There would thus be an intimate connection between the notion of image as Benjamin understands it and that of archetype central to Goethe’s reliance on intuition in the scientific investigation of nature. In particular, I aim to develop the concept of image in view of the relation that Benjamin establishes between his own method and conception of truth and that of Goethe. The present essay is devoted to clarifying the relation of the collection of material to that of the higher intuitability of history provided in the dialectical image.
The overall unity is primarily one that is characterized by Benjamin as that of an image, the dialectical image.
And yet it might be as problematic, in attempting to characterize Benjamin’s historical materialism, to give up on the dimension of overall unity that is the task of the project, in favor of the detailed dispersal of the collection and the archive. “Collection” and “archive” indeed introduce contingency and concrete materiality in all its details that resist easy assimilation into various premature conceptual unities. Walter Benjamin’s use of the concepts of collection and archive to characterize the task of the historian could initially be viewed as an antidote to the danger presented by the philosophical concept of system, which is liable to be abused in attempts to represent the essential in history.
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