Of Philosophical Style--from Leibniz to Benjamin

This essay seeks to be nothing more than a commentary on three consecutive entries in Convolute N of Benjamin's Arcades Project. Of course, this convolute, which was, until recently, the only one translated into English, has served as the point of entrance and center of attraction for a large number of readers—and with good reason: Nowhere else does Benjamin discuss more directly the stakes of his massive study, and nowhere else, with the possible exception of Convolute K, with its depiction of the Copernican turn in historical intuition, does Benjamin more explicitly lay out the points around which his puzzling venture revolves. Entries on the dialectical image, the idea of progress, and the meaning of Marx, all under the promising title "Epistemological [Erkenntnistheoretisches], Theory of Progress," give Convolute N its characteristic momentum. The remarks on which this essay comments have almost nothing to do with such matters, however, except e contrario, for they momentarily interrupt a sequence of entries in which the character of the image, the figuration of progress, and the thought of Marx are brought into line. Coming immediately after two suggestive citations—one from a work on nineteenth-century French literature that compares certain "images" of the past to "those that are imprinted by light on a photosensitive plate," ¹ the other from a poem by Victor Hugo, in which progress is represented as an "eternal reader" who "leans on its elbows and dreams" (N15a,2)—and coming immediately before an extensive engagement with Marx's work, the entries I discuss are easily overlooked. Neither the passages Benjamin cites nor his own brief remarks seem especially profound, nor are they likely to strike readers as anything more than an incongruous plea for clarity. The topic toward which this commentary gravitates is the locus of this incongruity, one of the very few technical terms of traditional philosophical discourse that Benjamin adopts for his Arcades Project, as if it were the last word of—and his last word on—what is generally called "philosophy," namely the technical term monad.

1. N15a,3, or "Du Style"

Benjamin quotes the following passage from Joseph Joubert's eclectic treatise "Du Style":

It is through familiar words [mots familiers] that style bites into and penetrates the reader. It is through them that great thoughts circulate and are accepted as genuine, like gold or silver imprinted with a recognized seal. They inspire confidence in the person who uses them to make his thoughts more sensible [sensible]; for one recognizes by such usage of common language someone who knows life and things, and who keeps in touch with the world. Moreover, these words make for a frank style. They show the author has long nourished the thought or the feeling expressed, that he has made them so much his own, so much a matter of habit that, for him, common expressions suffice to express ideas that have become natural to him after a long conception. In the end, what one says in this way will appear more truthful; and clarity is something so characteristic of truth that it is often confused with it. (N15a,3)

To which Benjamin adds, "Nothing more subtle than the advice: be clear so as at least to appear true [um wahr wenigstens zu erscheinen]. Imparted in this way, the advice to write simply, which usually harbors rancor, has the highest authority" (N15a,3). In light of the untroubled self-assurance that Joubert both describes and manifests, which rises above those lowly perspectives from which resentments are generated, Benjamin identifies a desideratum wholly removed from the dynamics of competitive desire: the style for which to strive. With these words—"On the style for which to strive [Ðber den Stil, der zu erstreben ist]"—he introduces the three passages from, and commentary on, Joubert's "Du Style" that make their way into The Arcades Project.

The style for which to strive—by whom, however, Benjamin never says—has...