On Adorno's concept of 'epic naïveté'

Abstract

In 1958, Theodor W. Adorno published the first volume of Notas de literatura, which included the essay "Sobre a ingenuidade épica”, written in 1943 as part of research for work produced with Horkheimer, Dialética do esclarecimento. Not by accident is that the concepts developed in this work may elucidate the notion of epic ingenuity presented in the short essay of 1943. In this article, I will analize the adornian concept of “epic ingenuity” in the light of the relationship between myth and reason developed in Dialética do esclarecimento. The contradiction in the epic discourse between the myth and linguistic register is presented as the reflexive principle which allows associations with the discourse of enlightened reason: both discourses intend, through objectivity, to dominate the unknown, lessen the fascination and fear caused by the obscurity. However, they are different because the epic discourse adheres to the particular, whereas the enlightened reason adheres to the universal. The criticism directed to the enlightened reason by the epic ingenuity results from that difference, since the epic discourse, proposing himself as a fiction and abstaining from the classificatory logic, associates concept and object to produce an image of the real.