Reflections on Walter Benjamin's Philosophy

Time is thus constellational rather than linear, where past events are teleologically linked with present events through an order which is redemptive and leading to an end which is redemptive and the arrest of all time with the Messiah's return, who will judge the victors in history and bring victory to those who have been oppressed through class struggle throughout history, and this will entail bringing justice to the oppressed classes and judgement for the Antichrist as ruling powers from which even the dead will not be safe.Benjamin thus describes history as the procession and succession of a series of victors-these victors are the rulers in history, the political elites who have benefited from the spoils of capitalism and who have gained power from these spoils from oppressing the lower classes or working classes. History has always been shown to empathize with these victors in history, or the rulers or political elites who have derived their power from the oppression of the lower classes or proletariat. As Benjamin puts it, this empathy with the victors in history is also an occasion of horror because the spoils of victory owe themselves to the anonymous toil of contemporaries as much as their great minds and talents who have created them. Thus Benjamin holds that there is no document of civilization which is not free from barbarism, it is the violence of class oppression which has allowed the victors in history to maintain their power and advantage. The task of the historical materialist is thus to brush history up against the grain and also depict the losers in history who will be eventually redeemed by the coming of the Messiah who will bring justice for them and give them a voice. Only the Messiah himself consummates all history, in the sense that he alone redeems, completes, creates its relation to the Messianic. (Benjamin, 1978: 312) The above quote posits the Messiah as the culmination of history, all the injustices of worldly life will be righted and all the oppressed classes will be redeemed by the Messiah as the Messiah completes history and will represent the culmination of Messianic time which history is moving inexorably towards.

In his Theologico-Political Fragment, Walter Benjamin writes, Only the messiah himself consummates all history, in the sense that he alone redeems, completes, creates its relation to the Messianic. For this reason, nothing historical can relate itself on its own account to anything Messianic. Therefore the Kingdom of God is not the telos of the historical dynamic; it cannot be set as a goal. From the standpoint of history it is not the goal but the end. Therefore the order of the profane cannot be built up on the idea of the Divine Kingdom and therefore theocracy has no political but only a religious meaning.

‘Philosophy and Revolution’ panel, Goldsmiths Continental Philosophy Research Group Inc. http://walterbenjamin2012.blogspot.co.uk/

How can one think of History in a time in which Europe happened to be haunted by the specter of catastrophe, in our modern times? How can one escape the perils of Progress? This urgency determined the thought of Walter Benjamin since his youth, and decisively marked his conception of history itself, but also of his vision of language and of translation, of his own critique of art and reception. Starting from the concept of dialectic image as a new paradigm of comprehension of history, Benjamin tries to substitute an idea of a narrative of progress for discontinued and figurative idea of history, that regains in the present the possibility of reactivate the past and that values a qualitative dimension of temporality, instead of a quantitative temporality that homogenized and disfigured his reading of history. Benjamin takes, essentially from the idea of Messianism, as a secularized category of Jewish tradition, to “build” what he designated as the dissident and revolutionary gesture of the historian of “brushing history against the grain”, focusing on himself that potentiality of rescuing the “messianic parcel” that become our fate and that brings in itself the echoes of voices that come to us. This is also the most important dimension of Benjamin’s thought, eminently political and ethical, configuring a radical gesture that reclaims justice for the ones that the history of Progress forgot: the overpassed and the victims of history.

Astrolabio. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, 2007

Constellations, 2008

The interpretive key to Walter Benjamin's "Theses On the Philosophy of History" which I intend to bring to light, can be deliberately and provocatively expressed in the title: "Messianism without Delay." This is literally a paradoxical title which seemingly contrasts with commonsense or current opinion with regard to those characteristics traditionally attributed to the "messianic." How is it possible, in a literal sense, to have a messianism without "horizon of delay?" And does not the lack of a 'wait' constitute sufficient reason for dissolving the very tension implied in the concept of a "messiah" itself? It is my firm conviction that one finds hidden here the secret cipher of a text-at once translucent and enigmatic-which can only be thoroughly grasped by reconstructing the multi-polar constellations of its conceptual and symbolic referents. That is, one cannot interpret its radical political-theological core simply as a "secularized" version of messianism (as occurs in the philosophies of history criticized by Karl Löwith 1): Benjamin's brand of messianism is in equal measure post-secular and post-religious. In short, the paradox of Benjamin's message of redemption lies in its position on the other side of the ambiguous Janus profile of western Futurism. It is symbolized, on the one hand, by the promise of salvation in monotheistic religions and, on the other, by the modern philosophy of history's faith in progress. Hence, I will try to illustrate how the singular figure of a "messianism without delay" is tied to the proposal of a "concept of history" not after the end of history, but rather, after the end of the faith in history. 2. I will begin with a passage from the last letter from Benjamin to Adorno: a precious and intense document from a dialogue that became-despite well-known disagreementsincreasingly close (the more intimate "mein lieber Teddie" instead of the formal "Lieber Herr Wiesengrund" with which their correspondence began on July 2, 1928 is telling in this regard). In this letter dated August 2, 1940-sent (an irony of fate) from Lourdes-Benjamin seems to apply the political-theological constellation of the "Grenzfall" at the extreme hour of his own existence, the extremus necessitatis casus: "Total uncertainty about what the next day, the next hour will bring has ruled my existence for many weeks." 2 We have here, together, an absolute temporal contraction and a diametrical overturning of the messianic wait into a "state of exception" (Ausnahmezustand): in the Ernstfall time carries a bi-polar structure in which the extremes of Fear (Angst) and of Hope (Hoffnung) are hazardously related. This is a motif that appears throughout the radical thought of the twentieth century and which is echoed in Hölderlin's knotty adage: "Where danger is there is salvation also." On the other hand, a recurring theme within the field of Benjaminian criticism argues that Benjamin developed his idea of messianism from reading the Romantics (in particular from Christenheit oder Europa by Novalis). This thesis is not completely correct and, on this point, Hermann Cohen provides an invaluable reference for reconstructing the sources and Urszenen (the symbolically prototypical scenes) of Benjamin's intellectual formation. Cohen's notion that history, properly defined, is a creation of the prophetic is of particular interest. Benjamin certainly draws from Novalis the idea of a 'plural' messiah ("with a million

Astrolabio, Revista Internacional de Filosofía, 2010

Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es rastrear y articular el concepto de materialismo histórico, así como su relación con otros conceptos tales como política, teología y progreso, en los principales textos histórico-filosóficos de Benjamin. El marco teórico del trabajo es analítico-descriptivo.

Walter Benjamin thus defines the current social order as a manifestation of demonic forces with the rule of the current profane order under the Prince of this world Satan. The divine is thus not vested in the current order but in revolution towards the world to come with the inversion of the hierarchy where the first will be last and the last will be first. Benjamin argues that in this world divine power is higher than divine powerlessness as religious power does not liberate the weak at present but in the world to come the weak will be strong and will be more powerful than those who are currently powerful in a religious hierarchy. The weak and poor will be set free with the coming of the Messiah who will invert social organizations and class systems.