'The ideology of cultural conservatism which sees enlightenment and art as simple antitheses is false, among other reasons, in overlooking the moment of enlightenment in the genesis of beauty. Enlightenment does not merely dissolve all the qualities that beauty adheres to, but posits the quality of beauty in the first place.'

'The idea that after this war life will continue 'normally' or even that culture might be 'rebuilt' - as if the rebuilding of culture were not already its nega…

'The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.'

'The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.'

The Greeks were the classicists of antiquity and they are still today the preeminent classicists. What marked all they did, the classic stamp, is a direct simp…

Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the ob…

'Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.'