The Theory of Criticism

The unity of philosophy-its system-is, as an answer, of a higher order than the infinite number of finite questions that can be posed. 1 It is of a higher kind and a higher order than that to which the quintessence of all these questions can lay claim, because a unity of the answer cannot be obtained through any questioning. The unity of philosophy therefore belongs to a higher order than any single philosophical question or problem can claim.-If there were questions that nevertheless called for a unified answer, their relation to philosophy would be fundamentally different from that of philosophical problems generally. In responses to such problems, there is a constant tendency to ask further questions-a tendency that has led to superficial talk to the effect that philosophy is an infinite task. The yearning for a unity that cannot be arrived at by questions turns, in its disappointment, to the alternative that could be called a counterquestion. This counterquestion then pursues the lost unity of the question, or seeks a superior question, which would simultaneously be a search for a unified answer.-If such questions-questions that seek a unity--did exist, the answers to them would permit neither further questioning nor counterquestioning. But no such questions exist; the system of philosophy as such cannot be interrogated. And to this virtual question (which can be inferred only from the answer) there could obviously be only one answer: the system of philosophy itself. Nevertheless there are constructs that bear the deepest affinity to philosophy, or rather to the ideal form of its problem, without constituting philosophy themselves--even though they are not the answer to that hypothetical question, or hypothetical, or even the question. These constructs, which are thus actual, not virtual, and are neither questions nor

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answers, are works of art. Works of art do not compete with philosophy as such. They do, however, enter into the profoundest relation with it through their affinity to the ideal of its problem. The ideal of the philosophical problem is an idea that can be called an ideal, because it refers not to the immanent form of the problem but to the transcendent content of its solution, even though only through the concept of the problem and thus through the concept that it possesses a unified answer to the problem. According to a lawfulness that is probably grounded in the essence of the ideal as such, the ideal of the philosophical problem can be represented only in a multiplicity (just as the ideal of pure content in art is to be found in the plurality of the Muses). Therefore, the unity of philosophy can in principle be explored only in a plurality or multiplicity of virtual [this word was subsequently crossed out-Ed.] questions. This multiplicity lies immured in the multiplicity of true works of art, and their promotion is the business of critique. What critique basically seeks to prove about a work of art is the virtual possibility of the formulation of its contents as a philosophical problem, and what makes it call a halt-in awe, as it were, of the work of art itself, but equally in awe of philosophy-is the actual formulation of the problem. For critique arrives at its formulation on the assumption (which is never made good) that interrogating the philosophical system as such is possible. In other words, critique asserts that, if the system were complete, it would turn out to have been interrogated during the investigation of one problem or another. Critique makes the ideal of the philosophical problem manifest itself in a work of art, or enter into one of its manifestations; if, however, critique wishes to speak of the work of art as such, it can say only that the artwork symbolizes this ideal. The multiplicity of works of art is harmonious, as the Romantics perceived, and, as the latter also suspected, this harmony does not stem from a vague principle peculiar to art and implicit in art alone. Rather, it arises from the fact that works of art are ways in which the ideal of the philosophical problem makes itself manifest. When we assert that everything beautiful somehow relates to the true and that its virtual place in philosophy is determinable, this means that a manifestation of the ideal of the philosophical problem can be discovered in every work of art. And we should add that such a manifestation may be assigned to every philosophical problem as its aura [Strahlenkreis], so to speak. At every point the hypothetical approach to the unity to be interrogated is available, and the work of art in which it is contained is therefore related to certain authentic philosophical problems, even though it may be precisely distinguished from them. Corresponding to this manifestation of the true as well as of the individual truth in the individual work of art is a further manifestation of the beautiful in the true. This is the manifestation of the coherent, harmonious totality

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of the beautiful in the unity of the true. Plato's Symposium, at its climax, deals' with this topic. Its message is that beauty achieves this virtual manifestation only within the truth as a whole. What remains to be investigated is the common ground for these two relations between art and philosophy. (The true: unity. The beautiful: multiplicity assembled into a totality.) (Perhaps there is a virtual relation between other realms, too. Can't morality appear virtually in freedom?) Comparison: Suppose you make the acquaintance of a young person who is handsome and attractive, but who seems to be harboring a secret. It would be tactless and reprehensible to try to penetrate this secret and wrest it from him. But it is doubtless permissible to inquire whether he has any siblings, to see whether their nature could not perhaps explain somewhat the enigmatic character of the stranger. This is exactly how the true critic inquires into the siblings of the work of art. And every great work has its sibling (brother or sister?) in the realm of philosophy. Just as philosophy makes use of symbolic concepts to draw ethics and language into the realm of theory, in the same way it is possible for theory (logic) to be incorporated into ethics and language in symbolic form. We then see the emergence of ethical and' aesthetic critique.
Fragment written in 1919-1920; unpublished in Benjamin's lifetime. Translated by Rodney Livingstone.

Notes
1. Benjamin uses the term "criticism" (Kunstkritik: literally "art criticism") as the

general designation for all criticism of literature, art, music, etc. In this text, as well as in The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism and "Goethe's Elective Affinities," the term "critique" (Kritik) usually designates a specific, philosophically informed aspect of criticism.- Trans.