Historia y filosofía de la historia en el Benjamin tardío

1998 ◽  
pp. 10-15
Author(s):  
José Sazbón
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Philosophical Style ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
Compare And Contrast

This paper deals with Walter Benjamin’s text largely known as "Theses on the Philosophy of History," and disputes its classification under that rubric. The circumstances of the elaboration and, more important, the explicit destination assigned to the reflections of the "Theses," require a consideration of its content and its relation to the historical studies the author was engaged in concerning the "prehistory" of modernity, especially of the remnants of the Parisian nineteenth century: the commonly known work "The Arcades Project." The relevance of a sameness in the language used in the two writings, particularly the resort to images, metaphors and the technique of montage, is stressed. It is argued that Benjamin’s philosophical style was always imagistic and that this fact is particularly relevant to the reflections on the concept of history. Philosophers and historians are both concerned by the historical research and concept construction of a thinker like the late Walter Benjamin. It is therefore desirable to compare and contrast their views.

scholarly journals On Breaking Up Time, or, Perennialism as Philosophy of History

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Bennett Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Philosophy

Abstract Current and recent philosophy of history contemplates a deep change in fundamental notions of the presence of the past. This is called breaking up time. The chief value for this change is enhancing the moral reach of historical research and writing. However, the materialist view of reality that most historians hold cannot support this approach. The origin of the notion in the thought of Walter Benjamin is suggested. I propose a neo-idealist approach called perennialism, centered on recurrent moral dilemmas and choices. This suggests a view of the relations of moral thought and ontology placed in the diachronic context that historians study.

scholarly journals THE ANGEL OF HISTORY AND THE RUINS OF PARIS: WALTER BENJAMIN IN FRANCE OR THE PROGRESS AS CATASTROPHE

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Barrett Fiedler
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
World War ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
Second World ◽  
Dominant Paradigm

If Walter Benjamin's writings have been mostly interpreted in the fields of art and literature critique, we would like here to take his philosophy of history more seriously, despite its acknowledged lack of unity (Habermas 1988: 32) and systematicity (Arendt 1960: 248). Drawing from the well-known allegory of the “Angel” developed in his theses on the concept of history written at the beginning of the Second World War and just before his death in Port-Bou, we will further analyze his genealogical critique of Parisian modernity contained in the Arcades Project, a work undertook more than a decade before, during his exile in France. In echo with the imagination of prospective ruins which florished during the modernization of the French capital after the 1850's, Benjamin's conception of progress, understood as a catastrophe submitting industrial capitalist societies to a permanent “state of emergency”, is thus combined with the theorization of a “Copernician revolution in the field of historical method” (Benjamin 1999: 348). Beyond Benjamin's phenomenological enterprise of a physiognomy of material modernity, and the romantic and surrealistic sensibility of his “anthropological materialism”, his philosophy of progress inscribes itself in a radical paradigm rendering its centrality to the idea of catastrophe (Anders 1972; Dupuy 2004; Stengers 2009), against the accidental role it holds in the principles of precaution and “responsibility” (Jonas 1979) and in the nowadays dominant paradigm of “risk” (Beck 1986); furthermore, “our” catastrophes would have in a Benjaminian perspective to be diagnosed in the past and the present rather than anticipated for the future. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0793/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Socialism and the Flow of  Time in Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Wright
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Flow Of Time

This chapter asks wider questions about the flow of time as it was explored in this historical writing. It focuses on Jaurès’ philosophy of history, initially through a brief discussion of his doctoral thesis and the essay entitled ‘Le bilan social du XIXème siècle’ that he provided at the end of the Histoire socialiste, then through the work of three of his collaborators, Gabriel Deville, Eugène Fournière, and Georges Renard. One of the most important challenges for socialists in the early twentieth century was to understand the damage and division caused by revolution, while not losing the transformative mission of their socialism. With these elements established, the chapter returns to Jaurès, and in particular the long study of nineteenth-century society in chapter 10 of L’Armée nouvelle. Jaurès advanced an original vision of the nineteenth century and its meaning for the socialist present.

Vor- und Nachgeschichte Bild und Zeit bei Walter Benjamin

2018 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-212
Author(s):  
Cornelia Zumbusch
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Dialectical Image ◽  
Hidden Agenda ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chronological Time

Abstract Benjamin’s approach to the history of the nineteenth century as a prehistory (Vorgeschichte) of modernity relies on his concept of the dialectical image. Starting from Benjamin’s interpretation of Proust’s narrative endeavor as the evocation of images that have not been seen before, this essay tries to situate Benjamin’s dialektisches Bild in new contexts. Examining Benjamin’s interest in Goethe’s Urphänomen as well as implicit references to Lessing’s concept of fruchtbarer Augenblick or Cassirer’s idea of symbolische Prägnanz, this essay stresses not so much the important but often considered aspects of discontinuity and destruction of chronological time, but tries to trace a hidden agenda: the affinity of Benjamin’s dialectical image to genetic processes.

Historical Citation and Revolutionary Epistemology

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-283
Author(s):  
Alison Ross
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Multiple Points ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
Arcades Project ◽  
Intended Effect

This article defends the thesis that there are multiple points of exchange between the categories of “word” and “image” in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. Benjamin describes the truth of the articulate wish of the past as “graphically perceptible” and the image as “readable.” In this respect the vocabulary of “word” and “image” that Benjamin’s early work had opposed are not just deployed in concert, but specific features of the vocabulary of “word” and “image” become exchangeable. The distinctive features of this exchange can be used to expound on Benjamin’s peculiar understanding of revolutionary experience and the significance of the break that it marks with his early way of opposing the word and the image. In particular, the exchange of features between word and image can explain the mechanics and intended effect of his idea that the meaning of history can be perceived in an image. The study of this exchange also shows that although the framework of “graphic perception” entails an experience of motivating meaning that is epistemologically grounded, the citation model of history is unable to secure the extension of the sought after legibility of the nineteenth century to a recipient.

Creation, Fall and Political Order — Prussian Conservatism and the Old Testament

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-181
Author(s):  
Laura C. Achtelstetter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Role Model ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Wars

Abstract This article examines differences within the theological basis of early nineteenth-century Prussian conservatism. By exploring the usage of the Old Testament in the writings of conservative thought leaders Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach, and Friedrich Julius Stahl, this article contributes to scholarship of both traditions of biblical interpretation and that of the relation of theology and political theory. The focus of this article centers on three concepts of the Old Testament and their implementation in conservative political doctrine. I will discuss Hengstenberg’s concept of biblical historicity and unity of Scripture, Gerlach’s use of the Old Testament as the source of a role model for just religious wars and a theocratic concept of law, as well as Stahl’s bible-based political philosophy of history and the resulting model of political order. Thus, the basis for different, resulting concepts of church, state, and nation that were merged into an overall religion-based political conservative doctrine in pre-1848 Prussia are analyzed.

The Rhythm of History

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saitya Brata Das
Keyword(s):  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
Historical Reason ◽  
The World

This chapter presents a reading of the posthumously published fragment The Ages of the World (Die Weltalter) to show that the deconstruction of sovereignty demands a re-thinking of the question of history. Confronting Hegel's pantheistic-immanent philosophy of history, it attempts to reveal an eschatological vision of history at work in Schelling's The Ages of the World which radically puts into question the secularising theodicy formulated by Hegel in his lectures on the philosophy of history. He thereby opens up the possibility, later elaborated by Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin, of a messianic-eschatological critique of historical Reason. Such an eschatological-messianic conception of history, by withdrawing from the triumphal march of universal world-historical politics, gives voice to those who are oppressed by the irresistible demand of progress.

Reading Magic in Walter Benjamin

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Downing
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Language Theory ◽  
Commodity Culture

This chapter focuses on divination in Walter Benjamin’s work, against the background of modernism’s self-imposed rejection of futurity and engagement with ‘primal history’, and the rise of fascism, commodity culture, and “Lebensphilosophie” or vitalism. It explores his writings on fate, graphology, gambling, childhood, language theory, his doctrine of the similar and the mimetic faculty, foregrounding his Neoplatonist investments, interests in magic, and take on the nineteenth century. Overall, the chapter considers the relations between Benjamin’s model of reading, especially magic reading, and the idea of happiness or “Glück.”

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