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Werke und Nachlaß. Kritische Gesamtausgabe #19
Sobre o Conceito de História
Au printemps 1940, quelques mois avant de se suicider, Walter Benjamin rédige une sorte de testament philosophique : dix-huit aphorismes denses et étincelants, au centre desquels rayonne « Angelus Novus », le tableau de Klee, que le philosophe associe à l’Ange de l’Histoire. Ces aphorismes réunis sous le titre de « Sur le concept d’histoire » sont très certainement le texte le plus commenté de Benjamin. Leur répondent ici deux autres textes antérieurs, « Edward Fuchs, collectionneur et historien », et le célèbre « Paris, capitale du xixe siècle »
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1940
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About the author
Walter Benjamin
844 books2,056 followersWalter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.
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June 26, 2023
In his last significant work the philosopher discusses the concepts of historicism, past as well as progress and criticises historical materialism. He uses a combination of scientific and poetic language.
'The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim.'
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'As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history. A historical materialist must be aware of this most inconspicuous of all transformations.'
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'For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns
threatens to disappear irretrievably.'
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'According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.'
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'A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.'
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The last paragraph (IX) about 'Angelus Novus' really impressed me. I also love Klee.
'The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history. A historical materialist must be aware of this most inconspicuous of all transformations.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns
threatens to disappear irretrievably.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.'
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The last paragraph (IX) about 'Angelus Novus' really impressed me. I also love Klee.
April 19, 2023
Walter Benjamin’s essay, On the Concept of History – or, alternatively, Theses on the Philosophy of History – is one of the more esoteric pieces of historiography I’ve encountered. The essay is a collection of loosely related theses – fragments, really – which express some of Benjamin’s concerns with the nature of history. In what seems like a burst of stream-of-consciousness writing, Benjamin teases out the pitfalls of historicism, unpacks the religious dimensions of crude Marxism, and points toward the overwhelming suffering of history.
Although I found a number of Benjamin’s arguments completely impenetrable, a few of them were quite illuminating and poetic, even venturing into the sublime. The ninth thesis, for instance, stood out among the others for its striking imagery. There, Benjamin uses a painting to represent “catastrophe” as the summation of human history. Since the ninth thesis is relatively short, I’ll reproduce it here in its entirety:
This idea of history as an unbroken continuum of human suffering – as “one single catastrophe” stretching on to infinity in both directions – stems directly from Benjamin’s own lived-experience. Written in 1940, On the Concept of History reveals Benjamin’s sense of melancholy and desperation as a Jewish-Marxist intellectual in Nazi Europe. It is a theory of history through the eyes of the persecuted. Indeed, the ninth thesis could stand on its own as a representation of the Frankfurt School and its approach to the past. I can see why Adorno and Horkheimer were so fond of him, and this sense of tragedy is echoed in their seminal work, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Before I close out my thoughts on this essay, I wanted to offer a brief point of comparison with another figure writing around the same time – Marc Bloch. Bloch, who was a French historian and founding member of the Annales School, shared much in common with Benjamin. Although Benjamin was far more politically radical than Bloch, they were both Jewish, left-leaning, historically-minded intellectuals. Both of them were also targeted by the Nazis. While the exiled Benjamin committed suicide in Spain in 1940, Bloch was arrested and executed in France four years later. Crucially, their experiences with Nazi persecution shaped their subsequent views of history. Both men scribbled frantically in the face of death, each gravely concerned with understanding history in relation to the horrors of 20th-century fascism.
Yet, although their wartime experiences overlapped, the same kind of experiences produced completely different theories of history. In particular, we see the greatest divergence between Benjamin and Bloch on the question of historical judgment. Whereas Bloch believed that “the mania for making judgments” was the “satanic enemy of true history”, Benjamin believed that precisely the opposite was true. In the fourteenth thesis, he claims: “History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now.” Historians, then, are always already in history, never outside of it. The present is projected into the past and the future from within an inescapable hermeneutic of dialectical subjectivity.
For Benjamin, moral judgment is inseparable from the historian’s craft. All temporalities are intertwined in a continuum. We cannot bracket our subjectivity from historical inquiry any more than we can reach into the ocean and pull out a single drop of water. Nor can we somehow let the past speak for itself by showing – as von Ranke suggested – “how things actually were”. History is catastrophic, not orderly; chaotic, not progressive; dialectical, not linear; tragic, not triumphant. And, like life itself, Benjamin thinks our approach to history must be equally relational and normative.
Driving this point home, Benjamin quotes Nietzsche in his twelfth thesis: “We need history, but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it.” History is a selective activity that we are endlessly wrapped up in. As such, for Nietzsche and Benjamin alike, since neutrality and objectivity are impossible, historians should embrace their subjectivity and allow history to become what it already is – an activity serving life itself.
Although I found a number of Benjamin’s arguments completely impenetrable, a few of them were quite illuminating and poetic, even venturing into the sublime. The ninth thesis, for instance, stood out among the others for its striking imagery. There, Benjamin uses a painting to represent “catastrophe” as the summation of human history. Since the ninth thesis is relatively short, I’ll reproduce it here in its entirety:
“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”
This idea of history as an unbroken continuum of human suffering – as “one single catastrophe” stretching on to infinity in both directions – stems directly from Benjamin’s own lived-experience. Written in 1940, On the Concept of History reveals Benjamin’s sense of melancholy and desperation as a Jewish-Marxist intellectual in Nazi Europe. It is a theory of history through the eyes of the persecuted. Indeed, the ninth thesis could stand on its own as a representation of the Frankfurt School and its approach to the past. I can see why Adorno and Horkheimer were so fond of him, and this sense of tragedy is echoed in their seminal work, Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Before I close out my thoughts on this essay, I wanted to offer a brief point of comparison with another figure writing around the same time – Marc Bloch. Bloch, who was a French historian and founding member of the Annales School, shared much in common with Benjamin. Although Benjamin was far more politically radical than Bloch, they were both Jewish, left-leaning, historically-minded intellectuals. Both of them were also targeted by the Nazis. While the exiled Benjamin committed suicide in Spain in 1940, Bloch was arrested and executed in France four years later. Crucially, their experiences with Nazi persecution shaped their subsequent views of history. Both men scribbled frantically in the face of death, each gravely concerned with understanding history in relation to the horrors of 20th-century fascism.
Yet, although their wartime experiences overlapped, the same kind of experiences produced completely different theories of history. In particular, we see the greatest divergence between Benjamin and Bloch on the question of historical judgment. Whereas Bloch believed that “the mania for making judgments” was the “satanic enemy of true history”, Benjamin believed that precisely the opposite was true. In the fourteenth thesis, he claims: “History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now.” Historians, then, are always already in history, never outside of it. The present is projected into the past and the future from within an inescapable hermeneutic of dialectical subjectivity.
For Benjamin, moral judgment is inseparable from the historian’s craft. All temporalities are intertwined in a continuum. We cannot bracket our subjectivity from historical inquiry any more than we can reach into the ocean and pull out a single drop of water. Nor can we somehow let the past speak for itself by showing – as von Ranke suggested – “how things actually were”. History is catastrophic, not orderly; chaotic, not progressive; dialectical, not linear; tragic, not triumphant. And, like life itself, Benjamin thinks our approach to history must be equally relational and normative.
Driving this point home, Benjamin quotes Nietzsche in his twelfth thesis: “We need history, but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it.” History is a selective activity that we are endlessly wrapped up in. As such, for Nietzsche and Benjamin alike, since neutrality and objectivity are impossible, historians should embrace their subjectivity and allow history to become what it already is – an activity serving life itself.
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July 16, 2023I certainly had expected more of this book. Of course, chapter IX in the article "The concept of history" is very captivating: Benjamin is comparing time with the angel in "Angelus Novus" by Paul Klee, on the run for what seemingly is a very disturbing past. Written in 1939-1940 (just before his suicide) it is clear what he was referring to. Unfortunately, the other texts of the article were less compelling, being musings on Benjamin's own interpretation of (marxist) historical materialism. The two essays that were added (on a French collectioner, and on Paris in the 19th century) were more interesting.
Some more in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
Some more in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
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July 16, 2025Am besten zusammen mit Sammy Martens lesen!
Alleine ist nur halb so viel Spaß.
"Der Messias kommt ja nicht nur als der Erlöser; er kommt als der Überwinder des Antichrist."
Alleine ist nur halb so viel Spaß.
"Der Messias kommt ja nicht nur als der Erlöser; er kommt als der Überwinder des Antichrist."
May 4, 2014
I bought my copy of this book during last year's BLTX. The original texts (English or German) are on the left pages of the book while the translation in Tagalog is on the right pages. For consistency, I just read the right pages.
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German literary critic, philosopher, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. As a literary critic, he wrote essays on the works of Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nicolai Leskov, Marcel Proust and Charles Baudelaire. He became a communist in the 30's due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht. He committed suicide while trying to evade the Nazis in 1940 in France while on his route to the US via the neutral Portugal.
Composed of twenty numbered paragraphs (called "theses"), On the Concept of History was in Benjamin's suitcase when he committed suicide. One interpretation of Benjamin in Thesis I, for example, is that Benjamin is suggesting that despite Karl Marx's claims to scientific objectivity, historical materialism is actually a quasi-religious fraud. Benjamin uses The Turk, a famous chess-playing device of the 18th century, as an analogy for historical materialism. Presented as an automaton that could defeat skilled chess players, The Turk actually concealed a human (allegedly a dwarf) who controlled the machine. Thesis I goes like this:
Because most of the time, I am not sure what to make of those theses that I read in the book. They seem to be for scholars to discuss and argue about.
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German literary critic, philosopher, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. As a literary critic, he wrote essays on the works of Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nicolai Leskov, Marcel Proust and Charles Baudelaire. He became a communist in the 30's due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht. He committed suicide while trying to evade the Nazis in 1940 in France while on his route to the US via the neutral Portugal.
Composed of twenty numbered paragraphs (called "theses"), On the Concept of History was in Benjamin's suitcase when he committed suicide. One interpretation of Benjamin in Thesis I, for example, is that Benjamin is suggesting that despite Karl Marx's claims to scientific objectivity, historical materialism is actually a quasi-religious fraud. Benjamin uses The Turk, a famous chess-playing device of the 18th century, as an analogy for historical materialism. Presented as an automaton that could defeat skilled chess players, The Turk actually concealed a human (allegedly a dwarf) who controlled the machine. Thesis I goes like this:
"Sinasabing may automaton na nakakasagot sa bawat kilos ng manlalaro ng chess upang ito ang tiyak na mananalo sa laro. May papet na nakasuot ng damit Turko at mga shisha sa bibig na nakaupo sa harapan ng board na nakapatong sa isang malaking mesa. Lumilikha ang isang sistema ng mga salamin ng ilusyon na walang nakaharang sa ilalim ng mesa mula sa lahat ng panig. Sa katunaya'y may maestro ng chess na kubang pandak sa loob na ginagalaw ang kamay ng papet sa pamamagitan ng tali. May maiisip ng katumbas sa pilosopiya ang aparatong ito. Lagi raw mananalo ang papet na binansagang "materyalismong istoriko." Mula rito'y madali na lamang talunin ang kahit sinumang basta kinuhang tagasilbi ng teolohiya na sa kasalukuya'y maliit at pangit at talaga namang hindi dapat ipakita."There are nineteen others like this and they deal with history, philosophy, sociology, religion, etc. They seem to be very interesting and if I only have time, I would google each term and people mentioned in the book plus the ones in Wiki. However, suffice it to say that this book is worth reading and pondering if you are into history and philosophy.
Because most of the time, I am not sure what to make of those theses that I read in the book. They seem to be for scholars to discuss and argue about.
May 24, 2018
Simple to read, written in, what I believe to be, a dialectic mode each paragraph stands as a hypothesis tangentially related by historical materialism. Written when Mr. Benjamin was in grave danger from real Nazi police, the pseudo-emergency of 'The War on Terror' is NOT Thesis VIII. Little pockets of trivia & poetry are squeezed in, what do you know about the Mechanical Turk? Ultimately, an excellent statement of relation between history's logic, making history in the eternal present and the broader social mood. Much better than what I had expected.
Read online and in English. I expect to have missed subtleties that matter.
Read online and in English. I expect to have missed subtleties that matter.
May 2, 2021
A short but very dense essay (20 short paragraphs) about history, progress and labor.
One important these - the working class was made to believe that it brings a meaningful contribution to progress (what is that anyway - Benjamin uses a painting by Paul Klee as metaphor for progress). In this way it was made forget its condition and without knowing got trapped in the hands of capitalism through the nice words of some social democrats.
Another theme - history telling and studying should be materialistic. Mere historicism is just listing of victories, without taking into consideration important stuff.
A short and rewarding read. Difficult english translation (I read the chapter from "Illuminations) but together with the german original it worked quite well.
One important these - the working class was made to believe that it brings a meaningful contribution to progress (what is that anyway - Benjamin uses a painting by Paul Klee as metaphor for progress). In this way it was made forget its condition and without knowing got trapped in the hands of capitalism through the nice words of some social democrats.
Another theme - history telling and studying should be materialistic. Mere historicism is just listing of victories, without taking into consideration important stuff.
A short and rewarding read. Difficult english translation (I read the chapter from "Illuminations) but together with the german original it worked quite well.
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November 13, 2024A bit cryptic and esoteric, albeit famous reformulation of Marx’s historical materialism based on the tradition of the ‘constructivist’ Marx of negative dialectics and ecologic metabolism. Benjamin rejected the teleology in historical materialism and introduced the 'messianic' role of revolutions in interrupting the otherwise linear course of history which if left to run its course would bring humanity toward fascist destruction. Hence, Benjamin’s conceptualisation of revolution critiques a) historicism and its linear temporality, b) determinist causality (of the automatic social change), and c) the ideology of progress (both in terms of teleology and politics). I read it in conjunction with several accompanying texts, and perhaps would not understand it without them.
November 29, 2023
kinda cracked
July 8, 2025
Sehr differenziert hergeleitete Kritik am Historischen Materialismus, der ich als Person, die wenig mit Theologie (und Begriffen wie Schicksal und Erlösung) anfangen kann, nicht immer zustimme. Trotzdem sehr anregend, besonders weil die revolutionäre Perspektive bleibt und die Sozialdemokratie kritisiert wird, da sie den Fortschritt zu einem reaktionären Prozess umwandelt. Außerdem: Objektivität ist in der bürgerlichen Herrschaft nicht frei von dieser (gegen eure ‚Neutralitätsbekennungen‘)
September 1, 2025
Sehr kurz und sehr geil geschrieben.
Nicht sooo zugänglich, aber macht Spaß sich da ein bisschen reinzudenken. Ich mag es ja irgendwie, wenn Autoren nicht so gut einzuordnen sind und sich die Nachwelt um sie streitet
Nicht sooo zugänglich, aber macht Spaß sich da ein bisschen reinzudenken. Ich mag es ja irgendwie, wenn Autoren nicht so gut einzuordnen sind und sich die Nachwelt um sie streitet
Currently reading
November 29, 2023
"We need history, but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it."
Nietzsche, Of the Use and Abuse of History
"We know that the Jews were prohibited from investigating the future. The Torah and the prayers instruct them in remembrance, however."
W. Benjamin
'We Are at War; We Will Win'
Benjamin Netanyahu
“Let me tell you: we are going to finish this war, we are going to win it, because we are stronger. And after that, Russia will pay the price!”
Amir Weitmann
„Die Hamas sind die neuen Nazis“,
(Netanjahu beim Pressestatement mit Scholz)
Welt
January 6, 2023
Een kort essay van Benjamin over retroactiviteit, a-historicisme en historisch (anti-stalinistisch) materialisme. Des te interessanter: geschreven in een persoonlijke/culturele crisis, vluchtend voor de Gestapo, vlak voor zijn zelfmoord.
March 31, 2025
simplement intel·ligentíssim, concís i precís
i l’edició molt maca i en certes coses enriquidora, però em sembla denunciable que hagin editat el que podrien ser 10 pàgines de pdf en un llibre de 200 pàgines que et venen x 20€… això em passa per comprar llibres amb presses
i l’edició molt maca i en certes coses enriquidora, però em sembla denunciable que hagin editat el que podrien ser 10 pàgines de pdf en un llibre de 200 pàgines que et venen x 20€… això em passa per comprar llibres amb presses
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July 16, 2023This was a strange read. I knew the German philosopher Walter Benjamin was a big name in philosophy, and the theory of art and literature, but what surprised me was how closely related he was to marxism (I should have known better). The three texts that are included in this booklet are expressions of Benjamin's thinking about historical materialism. In "the concept of history" it are rather loose thoughts, very colored by the dramatic moment in which they were written, namely in 1940, just before the suicide of the author, on the run for the advancing Nazis. With the exception of chapter 9 (which contains his famous comparison of time with the ‘Angelus Novus’ by Paul Klee), these texts did not appeal to me, precisely because they are so dated. I could be wrong of course, but historical materialism sure had merit - I'm not going to deny that - but it has passed into the archives of intellectual history, and has lost almost all of its appeal to modern society after the crash of the communist regimes in 1989-1990. The second article is a biography of the French collector Eduard Fuchs, again strongly focused on Benjamin's own interpretation of historical materialism. The last article, "Paris, capital of the 19th century" appealed to me most, but that was no surprise, being a big fan of the French capital.
As for the Angel of History, referring to Klee's famous painting, I can understand why Benjamin wrote that - and it remains a striking/horrifying image - but I think the vision he has woven around it is wrong. Let me explain: the essence of modernity, the faith in progress, is precisely that it is lived with all eyes to the future, a future that is open and promising, building on the glorious progress humanity has made and will continue to make. So, in line with Reinhart Koselleck, you can say that modern man turns his back on the past, and starts from the illusion of a 'more primitive', 'imperfect' past that will be rectified, yes - indeed - a typical eschatological expectation. With his interpretation Benjamin wanted to underline that this view is absurd, and that - looking at the past - the mess man has made of it becomes horrifyingly clear. Again, totally understandable if you lived in 1940. But with equal justice you could now say in 2023 that Paul Klee's Angelus Novus is modernity just turning from the past to the future and seeing what mess is coming our way. It argues for the force of Klee's image that both interpretations are possible. But Benjamin's is just one of them, and in my opinion a far too narrow one.
Maybe I got it all wrong, and not doing justice to Benjamin. Please let me know if you have a different opinion.
As for the Angel of History, referring to Klee's famous painting, I can understand why Benjamin wrote that - and it remains a striking/horrifying image - but I think the vision he has woven around it is wrong. Let me explain: the essence of modernity, the faith in progress, is precisely that it is lived with all eyes to the future, a future that is open and promising, building on the glorious progress humanity has made and will continue to make. So, in line with Reinhart Koselleck, you can say that modern man turns his back on the past, and starts from the illusion of a 'more primitive', 'imperfect' past that will be rectified, yes - indeed - a typical eschatological expectation. With his interpretation Benjamin wanted to underline that this view is absurd, and that - looking at the past - the mess man has made of it becomes horrifyingly clear. Again, totally understandable if you lived in 1940. But with equal justice you could now say in 2023 that Paul Klee's Angelus Novus is modernity just turning from the past to the future and seeing what mess is coming our way. It argues for the force of Klee's image that both interpretations are possible. But Benjamin's is just one of them, and in my opinion a far too narrow one.
Maybe I got it all wrong, and not doing justice to Benjamin. Please let me know if you have a different opinion.
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May 3, 2022Un-ratable because I wrote my integration paper on it & still don't really know what it means :P
"To articulate the past historically means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger"
"To articulate the past historically means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger"
September 16, 2020
Some people don't get this much into 400 pages
October 24, 2025
c2 Conspectus on the concept of history in light of the science of history
‘Historicism’ could be said to be nothing but the reflection of the real class-struggle played out in ideas, or:
‘Historicism’ could be said to be nothing but the reflection of the real class-struggle played out in ideas, or:
“Historicism [….] dominates the ideas of authors as diverse as Lukács, Korsch, Gramsci […] Sartre. It is characterized by a linear view of time [….] The knowledge of history is then the self-consciousness of each present [….] class consciousness [….] the organic ideology of the ruling (hegemonic) class [….] Human intersubjectivity as a whole, human ‘praxis’ […]” (L. Althusser, Glossary in: Reading Capital 1968, p.351, Verso, 2009)In other words, still an idealist conception of history, despite even deriving that primacy of investigation of consciousness from an economic-base:
“Historicism justifiably culminates in universal history. Nowhere does the materialist writing of history distance itself from it more clearly than in terms of method. The former [Historicism?] has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive: it offers a mass of facts, in order to fill up a homogenous and empty time. The materialist writing of history for its part is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the movement of thoughts but also their zero-hour [….] The historical materialist approaches a historical object solely and alone where he encounters it as a monad.” (W. Benjamin, On the Concept of History 1940, p.20, Classic Books America, 2009)Anyway, in the science of history, the primary historical-material is not just a mass of raw-data and facts, but an economic-dialectic. History is usually taught (or thought of) as a list of facts of historical-material to memorize, such may be the content (or events taking place) in history, but more important is the logic of history, the self-moving cell (production, class-struggle, or work and fight) which powers the totality, universal to all economic modes of production versus the particular developments to each historical-era:
“Hitherto, sociologists had found it difficult to distinguish the important and the unimportant in the complex network of social phenomena (that is the root of subjectivism in sociology) and had been unable to discover any objective criterion for such a demarcation. Materialism provided an absolutely objective criterion by singling out production relations as the structure of society, and by making it possible to apply to these relations that general scientific criterion of recurrence whose applicability to sociology the subjectivists denied. So long as they confined themselves to ideological social relations (i.e., those which before taking shape, pass through man’s consciousness) they were unable to note the recurrence and regularity in the social phenomena of the various countries, and their science was at best only a description of these phenomena, a collection of raw material.” (V. I. Lenin, What the ‘Friends of the People’ are and how they fight the Social-Democrats 1894, p.12, FLP, Peking, 1978)The specific content, events of history, are to an extent recurring, if the former is the case, then, all that is left is to explain the inner-economic-logic, or laws which govern the direction, goal, outcome, (end) of that history, for which a structure of change emerges. In this sense, the science of history may even eliminate those specific contents of history, seeing waves, cycles and spirals if left only to abstractions without any relation to concrete technological-developments, and their subjective implementation. People always ask for the following, an account of history so precise we may as well be attempting to raise the dead:
“The chronicler who recounts events without distinguishing between the great and small [….] only for a resurrected humanity would its past, in each of its moments, be citable. Each of its lived moments becomes a citation […]” (W. Benjamin, p.4)The science of history is entirely partisan for the revolutionary subjects of history, the socially necessary labourers, in recognizing their work and fight as a force of positive change for which their knowledge is transferred. To claim the science of history is a positivist ‘distanced observer’ mistakes the opposite of the science of history for the science of history! This ‘concept’ of history then reflects the totality of essential and inessential viewpoints, without prioritizing (or only giving a notion of) the essential alone which is necessary in description of the inner-laws which govern the objective-process. At first, there may be an all-sided analysis of each class in the class-struggle, but the point is, in the final analysis, primarily, partisanship towards the catalyst of production and technological advance, socially necessary labour, or the classes who are the revolutionary subjects of history:
“Fustel de Coulanges recommended to the historian, that if he wished to reexperience an epoch, he should remove everything he knows about the later course of history from his head. There is no better way of characterizing the method with which historical materialism has broken. It is a procedure of empathy. Its origin is the heaviness at heart, the acedia, which despairs of mastering the genuine historical picture, which so fleetingly flashes by [….] Few people can guess how despondent one has to be in order to resuscitate Carthage [….]” (W. Benjamin, p.8)
“To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize ‘how it really was.’ It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger. For historical materialism it is a question of holding fast to a picture of the past […] ” (W. Benjamin, p.7)
“In the historical materialist they have to reckon with a distanced observer [nonsense] …. the cultural heritage [….] It owes its existence not only to the toil of the great geniuses, who created it, but also to the nameless drudgery of its contemporaries. There has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism. And just as it is itself not free from barbarism, neither is it free from the process of transmission, in which it falls from one set of hands into another. The historical materialist thus moves as far away from this as measurably possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.” (W. Benjamin, p.8)
“Every child knows that a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish.” (Marx to L. Kugelmann, July 11, 1868, In: K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Letters, p.33, FLP, Peking, 1977)The science of history does not crudely collapse subject and object (spirit and nature), into a spontaneously-materialist or positivist absolute-substance (eliminating the subject), but rather affirms the subject to be reflected from and dependent upon-and as a result reactive later, on the object. There is no objectivist, positivist, pure, neutral third, ‘absolute subject’, ‘distanced observer’ standing above overseeing all history with a so-called timeless-morality, existing outside the world, disaffected by sin, negativity and historical-economic necessity, denying motion with total indifference to everything:
“The puppet [wow!] called ‘historical materialism’ is always supposed to win. It can do this with no further ado against any opponent, so long as it employs the services of theology […]” (W. Benjamin, p.2)Our ideas may very well just be a reflection of the real (the refraction of an economic-class in the prism of the process of production) so theology can also be considered an ‘organic’ reflex of society itself:
“man, turning against the existence of God, turns against his own religiosity.” (K. Marx, F. Engels, The Holy Family 1845, p.110, FLP, Paris, 2022)Hence, to turn against theology in a religious-society is to turn against society itself - our own selves. But if society has turned against religion, turning to a theology which is alienated from life, confronting society, is then to turn against society which has changed its economic habits and practices. So long as in real-life we are estranged from, and confronted by that real-life (i.e. creating a world which we do not willfully create, but for a wage to eat bread) philosophy, theology, scientific-abstractions, university discourse, bourgeois ideology → alienated-thought will persist:
“The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behavior [….] In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven [….] We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises [….] men, not in any fantastic isolation or abstract definition, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists. Where speculation ends—in real life—there, real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take its place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence.” (K. Marx, F. Engels, The Germany Ideology 1845, p.13-14, FLP, Paris, 2022)In this sense, we can say that philosophy is over and science has begun, only if we mean that the problems of the old philosophy have been solved, that is, when the idea corresponds to the real, when being asserts its primacy over thought, or when the historical-material recorded is a description of the real and not of the ideal. However, an end of philosophy (alienated-thought), then assumes an end of the history of alienated-being. As soon as truth is identified with reality (which mediates knowledge), philosophy as alienated-thought, a reflection of alienated-being, begins its end. When humans in the world are no longer alienated, so to, ends alienated-thought (philosophy). Philosophers writing about knowledge, may make systems of knowledge, noting down alienated-thought, but this is not the same as the process of being (becoming) which acquires knowledge: real-life processes, life-activity, economic-relations. Such is where a science of history is possible to begin:
“the science of the history of society, despite all the complexity of the phenomena of social life, can become as precise a science as, let us say, biology, and capable of making use of the laws of development of society for practical purposes. Hence, the party of the proletariat should not guide itself in its practical activity by casual motives, but by the laws of development of society, and by practical deductions from these laws. Hence, socialism is converted from a dream of a better future for humanity into a science.” (J. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism 1938, p.23, FLPH, Moscow, 1951)Of course, the economic-laws of the macro-societal world are in no way any less scientific than the so-called “eternal” laws of the biological micro-world (observed from some microscope or telescopic apparatus), as if the abstractions drawn from under a microscope are any more scientific than the relational-abstractions extrapolated from the economy:
“The laws of the microworld are paradoxical from the standpoint of conventional macroscopic conceptions […]” (M. E. Omelyanovsky, Dialectics in Modern Physics 1973, p.19, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1979)And so, we have ended with the beginning, with the banishing various phantasms from the study of history. Beginning with the end, and ending with the beginning, the beginning also defines the end (another word for the end is direction, outcome, goal, objective, purpose, etc. immediately, a law governed process of economic-development, from the simple to the complex, comes to mind):
“the end is the beginning and the beginning the end. The content is thus a circle; it is the discovery of the self in the other extreme [...]” (L. Althusser, On Content in the Thought of G W F Hegel 1947, in: The Spectre of Hegel Early Writings, p.56, Verso, 2014)
November 28, 2024
Read this as it was mentioned in another book and it's both lovely to think of finding/building "hope in the past" while frustrating (and reassuring) that we're facing the same issues today. "At a moment when the politicians in whom the opponents of Fascism had placed their hopes are prostrate and confirm their defeat by betraying their own cause, these observations are intended to disintangle the political worldlings from the snares in which the traitors have entrapped them. Our consideration proceeds from the insight that the politicians’ stubborn faith in progress, their confidence in their ‘mass basis’, and, finally, their servile integration in an uncontrollable apparatus have been three aspects of the same thing. It seeks to convey an idea of the high price our accustomed thinking will have to pay for a conception of history that avoids any complicity with the thinking to which these politicians continue to adhere."
December 17, 2021
Ang bersyong ito ng Über den Begriff der Geschichte/On the Concept of History ni Walter Benjamin ay isinalin ni Ramon Guillermo mula sa orihinal na wikang Aleman patungong wikang Filipino. Ang suryal sa pakiramdam na mabasa—mula sa diwa ng sariling wika—ang ganitong mga tekstong sumisiyasat nang kaylalim at kaytalas sa mga dambuhalang abismo ng kawalang-malay at kawalang-pag-unawa sa buhay. Hahanap-hanapin ko na ang pakiramdam na ito, salamat sa mga ganitong proyekto ng pagsasalin.
June 8, 2023
jujuju
July 17, 2025
The story was told me that Walter Benjamin was fleeing Paris during Nazi occupation as an open critic, likely to lose his life, and at the time he carried around these ‘Theses’ on separate strips of paper, on which he would revise, rewrite and rearrange them, until reaching their final configuration (once he took his own life).
These 20 paragraphs are individually dense and separated under sections I-XVIII then A-B. The thread which runs through them is not in an immediate sequence, but rather is more like a constellation.
Within it, he contrasts two primary ‘philosophies’ of history—one of which he criticizes (‘historicism’) and one of which he intends to deepen (‘historical materialism’) by “[enlisting] the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.”
Historicism is History as a continuum - such as: this caused this which caused this and led to this, up to today, which will lead to this in the future. It is also history told by the victors, which tends to give justification to their present rule; but even more importantly, it is also used by those rulers to tell the story of the present which justifies the future.
By contrast Historical Materialism can defeat Historicism by “[blasting] open the continuum of history,” grounding itself in time which comes to a stand-still, “filled with the presence of the now,” showing that “the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.”
In fact, history repeats itself. Is it because we imagine we are making progress toward some better end? It pays to convince people so.
"The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed."
“The present, which […] comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.”
History is our understanding of the past — whether of civilization, ancestors, all of the downtrodden, heroes, celebrities, human life, the earth, yesterday. That understanding shapes our present - and is drawn out of our present, just like any memory that appears in our mind, too. But what if time itself is consumed and we have no real ground left to stand on? Do we resort to sweeping narratives that help us to keep on living? Yes. Or shall we resurrect life?
These 20 paragraphs are individually dense and separated under sections I-XVIII then A-B. The thread which runs through them is not in an immediate sequence, but rather is more like a constellation.
Within it, he contrasts two primary ‘philosophies’ of history—one of which he criticizes (‘historicism’) and one of which he intends to deepen (‘historical materialism’) by “[enlisting] the services of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.”
Historicism is History as a continuum - such as: this caused this which caused this and led to this, up to today, which will lead to this in the future. It is also history told by the victors, which tends to give justification to their present rule; but even more importantly, it is also used by those rulers to tell the story of the present which justifies the future.
By contrast Historical Materialism can defeat Historicism by “[blasting] open the continuum of history,” grounding itself in time which comes to a stand-still, “filled with the presence of the now,” showing that “the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.”
In fact, history repeats itself. Is it because we imagine we are making progress toward some better end? It pays to convince people so.
"The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed."
“The present, which […] comprises the entire history of mankind in an enormous abridgment, coincides exactly with the stature which the history of mankind has in the universe.”
History is our understanding of the past — whether of civilization, ancestors, all of the downtrodden, heroes, celebrities, human life, the earth, yesterday. That understanding shapes our present - and is drawn out of our present, just like any memory that appears in our mind, too. But what if time itself is consumed and we have no real ground left to stand on? Do we resort to sweeping narratives that help us to keep on living? Yes. Or shall we resurrect life?
February 8, 2021
I liked this essay, but if someone asked me what it was about, I doubt I could give them a coherent answer. Some of it was really good, some of it was... odd, and even after reading this, I'm unsure as to what point Benjamin was trying to make here.
February 16, 2022
he kind of sounds like a madman and i'm kind of into it tbh
December 23, 2025
We are witness to, victim of, history's designs. The future is there, for the taking but not for the studying. Oh where lay thou hidden, our Messiah?
July 30, 2025
This compact text has attained an almost mythic status within the reception of Benjamin’s work, and beyond. However, contrary to what Benjaminian lore might lead us to believe, it is not a spontaneous distillation, nor a fragment hastily composed on the run under the shadow of imminent danger. Rather, much of its content is derived from Convolute N of The Arcades Project, a major undertaking to which Benjamin had devoted considerable effort during his years of exile in Paris. In a famous letter to Gretel Karplus, Benjamin characterised it as a summa of 20 years of thinking. It is likely that he composed the pamphlet as a compact synthesis of his key ideas, a format that would perhaps travel more unobtrusively, in a samizdat kind of way, through the cracks of a totalitarian system.
I ended up printing the essay and cutting it up in separate theses and then reassembling the text in another order. In that way a narrative emerged that I felt made more sense than the original:
XVIII Cosmic-ontological import
V Initial framing in terms of concepts of history: historicism vs. historical materialism
X Strategic-political intention of the text
VI–XVI-XVII-XIV-A-III Anatomy of messianic time
XII–XI-XIII-VII-VIII-IV Political critique under capitalism
II Ethical call to activate 'weak messianic power'
XV Revolutionary praxis as rupture
IX The stakes in allegorical form
B The gate of redemption, held open in memory
(I thought Benjamin's opening gambit with the automaton in [I] was confusing and superfluous.)
Taken as a whole, the text appears to embody a coherent synthesis of the at first sight idiosyncratic mix of Marxism and mysticism in Benjamin's thinking. The critique of progress, a linear conception of time, and the way it is embodied in social-democratic politics, is, from our vantage point today, easy enough to take on board. What Benjamin offers as an alternative - his messianic, monadic concept of Jetztzeit and its relationship with redemption - has great poetic density but is conceptually more difficult to buy into. What is needed, as a skill or a basic disposition (Benjamin referred to it as 'presence of spirit' (Geistesgegenwart)), to be able to capture or construct that redemptive 'dialectical image' that folds future and past into present? Ana Maria Rabe elsewhere (in: The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism) writes in an essay that this hinges on a practice of 'Eingedenken': "one needs to stay with what is fragile, mistreated, unconcluded: the rags of history, the destroyed or failed life plans and social projects, the so-often-ignored victims and defeated." This might lead to some kind of psychological compression of time, which manifests itself then als now-time:
I ended up printing the essay and cutting it up in separate theses and then reassembling the text in another order. In that way a narrative emerged that I felt made more sense than the original:
XVIII Cosmic-ontological import
V Initial framing in terms of concepts of history: historicism vs. historical materialism
X Strategic-political intention of the text
VI–XVI-XVII-XIV-A-III Anatomy of messianic time
XII–XI-XIII-VII-VIII-IV Political critique under capitalism
II Ethical call to activate 'weak messianic power'
XV Revolutionary praxis as rupture
IX The stakes in allegorical form
B The gate of redemption, held open in memory
(I thought Benjamin's opening gambit with the automaton in [I] was confusing and superfluous.)
Taken as a whole, the text appears to embody a coherent synthesis of the at first sight idiosyncratic mix of Marxism and mysticism in Benjamin's thinking. The critique of progress, a linear conception of time, and the way it is embodied in social-democratic politics, is, from our vantage point today, easy enough to take on board. What Benjamin offers as an alternative - his messianic, monadic concept of Jetztzeit and its relationship with redemption - has great poetic density but is conceptually more difficult to buy into. What is needed, as a skill or a basic disposition (Benjamin referred to it as 'presence of spirit' (Geistesgegenwart)), to be able to capture or construct that redemptive 'dialectical image' that folds future and past into present? Ana Maria Rabe elsewhere (in: The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism) writes in an essay that this hinges on a practice of 'Eingedenken': "one needs to stay with what is fragile, mistreated, unconcluded: the rags of history, the destroyed or failed life plans and social projects, the so-often-ignored victims and defeated." This might lead to some kind of psychological compression of time, which manifests itself then als now-time:
"...expecting a meeting with past generations, we may suddenly realize that the response to our wait is us, ourselves; we understand that those awaited were – are – ourselves. This is how the look ‘backwards,’ to where we suppose that that ‘other’ generation – that of the past – exists, reveals itself to be a look ‘forwards,’ towards the future generation: that is, towards the present generation in which we ourselves, the contemporaries, live. The ‘others’ – those of the past and those of the future – suddenly coincide in ‘us,’ those of now. This is the moment in which the rotating gaze of the Angel of History has captured us and has detained us in now-time."
May 28, 2020
Finally read this short, influential work after catching numerous allusions or direct references to Benjamin’s “Angel of History.” Benjamin’s Angel is “propelled into the future to which his back is turned,” and all the while, the catastrophes of history pile and grow larger at his feet with each moment of the present that expires. It’s a striking visual, and an unsentimental metaphoric embodiment of time.
Overall, Benjamin is giving us a critique of the influences of historical materialism. He is skeptical of the certainty and rigidity the view claims right to, and rejects the ideas that progress is a forward march or that power dynamics are fixed and clear. To be clear: Benjamin recognizes the structural nature of oppression. He simply isn’t persuaded that historical materialism, as widely practiced, is flexible or accurate enough to be useful in preparing us to defeat fascism. (This is my understanding and take-away from what I’m reading, but I am open to further elucidation because this text is somewhat out of my wheelhouse.)
The section that resonates most with me as a reader in this time (2020) and place (America) includes these prescient insights:
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keep- ing with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are ‘still’ possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge—unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.”
Brief, provocative, and lasting. Took me no time at all to finally read it, and I’m glad I did.
Overall, Benjamin is giving us a critique of the influences of historical materialism. He is skeptical of the certainty and rigidity the view claims right to, and rejects the ideas that progress is a forward march or that power dynamics are fixed and clear. To be clear: Benjamin recognizes the structural nature of oppression. He simply isn’t persuaded that historical materialism, as widely practiced, is flexible or accurate enough to be useful in preparing us to defeat fascism. (This is my understanding and take-away from what I’m reading, but I am open to further elucidation because this text is somewhat out of my wheelhouse.)
The section that resonates most with me as a reader in this time (2020) and place (America) includes these prescient insights:
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keep- ing with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are ‘still’ possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge—unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.”
Brief, provocative, and lasting. Took me no time at all to finally read it, and I’m glad I did.
November 12, 2018
Some excellent criticisms of Marx's historical materialism, many of which I have thought something similar to in recent months; Mr. Benjamin, however, was able to formulate these thoughts much more eloquently than I.
I regards to history I am skeptical than any attempt -- no matter how vast or erudite -- to make sense of it can escape the sentiment of Pascal when he said: "Le nez de Cléopâtre, s'il eût été plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait changé."
I regards to history I am skeptical than any attempt -- no matter how vast or erudite -- to make sense of it can escape the sentiment of Pascal when he said: "Le nez de Cléopâtre, s'il eût été plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait changé."
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February 16, 2021"La tradició dels oprimits ens ensenya que l'estat d'excepció en què vivim és la regla. Hem d'arribar a un concepte d'història que correspongui a aquesta situació. Llavors se'ns farà evident que tenim el deure de provocar l'arribada del veritable estat d'excepció; i d'aquesta manera millorarà la nostra posició en la lluita contra el feixisme. Les possibilitats d'èxit del feixisme depenen en bona part del fet que els seus enemics s'hi enfrontin en nom del progrés com a norma històrica."
March 21, 2023
Obra que hay que leer.
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