MAX BENSE
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new ones. Mr. Bense is as aware of this as the next man, nor can
he be accused of making things easy for himself: each pamphlet and
treatise from his pen is instinct with a sense of strain-the strain im–
posed by the vastness of his responsibility. But to whom, or to what,
does he feel thus responsible? To an ideal of pure reason-implying
scientific method as well as planned domination of nature-which,
though vastly expanded in scope, is still the ideal of Bacon, of Des–
cartes, of the French Encyclopedists. So far, so good; yet being the
honest man he is, Bense cannot stop there. He realizes the disturbing
elements threatening this careful underpinning and so at once comes
up against a fearful dilemma. Should he ignore the non-rational,
perhaps fight it? The first would be dishonest, the second both futile
and narrow. Why not, instead, widen the rationalistic framework so
as to accommodate the enemy-and, in the process, render him harm–
less? This is, in fact, the strategy Mr. Bense proposes himself and the
results, while they inspire respect, are most peculiar. Reasoning back
to the premises one is struck, almost appalled, by the naivete of so
complex a writer.
Bense attempts to mediate all, or nearly. Pascal and Husserl,
symbolic logic and Existentialism, poetry and technology, Kafka and
Hegel-these and similar pairs may be seen to move, hand in hand,
through his strangely homogenized discourse. The system rejects noth–
ing, it seems, except chunks of Plato, German Idealism, and certain
mystical doctrines. Incongruous yokings apart, Bense's analyses of in–
dividual writers, or expositions of individual works, are quite masterly
in their way; and there is irony in the fact that among his very
best pieces are those on Kafka and Gottfried Benn: authors who
militate against his dearest convictions and who, if taken at their
full value, would subvert them altogether. Bense guards against this
danger, not, as an unsympathetic critic might, by falsification but by
categorization, i.e., rationalization. Overriding his own cautions against
confounding literary and philosophical discourse, he presents a Kafka
who looks very much like a congener of Husserl and Heidegger, try–
ing to classify the modes of contemporary experience. It all makes
sense; supremely good sense sometimes; but it is not the whole
story-not quite.
The trouble, however, goes deeper. Some of the most senous
