Thinking as Gesture

The idea that there is a relationship between thinking and exaggeration, which proves to be constitutive of thinking itself and its presentation, is an idea Adorno repeatedly formulates without ever expressly and systematically developing. Because this relationship is meant to allow thinking to relate to truth, the lack of a systematic development cannot be explained as the result of a simple omission on the part of the philosopher. The question must be raised whether Adorno's idea does not in itself amount to an exaggeration. Does the exaggeration of thinking not thwart the attempt to develop a thought systematically? Does the absence of a systematic development of the idea that the very constitution of thinking depends on exaggeration not result from exaggeration itself, from the impossibility of justifying it? Every justified exaggeration is no longer an exaggeration. Once justified, exaggeration is either an external device or a necessary limitation of thought. In both cases it ceases to be an exaggeration which constitutes thought and its claim to truth; indeed it ceases to be an exaggeration capable of constituting thought and its claim to truth. The external device may serve the purpose of rhetorical emphasis, yet strictly speaking its function cannot be justified from the point of view of thought. Thought as such stands in no need of rhetorical emphasis. Thus, exaggeration does not constitute a thought it emphasizes rhetorically. As soon as it has been justified as a rhetorical device or supplement, it also ceases to be an exaggeration. It has been domesticated. A necessary limitation, on the other hand, belongs to thinking itself

Aesthetics · Art · Dialectic · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Gesture · Linguistics · Literature · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Philosophy

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