'… abandoning the fragile hope that works of art might lead to new ways of life'

'The main title, The Claim of Reason, refers at once to (1) the claim that reason makes for its own sovereignty; (2) the typical claim—the sort of claim—that one makes to know something (whether about the external world, our own minds, or other minds) or in judging actions or intentions; (3) our moral claims on one another; and (4) the kind of claim that reason stakes out in the realm of philosophy which is itself initiated as an enterprise.'

'… that which presents itself to the spectator as the play of art does not simply exhaust itself in momentary transport, but has a claim to permanence and the permanence of a claim.

The word "claim" does not occur here by chance. In the theological reflection that began with Kierkegaard and which we call "dialectical theology," it is no accident that this concept has made possible a theological explanation of what Kierkegaard meant by contemporaneity. A claim is something lasting. Its justification (or pretended justification) is the primary thing. Because a claim lasts, it can be enforced at any time. A claim exists against someone and must therefore be enforced against him; but the concept of a claim also implies that it is not itself a fixed demand, the fulfillment of which is agreed on by both sides, but is rather the ground for such. A claim is the legal basis for an unspecified demand. If it is to be answered in such a way as to be settled, then to be enforced it must first take the form of a demand. It belongs to the permanence of a claim that it is concretized in a demand.

The application to Lutheran theology is that the claim of faith began with the proclamation of the gospel and is continually reinforced in preaching. The words of the sermon perform this total mediation, which otherwise is the work of the religious rite—of the mass, for example. We shall see that in other ways too the word is called in to mediate between past and present, and that it therefore comes to play a leading role in the problem of hermeneutics.'

'… the wretched task / Of telling things I ought rather to ask'

'… media no longer "exist" in a traditional sense…'

'Two uses of "we"'

'Darkthrone is for all the evil in man.'

'An experience is as much distinguished from other experiences—in which other things are experienced—as it is from the rest of life in which "nothing" is experienced.'

An eloquent image: a closet, half-empty.