Heine is no idealist, nor a Hegelian for that matter. Rather, his approach preludes a key notion at the heart of Benjamin’s and Adorno’s historical materialism. Heine makes it clear that the forces that reshape human life are not driven by ideas themselves—for ideas have no power in themselves, but gain force only to the degree that they reflect, that is, express, the power of the dynamics of the affects that determine people’s actions. This notion—close to Spinoza’s conception of the function and life of ideas28—points beyond the dichotomous distinction between idealist and materialist explanation of cultural production and of history. Heine’s point is that the power of ideas is derived not from any isolated pure act of thinking, but rests instead on a complex nexus of material conditions in which ideas gain life as the products of a process that creates “the great facts and the great books.” This process defies idealist and materialist explanations as it calls for a model that comprehends life as the sum total of the function of the infinitely complex interplay of the material conditions that determine life, down to our most personal actions and the way we think. It is at this point in his discussion that Heine introduces a notion that will assume critical significance in Benjamin and Adorno:

Perhaps it is time to write a literary astrology, and in it explain the appearance of certain ideas or of certain books wherein these reveal themselves, according to the constellations of heavenly bodies. (L 6, 37f.)29

Es ist vielleicht an der Zeit eine literarische Astrologie zu schreiben und die Erscheinung gewisser Ideen, oder gewisser Bücher worin diese sich offenbaren, aus der Konstellation der Gestirne zu erklären. (B 3, 466)

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