CONTRADICTION, CRITIQUE, AND DIALECTIC IN ADORNO A ...

adicalization of the materialist strain in his interpretation of language. The unifying
theme throughout my exegesis of Benjamin is an interpretation of his philosophical ideas
on language’s ability and methodology to express the non-conceptual.
Benjamin begins the essay “Über Sprache Überhaupt und Über die Sprache des
Menschen” by noting that the essence of all things is language.
Es gibt kein Geschehen oder Ding weder in der belebten noch in der unbelebten
Natur, das nicht in gewisser Weise an der Sprache teilhätte, denn es ist jedem
wesentlich, seinen geistigen Inhalt mitzuteilen. Eine Metapher aber ist das Wort
‚Sprache’ in solchem Gebrauche durchaus nicht. Denn es ist eine volle
inhaltliche Erkenntnis, daß wir uns nichts vorstellen können, das sein geistiges
Wesen nicht im Ausdruck mitteilt; der größere oder geringere Bewußtseinsgrad,
mit dem solche Mitteilung scheinbar (oder wirklich) verbunden ist, kann daran
nichts ändern, daß wir uns völlige Abwesenheit der Sprache in nichts vorstellen
können. 341
The first thing to note about this claim is that Benjamin operates with a very wide
understanding of ‘language’ not limited to conceptual language. ‘Language’
encompasses for him the larger category of ‘expression’ [Ausdruck]. And expression
does not occur in the medium of concepts. Hence the view that all things, including
inanimate ones, have linguistic being does not mean, as might at first appear, that all
things have conceptual structure and discursive abilities.
341 Benjamin, Walter, “Über Sprache Überhaupt und Über die Sprache des Menschen,” in
Gesammelte Werke I (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 2011), 206-220. English translation by
Edmund Jephcott in “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected
Writings, vol. 1 (Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 62:
There is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that does not in some way partake
of language, for it is in the nature of each one to communicate its mental contents. This use of the
word ‘language’ is in no way metaphorical. For to think that we cannot imagine anything that
does not communicate its mental nature in its expression is entirely meaningful; consciousness is
apparently (or really) bound to such communication in varying degrees, but this cannot alter the
fact that we cannot imagine a total absence of language in anything.
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