170
PARTISAN REVIEW
them, the reader-this reader-feels compelled to insist, sympathetic–
ally, on their massive presence.
A SELECTION OF PASSAGES FROM MAX BENSE'S WORK
(Translated
by
Francis Golffing)
THEORY
We are constantly transcending our theory so as to remove our–
selves, imperiously, from the world we have made. Yet we require the
aid of theory, today more than ever, to be at all able to dwell in this
world of artifice-to dwell in it both existentially and practically; to
inhabit its inside as well as its outside.
(P
oster World)
It should be quite obvious that technological progress spells nothing
about values, their existence or non-existence. It simply tells us whether
or not, in a given domain, certain chains of thought have been rigor–
ously developed; whether or not that domain itself, as originally con–
stituted, may be considered complete. It is in this sense that we view
the history of technics as a chain of perfections-as so many
perfected
expressions of philosophical, mathematical, sociological, artistic, political
thought. Once the world of technology is seen under the category of
"labor"-the way Marx sees it and, on the other side of the fence,
Heidegger or Simone Weil-we are fully entitled to equate the history of
technics with the history of human labor. The progressive perfection of
this technological world, in terms of complete entities and existences, of
complete functions and relations, argues the total absorption into the
labor process of all thoughts that have ever been entertained, by scientists
and philosophers, moralists and theologians, concerning the nature of
the universe. And what holds for discursive thought holds with equal
strength for the experiences-so profoundly attached to
materials-of
artist, poet and musician.
(Poster World)
METHOD
Trenchancy and acumen are the prime requisites of a critic; force
tempered with tact, of a controversialist. The success of a critic is
measured by his ability to take a statement supposedly true and look
at it hard, while turning it this way and that, until his eye lights on
the delicate spot that betrays it. But the writer engaged in polemics
