Latest / The Podcast of Jewish Ideas / 88. Walter Benjamin | Dr. Vivian Liska

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88. Walter Benjamin | Dr. Vivian Liska · The Podcast of Jewish Ideas

0:20
Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome back to the Podcast of Jewish Ideas,
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Speaker 1: a Torah in motion production. I'm jj Kimbrie. On today's episode,
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Speaker 1: we will turn to one of the most enigmatic and
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Speaker 1: influential thinkers of the twentieth century, Walter Benjamin. Living between philosophy,
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Speaker 1: literary criticism, theology, and political theory, Benjamin produced a body
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Speaker 1: of work that resists easy classification but continues to shape
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Speaker 1: the way we think about history, modernity, and culture itself.
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Speaker 1: We will be paying particular attention to the Jewish and
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Speaker 1: Jewish inflected dimensions of Benjamin's thoughts, including his engagement with
0:51
Speaker 1: themes such as Messianism, translation, and exile, and how these
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Speaker 1: themes inform his distinctive philosophy, joining us to discuss the
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Speaker 1: fascinating thoughts of all the Benjamin is a leading scholar
1:01
Speaker 1: of modern German Jewish thought. Doctor Vivian Liska, who is
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Speaker 1: a Professor of German Literature and director of the Institute
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Speaker 1: of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp and also
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Speaker 1: a distinguished visiting professor at the Hebrew University. Professor Lisker's
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Speaker 1: extensive work in the field of modern Jewish thoughts written
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Speaker 1: in several languages, includes her twenty seventeen work German Jewish
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Speaker 1: Thought and Its Afterlife, A Tenuous Legacy, published by Indiana
1:22
Speaker 1: University Press. It is a pleasure to welcome her to
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Speaker 1: the Podcast of Jewish Ideas Today, Professor Lisker, thank you
1:27
Speaker 1: for joining us.
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Speaker 2: JJ, Thank you for having me. So, writer Benjiam.
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Speaker 1: Lewis a Yes, Walter Bejumin. We are very excited to
1:35
Speaker 1: jump at him. So let's start off because not so
1:38
Speaker 1: many of our listeners may be all that familiar with him.
1:40
Speaker 1: His life is circumstances. Let's start off with just the background,
1:43
Speaker 1: the biography. Who was he, when did he live, and
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Speaker 1: how did his life play out?
1:47
Speaker 2: So Writer Benjamin was one of the most challenging, magnetic,
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Speaker 2: and enduring figures in modern Jewish intellectual history. Unlike other
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Speaker 2: important German Jewish thinkers such as Franz Rosensweig or Gashum Scholem,
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Speaker 2: and more like Kafka hana Are, he became one of
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Speaker 2: the major thinkers of and about modernity, way beyond the
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Speaker 2: German or the Jewish fear so one could practically call
2:18
Speaker 2: him a universal figure. Benjamin lived from eighteen ninety two
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Speaker 2: to nineteen forty, and his life in many ways reads
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Speaker 2: like a condensed history of European Jewish modernity and its crises.
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Speaker 2: He was born in Berlin into an assimilated, upper middle
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Speaker 2: class Jewish family, secure cultured, deeply invested in German civilization.
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Speaker 2: Like many German Jews of his generations, his parents believed
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Speaker 2: the Jewish life in Germany was stable and secure, that
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Speaker 2: emancipation and cultural integration were irreversible achievements. Benjamin grew up
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Speaker 2: surrounded by books, music, and the ideals of build Ung.
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Speaker 2: It's one of those words that are how to translate
3:09
Speaker 2: and that I think have entered the English vocabulary, so
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Speaker 2: the Enlightenment ideal of cultural self formation. In that sense,
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Speaker 2: he grew up in the German humanist bourgeois world before
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Speaker 2: Judaism became an explicit theme in his thinking. Some scholars,
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Speaker 2: like George Mosser is a prominent example, have described build
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Speaker 2: Ung and liberalism as the defining features of modern German
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Speaker 2: Jewish intellectual life. Benjamin, however, belongs to a generation that
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Speaker 2: increasingly rebelled against precisely this idea, and the scholar Stephen
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Speaker 2: Asheim has argued this against his teacher Mosser alongside other
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Speaker 2: German Jewish thinkers, Benjamin diagnosed the ills of his time
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Speaker 2: as a form of enlightenment or modernity gone awry that
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Speaker 2: contributed rather to the actual and looming political and cultural
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Speaker 2: catastrophes of the twentieth century, rather than wanting that off.
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Speaker 2: So that critical stance forms an important background to how
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Speaker 2: he later engages with the Jewish tradition. Even early on,
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Speaker 2: Benjamin felt out of place in his bourgeois surroundings. He
4:30
Speaker 2: never quite fit the established institutions of or expected life path.
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Speaker 2: He completed a brilliant doctoral dissertation, but his attempt to
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Speaker 2: pursue an academic career failed decisively when his habilitatsion on
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Speaker 2: the German So That's a higher doctorate on the German
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Speaker 2: Broke Towerspiel or Morning Play was rejected. Some say it
4:56
Speaker 2: was because of anti Semitism, but certainly it was also
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Speaker 2: because Benjamin didn't write in a conventional academic idiom. He
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Speaker 2: was already thinking across philosophy, theology, literature, and politics in
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Speaker 2: ways universities at that time and maybe even today simply
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Speaker 2: could not accommodate. This failure was devastating for him, but
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Speaker 2: it was also formative because it forced him out of
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Speaker 2: the academy, and although he lived the rest of his
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Speaker 2: life as an itinerant intellectual, writing essays, translating literature, producing
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Speaker 2: radio broadcasts, reviewing books, and relying heavily on friends for support,
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Speaker 2: he never held a stable position. He lived in constant
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Speaker 2: financial insecurity. Yes, it was precisely this life outside of
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Speaker 2: institutions that enabled him to develop one of the most
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Speaker 2: original and unsettling bodies of thought in the twentieth century.
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Speaker 2: He married Dora Pollard, but that marriage failed and his
6:04
Speaker 2: relationship to women in generals was rather problematic. His later
6:09
Speaker 2: infatuation with the communist Asia Latis, who was very important
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Speaker 2: for him, came to nothing. Benjamin's adulthood unfolded under the
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Speaker 2: shadow of catastrophe. World War One shattered the belief in
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Speaker 2: progress that had sustained the European culture. Unlike many contemporaries,
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Speaker 2: Benjamin did not see the war as a tragic exception,
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Speaker 2: but as a revelation of modernity's destructive core. From the
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Speaker 2: twenties onwards, he became increasingly convinced that European civilization was
6:41
Speaker 2: moving toward disaster. His writing from this period on language, art, history,
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Speaker 2: and violence attempts to think within this crisis rather than
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Speaker 2: explain it away. Benjamin was forced to leave Germany and
6:56
Speaker 2: lived in France for many years. Actually, Benjamin contemplated leaving
7:02
Speaker 2: Europe in his youth. Later he spoke repeatedly of emigrating.
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Speaker 2: But maybe we'll still talk about this later, urged by
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Speaker 2: his close friend Gasham Scholem, and yet he never left Europe.
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Speaker 2: It was not just a place for Benjamin. It was
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Speaker 2: his whole intellectual home. Its languages, libraries, archives, and cultural
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Speaker 2: sediments were the very material of his thinking. By nineteen thirty,
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Speaker 2: Benjamin was living in Paris, increasingly isolated, stateless, and vulnerable.
7:34
Speaker 2: After Hitler's rise to power, his situation grew desperate in
7:38
Speaker 2: nineteen forty as the Nazis advanced through France, Benjamin attempted
7:45
Speaker 2: to flee across the Pyrenees into Spain. When he was
7:49
Speaker 2: denied entry and faced the prospect of being handed back
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Speaker 2: to the authorities, he took his own life in the
7:55
Speaker 2: border town of Poppu. Benjamin died at forty eight on
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Speaker 2: the literal and symbolic threshold between countries, languages, Europe and Judaism,
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Speaker 2: exile and the hope of rescue. His death is tragic,
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Speaker 2: but it is not merely biographically. It crystallizes the core
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Speaker 2: of his life, a thinker who never arrived, never settled,
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Speaker 2: never reconciled himself to the world as it is. And yet,
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Speaker 2: and this is crucial, after his Benyamin's work began its
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Speaker 2: extraordinary after life and is not only stilly but mainly
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Speaker 2: particularly relevant today but maybe every generation since. Benjamin, who
8:39
Speaker 2: participated in his reception, believes that excellent.
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Speaker 1: So, firstly, I'm glad you touched on a few things
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Speaker 1: which we do want to expand on later, such as
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Speaker 1: his restlessness and his constant traveling and unwillingness to settle anywhere,
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Speaker 1: as well as the extraordinary afterlife of Benjamin's works, which
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Speaker 1: will get you intwo course. But before we do, I mean,
8:56
Speaker 1: let's do a little bit of a bird's eye view
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Speaker 1: on what were the kinds of topics and ideas that
9:01
Speaker 1: Benjamin wrote about to a great extent. Again, you know,
9:04
Speaker 1: he was a very prolific and important European intellectual of
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Speaker 1: of those early twenty century decades. So what sort of
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Speaker 1: things was he was he broaching? What was he writing?
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Speaker 1: And then we'll go into the Jewish aspects.
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Speaker 2: If I had to summ up Benjamin's intellectual life, I'd
9:20
Speaker 2: probably say that he spent his entire career trying to
9:24
Speaker 2: understand how meaning, justice, even redemption are still possible in
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Speaker 2: a world that seems to be falling apart. No matter
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Speaker 2: what he was writing about language, art, history, politics, this
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Speaker 2: question was somehow always in the background. But striking about
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Speaker 2: Benjamin is how wide his interests were. He moved effortlessly
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Speaker 2: between philosophy, literature, theology, politics, esthetics, and also importantly everyday culture.
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Speaker 2: But this wasn't really eclecticism. He refuses the usual borders
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Speaker 2: between disciplines and becomes a master in linking microscopic phenomena
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Speaker 2: to the big metaphysical picture of things. Benjamin was never
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Speaker 2: a system builder. Instead, he thought in fragments, images, constellations,
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Speaker 2: moments where insights flash up, rather than unfolding them step
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Speaker 2: by step. One of his earliest and most decisive interests
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Speaker 2: was language, and it was the time of the linguistic
10:32
Speaker 2: turn with sinkers like Wittgenstein and Smautner. It's all and
10:38
Speaker 2: in a remarkable essay from nineteen sixteen, one of his
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Speaker 2: early important essays called on Language as Such and on
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Speaker 2: the Language of Men. Benjamin rejects the idea that language
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Speaker 2: is mainly a tool for communication and goes way beyond
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Speaker 2: that towards and that's where his first steps into the
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Speaker 2: Jewish tradition are manifest into a certain way of understanding
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Speaker 2: language that has resonances with the Kabbalah and even with Bashi,
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Speaker 2: with the idea of God telling man to name the world,
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Speaker 2: to name the animals. So there is that transcendent moment
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Speaker 2: that appears already in this early essay. Then there is,
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Speaker 2: But maybe we'll talk about that later as well, because
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Speaker 2: that is a major way of understanding how Venine relates
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Speaker 2: to the Jewish tradition. Are questions of language and translation,
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Speaker 2: and there too one can already detect some elements of Jewish,
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Speaker 2: of the Jewish textual world. Another major strand of his
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Speaker 2: work is literary criticism, especially his engagement and with German literature.
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Speaker 2: His book on the Baroque Tawerspield The Morning Play already
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Speaker 2: draws a world that sees history as a landscape of ruins,
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Speaker 2: and that also will become a motive for him later
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Speaker 2: on in the twenties and thirties, Beny I mean turns
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Speaker 2: increasingly toward modern culture and everyday life. So there are
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Speaker 2: certain aspects of modern culture, especially his reflections on the
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Speaker 2: new media. What were new media at the time became
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Speaker 2: very important, and one of his famous essays is the
12:39
Speaker 2: Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, where
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Speaker 2: he examines how new technologies destroyed the aura of artworks. Now,
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Speaker 2: sometimes in these speculations about the new media, he also
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Speaker 2: got it wrong, for example, when he celebrates film, the
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Speaker 2: new medium of film as something that can improve vigilance
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Speaker 2: because images flash by so quickly that you have to adapt,
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Speaker 2: and that somehow Benjamin believed could have even a political effect.
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Speaker 2: Now as we know later under national socialism, film was
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Speaker 2: used for Nazi propaganda. And this is just one point
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Speaker 2: where I thought that, okay, that as we speculate about
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Speaker 2: our new media today, we wouldn't be the first ones
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Speaker 2: to get it wrong. At the same time, Benjamin developed
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Speaker 2: philosophy of history, became deeply engaged with Marxism, especially with
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Speaker 2: historical materialism, but always at arm's length. He never becomes
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Speaker 2: an orthodox Marxist, and his Messianism, which we will certainly
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Speaker 2: talk about in the context of his references to the
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Speaker 2: Jewish addition, will be in an important and illuminating tension
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Speaker 2: with his Marxism. So this constellation of Messianism and Marxism
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Speaker 2: will be very important. This this tension accompanies him throughout
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Speaker 2: his work. Even in the Major Study, if one can
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Speaker 2: call it that, it's really a collection of a whole
14:31
Speaker 2: archive that he creates with the Arcades Project, and that
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Speaker 2: which was something he would do until the end of
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Speaker 2: his life. But at the very end he writes the
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Speaker 2: thesis on the philosophy of History that are for many
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Speaker 2: his testament. So Benjamin's intellectual biography cannot be separated from
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Speaker 2: his method of thinking and his primary concern with finding
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Speaker 2: a form and a mode of thinking that would correspond
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Speaker 2: to what he perceived as the catastrophic period of history
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Speaker 2: that he is living in.
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Speaker 1: That again, a splendid overview of quite difficult and often
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Speaker 1: we'll actually we'll get to Benjamin the form of Benjamin's
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Speaker 1: right consumed, because that's also I think plays important role
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Speaker 1: in the story. Before we do, I want to jump
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Speaker 1: a little bit into the into his Jewish background. So
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Speaker 1: you know, this is a man, as you mentioned, he
15:32
Speaker 1: was seculary his whole life. He was a Marxist, he
15:35
Speaker 1: did not seem to, you know, he certainly didn't write
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Speaker 1: anything which can be let's say, tradition, be called Jewish
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Speaker 1: or at least sort of in some some sort of
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Speaker 1: recognizable Jeish cannon. But nonetheless, there are many who have
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Speaker 1: claimed Benjamin within the Jewish cannon. So let me ask
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Speaker 1: at least the first question, a sort of more biographical one,
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Speaker 1: which was what kind of Jewish background, or sympathies or
15:53
Speaker 1: education did the man have? I mean, did he how
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Speaker 1: much did he know? What did he know? And from
15:57
Speaker 1: there let's jump into the bigger question of well, what
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Speaker 1: Jewish themes influences et cetera week and we have so,
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Speaker 1: I mean, in his life? How Jewish was Benjamin's life?
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Speaker 2: I'm always fascinated with the way in which one asks
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Speaker 2: this question, you know, what is Jewish about which? And
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Speaker 2: how Jewish was Benjamin? Well, it is interesting that is
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Speaker 2: how Jewish almost implies a quantitative element. Was it very Jewish?
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Speaker 2: A little bit Jewish? And I mean it is striking
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Speaker 2: that it's precisely in Judaism that you're either Jewish or
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Speaker 2: you're not, but that the rabbis have made sure that
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Speaker 2: one shouldn't be a little bit more or less Jewish.
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Speaker 2: But of course I understand what you mean when you
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Speaker 2: ask the question. Benjamin wasn't educated in a traditional Jewish way,
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Speaker 2: he wasn't observant, he never joined the Jewish movement in
16:55
Speaker 2: any straightforward sense, and yet Judaism becomes one of the
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Speaker 2: most powerful and persistent forces shaping his thinking. Now, I
17:05
Speaker 2: resist this distinction between Jewishness and Judaism. And this is
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Speaker 2: relevant here because for many Benjamin is. You know, one
17:17
Speaker 2: can think of Benjamin's Jewishness, but it would be wrong
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Speaker 2: to think of him in terms of any significant contribution
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Speaker 2: to the Jewish tradition as Judaism, with the exception of
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Speaker 2: a few motives. But I think that there is much
17:35
Speaker 2: more to it than that. I think that there is
17:37
Speaker 2: another distinction that is much more interesting, a distinction that
17:41
Speaker 2: is made by Stefan Moses. Moses makes the distinction between
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Speaker 2: what he callsed normative and critical Jewish modernity. He formulates
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Speaker 2: the question is it's in a text where he formulates
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Speaker 2: the question is the thread of tradition broken? And then
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Speaker 2: he considers two groups of thinkers. For me, that was
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Speaker 2: a crucial moment because I realized that all the figures
18:08
Speaker 2: I've been dealing with in my own research fell into
18:11
Speaker 2: one of these groups, and that explained something to me.
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Speaker 2: So what are these two? What is the distinction between
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Speaker 2: the normative and the Jewish modern thinkers. Moses explains that
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Speaker 2: normative modernity tries to preserve continuity by translating the Jewish
18:33
Speaker 2: tradition into modern terms, often in the service of renewal
18:39
Speaker 2: or identity. Benjamin belongs firmly to the other group, which
18:46
Speaker 2: Mosaes caused critic, Jewish modern thinkers. These do not modernize Judaism,
18:54
Speaker 2: but they think about modernity in Jewish categories. And it
18:59
Speaker 2: is not the aim to renew you know, like Bubba's
19:03
Speaker 2: Jewish Renaissance. That was not the idea. And Mosases makes
19:08
Speaker 2: a very interesting remark after he introduces this distinction in
19:16
Speaker 2: this essay, it seems like Mosaes, who was a professor
19:20
Speaker 2: of German he actually was the first chair of the
19:23
Speaker 2: German department at Ibrew University, he seems like a normative
19:26
Speaker 2: thinker himself, who is all about renewing Jewish thought in
19:32
Speaker 2: the modern world. And yet at the end he says,
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Speaker 2: there's a lot of continuity among the normative thinkers, but
19:41
Speaker 2: it is among the critical ones that there is actual
19:45
Speaker 2: hope because they, although it is not their goal, they
19:51
Speaker 2: allow us to look at the Jewish tradition with new
19:56
Speaker 2: eyes and discover the unexpected in the tradition itself, not
20:03
Speaker 2: projecting it, but actually discovering that it is already there.
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Speaker 2: And this could be a framework to understand how Benjamin
20:13
Speaker 2: operates in terms of the Jewish tradition. So there there
20:19
Speaker 2: are certain contemporary scholars who say that all these German
20:26
Speaker 2: Jewish thinkers are barely Jewish. So an answer to your question,
20:32
Speaker 2: how Jewish was Benjamin because they didn't read their primary literature.
20:37
Speaker 2: And with the argument, you know, you wouldn't call somebody
20:40
Speaker 2: in the tradition of Greek philosophy if he hasn't read
20:43
Speaker 2: his he or she hasn't read the you know, the
20:49
Speaker 2: basic works of Plato an Aristole, And if they haven't
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Speaker 2: read The Tumult and its commentaries in any depths, one
20:58
Speaker 2: can call them Jewish. And I've really think that this
21:01
Speaker 2: is not the right approach for me. It became it
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Speaker 2: became clear that all these thinkers, So who are the normatives?
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Speaker 2: I didn't mention this, but who are the normatives? From
21:14
Speaker 2: Osesse there are Rosensweig, Buber and Levinas man Coin, and
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Speaker 2: the critical ones are Kafka, Ceylan are Benjamin, and then
21:28
Speaker 2: there is Sholem, where he doesn't quite know where to
21:31
Speaker 2: place him. But that's another story. So for me, it
21:34
Speaker 2: became obvious that I was particularly interested in what remains
21:41
Speaker 2: in what remains of the Jewish tradition, precisely in thinkers
21:46
Speaker 2: that are not primarily concerned with reviving it. That is
21:51
Speaker 2: the one thing, and the other. A moment when I
21:54
Speaker 2: became really interested and even convinced of the of the
21:59
Speaker 2: deep jewishness of Benjamin and these other critical modernists was
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Speaker 2: when I read interpretations that deny their Jewish aspect, be
22:14
Speaker 2: it from Jews who would consider a Jewish thinker only
22:19
Speaker 2: one who is actually deeply in the tradition, but also
22:23
Speaker 2: by those who who christianize Benjamin, for example, and that's
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Speaker 2: another story within his reception. At my Institute of Jewish Studies,
22:39
Speaker 2: twenty years ago, we organized a Benjamin conference, and we
22:44
Speaker 2: had together with the German Institution. We organized this. There
22:48
Speaker 2: were one hundred speakers who spoke about Benjamin, and the
22:54
Speaker 2: only place where the word Jewish came up was at
22:58
Speaker 2: the top of the poster where it said insttitude of
23:00
Speaker 2: Jewish studies so.
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Speaker 1: Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Jewish. So so then
23:07
Speaker 1: I'm afraid you've opened yourself up to the to the
23:09
Speaker 1: natural following question, which is well also elaborate. I mean, what,
23:14
Speaker 1: when reading Benjamin's you know, works on these various topics,
23:19
Speaker 1: what discernibly Jewish? Because, as you noted correctly, he isn't
23:23
Speaker 1: writing we didn't receive a Jewish education, not writing in
23:25
Speaker 1: the classical text tra tradition. But but what can be deduced? What,
23:31
Speaker 1: in your opinion of his ideas and of his writings
23:33
Speaker 1: bear a Jewish imprint?
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Speaker 2: I want to I want to start with two quotes
23:43
Speaker 2: to reply, please, two quotes by by Benjamin. One is
23:52
Speaker 2: from an early letter to a friend, Ludwig House, where
24:00
Speaker 2: he writes everything Jewish is self understood, and everything that
24:06
Speaker 2: goes beyond that is dangerous. I think that what is
24:12
Speaker 2: behind this rather enigmatic sentence is the fear of a
24:21
Speaker 2: kind of parochialism, nationalism, Jewish centeredness that he certainly wanted
24:31
Speaker 2: to avoid when he talks about you know, everything that
24:34
Speaker 2: goes beyond that which is self understood when you look
24:39
Speaker 2: closely at the way he dealt with Jewish motifs. They
24:42
Speaker 2: are everything but self understood. They're even sometimes how to understand.
24:48
Speaker 2: But my second quote, and that was that cheme as
24:53
Speaker 2: a surprise. It is in a letter he writes to
24:58
Speaker 2: Cholem in nineteen thirty five, one year after Hitters rise
25:02
Speaker 2: to power, where he reflects on Kafka. They had a
25:08
Speaker 2: very intense exchange about Kafka, and Benjamin talks about the
25:14
Speaker 2: world of Kafka's novels as a swamp world. And then
25:21
Speaker 2: he writes, the world that Kafka depicts is a world
25:26
Speaker 2: in which the work of the Torah has been thwarted.
25:31
Speaker 2: And he says Torah doesn't write the Bible. He says
25:33
Speaker 2: the Torah he adds in pencil, and that one can
25:39
Speaker 2: in the book. It's a footnote introduced by Sholemb that
25:43
Speaker 2: everything Moses once accomplished would now have to be accomplished again.
25:52
Speaker 2: Now this is a quote from the footnote, from Scholem's
25:56
Speaker 2: footnote saying that this is what Benjamin is it in
26:01
Speaker 2: his letter. Now this raises a big question. Does Benjamin
26:06
Speaker 2: mean that one would have to revive the Torah in
26:10
Speaker 2: our time? Does it mean that one would have to
26:13
Speaker 2: reread the Torah in different ways and new or even
26:17
Speaker 2: create a new one. He leaves that open, but the
26:21
Speaker 2: critique that it is a world. So for him, Kafka
26:25
Speaker 2: depicts the modern world and everything that's wrong with it
26:28
Speaker 2: and and diagnoses this in terms of the work of
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Speaker 2: the Torah that has been thwarted. Now you asked me
26:39
Speaker 2: more concretely about what it is that interested. I mean,
26:45
Speaker 2: I can maybe start saying yeah.
26:48
Speaker 1: I mean, my question was more sort of your position
26:51
Speaker 1: on this, because as you mentioned, there's there's a wider
26:53
Speaker 1: ray of interpretation of how to position Benjamin in returns
26:58
Speaker 1: in terms of the Jewish question. My question you as
27:00
Speaker 1: you know, what what do you see when reading his
27:02
Speaker 1: books is essay, et cetera. What Jewish characteristics that that
27:07
Speaker 1: are unmistakably Jewish if any, if any sort of exists
27:11
Speaker 1: in his more general work. It's because you know, as
27:14
Speaker 1: you mentioned, that there's such a wide array of readings
27:16
Speaker 1: of Benjamin. Everyone has been arguing about this now for
27:19
Speaker 1: so many decades. But but you seem to really you've
27:22
Speaker 1: placed him within this umbrella of German Jewish thought, and
27:26
Speaker 1: you know you've seen him as part of this tradition.
27:28
Speaker 1: So so let's let's, as you say, nail it down
27:31
Speaker 1: a bit more concretely, like what what what is Jewy
27:35
Speaker 1: about about Benjamin?
27:37
Speaker 2: I think that Benja means Jewish commitments were intellectual, ethical, political,
27:46
Speaker 2: and in some big way metaphysical, and the way he
27:51
Speaker 2: combines these is fascinating often hard to grasp. But personally
27:58
Speaker 2: I'm a I'm a very close reader of texts, so
28:02
Speaker 2: to make grand general statements is dangerous for me. It's
28:09
Speaker 2: easier for me to actually draw evidence from texts, and
28:14
Speaker 2: in Benjamin's case, because of the subtlety of his writing,
28:19
Speaker 2: this is very important. The most obvious motif that really
28:26
Speaker 2: does run throughout his work is Messianism. No one has
28:29
Speaker 2: to see exactly what that is what it is for him,
28:35
Speaker 2: and that opens up a whole world. I mean, I
28:38
Speaker 2: personally went through a development in my relationship to Benjamin
28:44
Speaker 2: and to the way he deals with the Jewish motives.
28:47
Speaker 2: At first, I was fascinated by the radicalism of his thinking,
28:55
Speaker 2: and Messianism in many ways seemed to me like a
29:00
Speaker 2: demand put on the world that was total, and I
29:08
Speaker 2: gradually understood that this was neither something I would particularly
29:15
Speaker 2: admire nor was it actually there and Benjamin. Now, whether
29:20
Speaker 2: my idea of Benjamin has changed because my expectations changed,
29:26
Speaker 2: or whether I just read them more closely and found
29:29
Speaker 2: another dimension in him is hard for me to tell.
29:34
Speaker 2: We could ask the question why wouldn't Marxism be enough?
29:39
Speaker 2: If as a kind of critique of his situation, Marxism
29:47
Speaker 2: or utopia, why would it have to be Messianism? Now,
29:52
Speaker 2: in some ways Messianism is much more radical. It demands
29:58
Speaker 2: a much more total idea of redemption then Marxism that
30:03
Speaker 2: is merely class struggle and equality, and Messianism actually speaks
30:09
Speaker 2: of total redemption.
30:11
Speaker 1: So I ask, if if I can interjects, because this
30:13
Speaker 1: is actually an important point, what did Benjamin mean by Messianism?
30:17
Speaker 2: How do he?
30:17
Speaker 1: Because of course Messianism in the very religious context is
30:21
Speaker 1: readily understandable. It means a messiah, you know, someone coming
30:24
Speaker 1: to redeem the world, like a person literally or yeah,
30:27
Speaker 1: there are other explanations, but that's classically it's understood. For
30:30
Speaker 1: a secularist or secular thinking like Benjamin, what does he
30:34
Speaker 1: mean when he writes about Messianism and how does he
30:36
Speaker 1: see it come about?
30:37
Speaker 2: Like?
30:37
Speaker 1: What what does that mean? Within his within his world
30:40
Speaker 1: of ideas, I can.
30:42
Speaker 2: Maybe give you a little moments where his Messianism is expressed,
30:49
Speaker 2: and always a bit in a bit different way. For example,
30:53
Speaker 2: in his language essay, Benjamin speaks of a language of
30:58
Speaker 2: an us primal language, a pure language, that is, the
31:04
Speaker 2: language that or a damic it's also called the Adamic language,
31:09
Speaker 2: a language where the where word and thing coincide completely,
31:14
Speaker 2: where things were named in the in their true way
31:18
Speaker 2: and guaranteed by God in a way like you know,
31:23
Speaker 2: like God's own language. And with the fall from Paradise,
31:28
Speaker 2: this language got lost and language became arbitrary, just conventional.
31:33
Speaker 2: In Benjamin's Messianic idea, eventually language will be restored. Now
31:40
Speaker 2: that language that you know, language where word and thing
31:44
Speaker 2: will perfectly coincide again, will be restored. Now. Benjamin, as
31:51
Speaker 2: in the Jewish tradition, does not go into any length
31:56
Speaker 2: as to what this world would look like, right, and
32:01
Speaker 2: so that in itself, you know, would not correspond to
32:06
Speaker 2: the Jewish tradition if he were actually to say what
32:09
Speaker 2: is happening in what the Messianic world would look like.
32:13
Speaker 2: But he wrote somewhere that as long as there is
32:17
Speaker 2: a single beggar still in the world. The world is
32:21
Speaker 2: not redeemed, so from that one can extrapolate what redeemed
32:27
Speaker 2: world would be like. And one of the best places,
32:33
Speaker 2: although that too is a very complex text, but one
32:38
Speaker 2: of the best places to go to is his in
32:41
Speaker 2: German theologist politicians fragmented, theological political fragment. And there he
32:48
Speaker 2: so he draws a fascinating sketch in which he has
32:59
Speaker 2: the divine redeemed world and there is the profane world,
33:04
Speaker 2: and the two are separate. And Benjamin insists that one
33:08
Speaker 2: cannot reach a messianic world in any straight way. So
33:13
Speaker 2: let's say, as in the religious idea, that with good
33:17
Speaker 2: deeds and prayer, if all the Jews would keeps about,
33:21
Speaker 2: for example, then the Messiah would come. But he has this, uh,
33:28
Speaker 2: this dialectic motion where the more you strive for happiness
33:36
Speaker 2: in the in the here and now, and with happiness
33:41
Speaker 2: what is implied is justice, and so social justice and
33:45
Speaker 2: so on. The more you strive for happiness in this world,
33:48
Speaker 2: the more you are you are bringing the Messiah or
33:55
Speaker 2: the Messianic world closer. And there he has this no
34:00
Speaker 2: of two errors that pass by each other and that
34:05
Speaker 2: reinforce each other. Now we talked about plausibility before there
34:13
Speaker 2: is a You know, for many this is just a
34:17
Speaker 2: kind of phantasm of a post Enlightenment, post rational worldview.
34:27
Speaker 2: Another another instance where he invokes Messianism is in the
34:32
Speaker 2: context of translation. So for him, translation is much more
34:37
Speaker 2: than just passing from one language to the other. But
34:40
Speaker 2: for him, the very act of the experience of translation
34:47
Speaker 2: points to the loss of that primal, divine, pure language
34:55
Speaker 2: and thereby participates in it. Not in its rest storation,
35:00
Speaker 2: because it is not for humans to restore the pure language,
35:06
Speaker 2: but by experiencing that we do not have that, by
35:12
Speaker 2: experiencing that when you pass from languag one language to
35:16
Speaker 2: the other, it is not it doesn't coincide perfectly. So
35:20
Speaker 2: by experiencing the lack of this perfection, you somehow participate
35:28
Speaker 2: in bringing yeah, in bringing it about. Bringing it about
35:33
Speaker 2: is even too much pen I mean speaks of sparks
35:37
Speaker 2: and splinters, of Messianic sparks and Messianic splinters that exist
35:44
Speaker 2: in every generation. Every generation has a weak Messianic force.
35:51
Speaker 2: So there are these these tiny elements that consist of
35:56
Speaker 2: the most diverse phenomenon, and they are usually they are profane,
36:01
Speaker 2: but somehow by activating them, there is something of this
36:06
Speaker 2: Messianic force that comes alive.
36:11
Speaker 1: So this is fascinating, especially the part about translation. And
36:15
Speaker 1: there are many who have rightly seen his essay on
36:17
Speaker 1: the Task of the Translator and other such works as
36:21
Speaker 1: having these sort of Jewish points of origin. Let's say,
36:25
Speaker 1: so let me ask him, do you see his is
36:29
Speaker 1: writings on translation and on this is kind of a
36:31
Speaker 1: Damic language as being consistent? Well, are two parts of
36:37
Speaker 1: this question actually? A do you see it as somewhat
36:39
Speaker 1: rooted in Jewish ideas? I mean, within certainly within Jewish
36:42
Speaker 1: mystical traditions, there are some that there are some that
36:45
Speaker 1: say parallel ideas of a kind of a pristine language
36:47
Speaker 1: that that suffered some kind of fall and has to
36:49
Speaker 1: be piece back together. And also, of course the fact
36:53
Speaker 1: that as a Jew, and as perhaps you know, if
36:56
Speaker 1: one might want, a stereotype of sort of wondering cosmopolitan
37:00
Speaker 1: of the early twentieth century, who you know, had no
37:03
Speaker 1: specific home, but found his home in various European capitals
37:06
Speaker 1: and various civilizations and various places in the world, and
37:10
Speaker 1: he therefore had to be a translator in and of himself.
37:13
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, if you were born in very
37:15
Speaker 1: first place in Europe, you live sometimes in Berlin, you
37:17
Speaker 1: live sometimes in Paris, you do sometime here and there,
37:19
Speaker 1: and you're sort of wondering between cultures. You have to,
37:21
Speaker 1: in a way constantly be translating. You have to constantly
37:24
Speaker 1: be a sort of cultural courier, a bridge, as it were.
37:27
Speaker 1: And so do you think that Benjamin's writing on translation,
37:30
Speaker 1: which are extremely a valuable do they have these would
37:34
Speaker 1: you say that these stem from some kind of Jewish background?
37:39
Speaker 2: You see, we hear just listening to the way you
37:43
Speaker 2: put the question. There is a part of it that
37:47
Speaker 2: is Jewish nest that has to do with moving from
37:50
Speaker 2: one place to the other, with being cosmopolitan. And then
37:54
Speaker 2: you also mentioned the Kabbalah, and certain the sacredness of
37:59
Speaker 2: language and the immense impact of every letter that you have.
38:05
Speaker 2: And so these two realms, the way they interact. It
38:11
Speaker 2: is certainly not not conscious that you know that Benjamin,
38:17
Speaker 2: confronted with the multiplicity of cultures and languages, would therefore
38:24
Speaker 2: give language such a such a way. But the way
38:29
Speaker 2: he does it is specific. So the way he brings
38:32
Speaker 2: this together. So, for example, he opposed very strongly these
38:38
Speaker 2: artificial universal languages Esperanto for example, that was, you know,
38:46
Speaker 2: there was a kind of hope that this would contribute
38:49
Speaker 2: to peace and to understanding between humans, and Benjamin rejected
38:54
Speaker 2: that completely because that two wouldn't be nothing but a
38:58
Speaker 2: convention between between humans. So there is an insistence on
39:05
Speaker 2: something that actually has a transcendent dimension.
39:08
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fair enough, in which case, let me let's
39:11
Speaker 1: attack this question from a different angle, which is something
39:13
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to bring up the entire conversation, which is,
39:15
Speaker 1: of course his friendship with Gersham Shalam, because of course,
39:19
Speaker 1: one thing that you know, students of George still do
39:21
Speaker 1: know about what's Benjamin is that he was very close
39:23
Speaker 1: friends with with Gersham Charalam, who saw in him both
39:26
Speaker 1: a very close personal friend also a close intellectual collaborator
39:29
Speaker 1: as it were, So could you and I think this
39:32
Speaker 1: directly touches upon the themes that we've been broaching now
39:34
Speaker 1: Messianism and translation and other sort of things, because it
39:37
Speaker 1: could and has been argued. I think that if if
39:39
Speaker 1: Benjamin had any portal into Judaism or Jurishnis, it would
39:43
Speaker 1: have been his close friend Gersham Charalam, who of course
39:45
Speaker 1: would would go on to become the sort of founder
39:48
Speaker 1: of modern studies of Pabala. We've had, you know, conversations
39:51
Speaker 1: on this podcast about Shlom before, So could you perhaps
39:54
Speaker 1: give us firstly that kind of biographically their friendship and
39:57
Speaker 1: secondly intellectually what did they gain from each other? What
40:01
Speaker 1: were they talking about, who influenced whom and how? And yeah,
40:05
Speaker 1: could you sort of give us a window into that
40:07
Speaker 1: particular world.
40:08
Speaker 2: The friendship between Benjamin and Scholem is one of the
40:11
Speaker 2: most intense, productive, and ultimately tragic intellectual relationships of the
40:17
Speaker 2: twentieth century. It begins in nineteen fifteen, when both men
40:23
Speaker 2: are still very young Benjamins twenty three and Sholem was
40:26
Speaker 2: only nineteen, and it lasts in one form or another
40:30
Speaker 2: until Benjamin's death in nineteen forty and beyond. In Schorlem's writings,
40:38
Speaker 2: Charlem edited Benjamin's text after his death and wrote about
40:45
Speaker 2: their friend wrote the whole book about their friendship, and
40:49
Speaker 2: published letters so he was he actually would say it
40:55
Speaker 2: faithful to this friendship beyond Benjamin's death. What makes this
41:00
Speaker 2: friendships are extraordinary It is not just its emotional depths
41:04
Speaker 2: with mainly came from Chorlem, who at times in his
41:09
Speaker 2: diaries in his youth diaries, sounds like he's in love
41:13
Speaker 2: with Benjamin, but the way it stages the central tensions
41:19
Speaker 2: of modern Jewish thought between them and for me, it
41:23
Speaker 2: was particularly interesting to see what they disagreed. From the
41:27
Speaker 2: very beginning. Sholem sense that Benjamin was an exceptional thinker
41:32
Speaker 2: and also a precarious figure. Chorlem was already on quite
41:39
Speaker 2: a clear path as a young man. He was turning
41:44
Speaker 2: decisively to Jewish theology, to Hebrew, to Kabbalah, studied tunneled,
41:51
Speaker 2: and obviously to Zionism, convinced that the Jewish tradition had
41:55
Speaker 2: to be reclaimed with full intensity after the collapse of
41:59
Speaker 2: you assimilation. Benjamin by the collapse and the danger of
42:05
Speaker 2: the attraction of European assmilition. Benjamin, by contrast, was immersed
42:12
Speaker 2: in German philosophy, literature, esthetics, deeply skeptical of any straightforward
42:18
Speaker 2: return to religion. And yet Lem immediately recognized that Benjamin's
42:24
Speaker 2: thinking was already structured by Jewish categories, especially language, redemption, revelation, messianism,
42:33
Speaker 2: that these were already there latently, and that he only
42:38
Speaker 2: had to actually bring them out, and that he only
42:43
Speaker 2: yeah that Benjamin resisted them precisely for the reasoners that before,
42:49
Speaker 2: because he was afraid that it would be parochial. But
42:52
Speaker 2: for Scholem that that was not an argument. Their correspondence
42:59
Speaker 2: with stretches over decades is one of the great documents
43:03
Speaker 2: of German Jewish intellectual history. So I wrote a long
43:11
Speaker 2: essay in which I go through all these letters, and
43:17
Speaker 2: in which Scholem tells Benjamin to come to Palestine, and
43:22
Speaker 2: Benjamin hesitates, is tempted, promises, withdraws, and one can see
43:31
Speaker 2: that there is there is just so much going on
43:35
Speaker 2: between them that involves much larger questions, even larger questions
43:41
Speaker 2: than Palestine or Europe. There are questions of yeah, of
43:45
Speaker 2: what would give meaning and what means survival. And so
43:50
Speaker 2: Charlem presses Benjamin to learn Hebrew. Okay, but that also
43:55
Speaker 2: had something to do with his engagement he had. He
43:58
Speaker 2: wanted to get him position here in Jerusalem, and so
44:05
Speaker 2: the for this year to learn Hebrew. And this never
44:08
Speaker 2: came about a controversy between you know, those who think
44:13
Speaker 2: that Scholem didn't really try hard enough and the others
44:16
Speaker 2: who think that that it was Benjamin who didn't live
44:20
Speaker 2: up to this promise, so that was an important moment.
44:24
Speaker 2: One of their main debates later was between Marxism and Messianism,
44:29
Speaker 2: and Sholem always wanted to pull Benjamin a way and
44:35
Speaker 2: said he doesn't really believe it himself, and that he's
44:41
Speaker 2: for some reason denying his allegiance to Judaism because he's
44:48
Speaker 2: being pulled away to the Marxist ideology. I became particularly
44:54
Speaker 2: interested in their debate on Kafka, and there you can
45:00
Speaker 2: see how their differences play out, because Schorlem reads Kafka
45:08
Speaker 2: from with Kabalistic vocabulary, so he speaks of Kafka as
45:15
Speaker 2: the nothing of revelation. What one can see in Solem's
45:21
Speaker 2: writings about Kafka is his negative theology. So God is absent,
45:27
Speaker 2: he is unreachable. But that is where God manifests himself
45:33
Speaker 2: in modernity. And Benjamin uses another vocabulary, even where he
45:40
Speaker 2: refers to the Jewish tradition. And Benjamin, at some point,
45:45
Speaker 2: although he knew this distinction from Chorlem, the distinction between
45:51
Speaker 2: halaha and agada in the time mould between the legal
45:56
Speaker 2: and the narrative parts in the time, and he calls
46:01
Speaker 2: Kafka stories a kind of agada to Alaja and this
46:08
Speaker 2: difference between the Kabbalistic notions that Shortlam brings in and
46:16
Speaker 2: the Talmudic category that Benjamin brings in. You can see
46:22
Speaker 2: how there are two different paths that Jewish modernity can
46:28
Speaker 2: go in its reference to the older Jewish textual tradition.
46:33
Speaker 2: And it becomes clear that for Benjamin the time, because
46:39
Speaker 2: it is concerned with everyday life, has more potential to
46:45
Speaker 2: be even politically relevant than short Lim's kabbalistic notions. And
46:54
Speaker 2: for me that was a moment when although Benjamin got
47:00
Speaker 2: most of his Jewish education from Cholem, where if I
47:08
Speaker 2: felt that Benjamin was more Jewish, although I resist you
47:15
Speaker 2: how Jewish? More Jewish?
47:18
Speaker 1: Can I point out to the listeners of this podcast
47:20
Speaker 1: that the professor is using her fingers for air quotes
47:22
Speaker 1: when she says more Jewish here, that I can see
47:25
Speaker 1: her on the video, but the listeners will not be.
47:27
Speaker 1: That's an important thing to point out that you are
47:30
Speaker 1: practicing this with the air quotes when you say more Jewish.
47:32
Speaker 2: But yes, God, Yes, because that in this debate Charlem,
47:37
Speaker 2: at some point he talks about the law as the
47:43
Speaker 2: law with a big L, as something that is unfulfillable,
47:49
Speaker 2: and there is so this resistance or maybe this is
47:56
Speaker 2: something that probably resonates with the idea of redemption through sin,
48:01
Speaker 2: so of transgression. And for me, partly because I worked
48:08
Speaker 2: on I mentioned this before indirectly, this Christian Christianizing reception
48:15
Speaker 2: of Benjamine, of Kafka, of all these figures that I've
48:18
Speaker 2: been working on in the book you mentioned when you
48:21
Speaker 2: introduced me, and I felt that that approach to Alaja
48:26
Speaker 2: that one finds in Scholem, in this Kafka text this
48:30
Speaker 2: is it's not Paulinian, but it is let's say, it
48:36
Speaker 2: betrays sympathies with a certain side of that idea of
48:41
Speaker 2: you know, the underpaid, unattainability. This is actually what Paul said.
48:44
Speaker 2: It says the Jewish law has to be suspended because
48:48
Speaker 2: it turns us all into signos, because it cannot be fulfilled.
48:51
Speaker 2: And Benjamine has no problem with Jewish law. He has
48:56
Speaker 2: a problem with state law because there was a certain
49:00
Speaker 2: narkist leading in him. But yeah, I found that moment
49:05
Speaker 2: between Charlem and Benjamine particularly revealing interesting.
49:09
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, fair enough that there's a lot that I mean,
49:12
Speaker 1: let me ask you sort of one biographical detail, because
49:15
Speaker 1: this is also a point of controversy with Benjamin's life,
49:18
Speaker 1: which is that, as you mentioned several times, there was
49:20
Speaker 1: a possibility of him joining Charalam in Ersustrael and Israel,
49:24
Speaker 1: and Charlam maybe would have found a position there, and
49:27
Speaker 1: several times he did not. He sort of demurred, he
49:29
Speaker 1: delayed until unfortunately his his tragic ended in nineteen forty.
49:33
Speaker 1: And the question is, you know, do you see this
49:37
Speaker 1: as I simply like a coincidence in his biography, is
49:41
Speaker 1: something that you know was just just happened to be
49:44
Speaker 1: the case that Benjamin dride a few times comes to
49:46
Speaker 1: Israeld that it didn't work out. What do you see
49:48
Speaker 1: this as very symbolic of Benjamin himself and his sympathies,
49:51
Speaker 1: because this is a man very rooted, let's say, in
49:53
Speaker 1: European culture, and also very committed to moving from place
49:57
Speaker 1: to place and being mobile, sort of being able to
49:59
Speaker 1: cross back, and of course settling in the land of
50:02
Speaker 1: Israel like Shalam did. Is firstly a move away from
50:05
Speaker 1: Europe and European culture, which was considered the cultural center
50:08
Speaker 1: of the world at the time, but also seen as
50:10
Speaker 1: sort of a step away from from the itinerant life
50:14
Speaker 1: from and a step into rootedness and Jewishness, writ Large
50:21
Speaker 1: Island House to put it a commitment to stay in,
50:23
Speaker 1: a commitment to be ground. And as Charlom was fine.
50:26
Speaker 1: Charlom was a very committed Zionis, and he was fine
50:28
Speaker 1: and doing the un the constrious. His dreamed to do that,
50:29
Speaker 1: and he did it very well. So you know, do
50:31
Speaker 1: you think do you agree with that sort of reading
50:34
Speaker 1: of Benjamin's hesitancy and ultimate decision not to go until
50:38
Speaker 1: it was far too late.
50:39
Speaker 2: So this is what the passages in the letters to
50:43
Speaker 2: show Lem revealed over twenty years. Benjamin considers leaving Europe.
50:50
Speaker 2: He writes very early on, in one of his early
50:53
Speaker 2: letters to Ludwig Schaus, he writes, I have to leave
50:59
Speaker 2: you and I can't. I have to do it, and
51:03
Speaker 2: I can't bring myself to it already. Then he doesn't
51:08
Speaker 2: say leaving it for what, But there was a sense
51:12
Speaker 2: that it was doomed. Europe was doomed, and at the
51:19
Speaker 2: same time he was deeply, deeply tied to it. But
51:23
Speaker 2: he was also ambivalent about Palestine, and surprisingly it was
51:31
Speaker 2: not at least if one takes what he writes at
51:34
Speaker 2: face value, not because it was too Jewish, because and
51:39
Speaker 2: I have a So there is an incredible quote where
51:45
Speaker 2: he talks about Zionists as it's a pretty terrible term.
51:52
Speaker 2: I've mentioned half humans who And then he says, have
51:58
Speaker 2: they ever thought about schools, about running a state in
52:06
Speaker 2: Jewish terms? He says, they call themselves Zionists, and they
52:11
Speaker 2: booze in German. So he says that they wouln't that
52:16
Speaker 2: they would lose their Jewishness. Not they would. They do
52:20
Speaker 2: lose their Jewishness because they import into Palestine they are
52:26
Speaker 2: German ways, and he didn't believe that Palestine could actually
52:33
Speaker 2: sustain the spiritual dimension of sholemns of what made come
52:41
Speaker 2: to Palestine at the time. You know, he turns it
52:45
Speaker 2: in these letters into something almost positive, the hesitation itself.
52:52
Speaker 2: At some point he writes, you get passages like, dear Gohard,
52:59
Speaker 2: everything's ready. I'm coming in November. I'm in Jerusalem. Everything's ready.
53:03
Speaker 2: All my affairs are settled now. Actually my mother is
53:08
Speaker 2: sick and I'm expecting guests, and I don't have any money. Now.
53:14
Speaker 2: I forgot to tell you that I just bought the
53:17
Speaker 2: complete volumes of good in some antique shop. Right after
53:22
Speaker 2: saying that he has no and there is a self
53:25
Speaker 2: undermining that goes on, and at one point even himself
53:29
Speaker 2: talks about his patrological hesitation. And yet in one of
53:37
Speaker 2: those letters he talks about the glorious spill rowmleeway that
53:46
Speaker 2: happens in hesitation, because he said, he writes, at the
53:51
Speaker 2: actual moment, when the catastrophe is here, there is no
53:56
Speaker 2: more lieveway, there is no more spill roun to hesitate.
54:00
Speaker 2: So Benjamin was not only a man full of tensions,
54:05
Speaker 2: but he embraced tension itself as a mode of thinking
54:10
Speaker 2: and as a source of inspiration.
54:12
Speaker 1: Right, And I suppose it's one of these tragic, tragic
54:16
Speaker 1: instances where life kind of mirrors philosophy in a way.
54:20
Speaker 1: Was after all those hesitations, after all those you know,
54:24
Speaker 1: after all those series of decisions to stay within Europe,
54:29
Speaker 1: he stayed there forever, essentially because his tragic absolute So
54:35
Speaker 1: one sort of final important question regards Benjamin's afterlife, because
54:41
Speaker 1: obviously his I mean or not obviously, but it is
54:43
Speaker 1: the case that his works have been subject to a
54:46
Speaker 1: great deal of interpretation and argumentation, review, and especially his
54:50
Speaker 1: work within the broader context of the Frankfurt scho which
54:52
Speaker 1: we haven't really talked about, but he was a collaborator
54:54
Speaker 1: and interlocutor with I don't know and hr time Man,
54:57
Speaker 1: and you know, a series of very important figures who
55:00
Speaker 1: later on in post war and the United States, became
55:02
Speaker 1: very important cultural critics of their own in their own rights.
55:06
Speaker 1: But there has also been arguments after Benjamin's death as
55:09
Speaker 1: to the question. We've been discussing that, and I wonder
55:11
Speaker 1: if you could maybe guide us a little through this
55:14
Speaker 1: quagmire of kind of debate and discussion regarding Benumin, especially
55:17
Speaker 1: his his Jewish or otherwise roots or sort of aspects
55:23
Speaker 1: of him, and also just the sort of the stakes
55:25
Speaker 1: of it. You know, why would it be important either
55:28
Speaker 1: to to bring Benjamin closer or to distance him from
55:33
Speaker 1: Jewishness or Judaism. What are the sort of underlying motivations
55:37
Speaker 1: within such a debate that that occurred in the decades
55:40
Speaker 1: after Benyamin's death.
55:41
Speaker 2: Maybe the best place to start to answer this is
55:45
Speaker 2: to pick up the idea of a man of many tensions,
55:50
Speaker 2: this tension between Marxism and Messianism, between politics and theology,
55:56
Speaker 2: between Europe and Palestine, between an affirmation of modernity and
56:03
Speaker 2: a radical critique of modernity. Benjamine does touch on some
56:09
Speaker 2: of the fundamental questions that any intellectual in the twenties
56:17
Speaker 2: and still in the twenty first century has to find
56:20
Speaker 2: an answer for. And these replies are so complex and
56:25
Speaker 2: subtle that they invite multiple viewpoints on the and this
56:33
Speaker 2: to this day. So, for example, the question of you know,
56:39
Speaker 2: with the agreement among intellectuals that the system was was
56:47
Speaker 2: catastrophic and that one had to so a certain idea
56:53
Speaker 2: of revolution, of the revolution, And the question to what
56:58
Speaker 2: extent violence is justified when you are in a tyrannical
57:04
Speaker 2: system a question that leads us right into our days.
57:10
Speaker 2: But Benjamin answers this. So there is for example, in
57:15
Speaker 2: his in his essay Critique of Violence that has a
57:18
Speaker 2: very strong Jewish dimension. It is fascinating to see how
57:23
Speaker 2: some people read this completely without the Jewish dimension and
57:29
Speaker 2: read it as an affirmation of the right to violence
57:34
Speaker 2: in the revolutionary context, and others do the opposite. And
57:42
Speaker 2: I've I've written on this text recently, and it became
57:47
Speaker 2: clear to me that one of the the aspects of
57:54
Speaker 2: especially German, of the German intellectual landscape, was the question
58:00
Speaker 2: of myth. Benjamin rejects myths radically and at very different levels.
58:08
Speaker 2: And in this text he talks about mythical violence, and
58:12
Speaker 2: mythical violence is the violence that a state or anyone
58:17
Speaker 2: in power. So the powers that we exert in order
58:21
Speaker 2: to create their position of power and sovereignty or to
58:26
Speaker 2: maintain it both are mysical. There he calls that mythical
58:31
Speaker 2: violence and opposes that to a mysterious notion of divine violence.
58:37
Speaker 2: And in explaining what divine violence is, that is so
58:41
Speaker 2: that is justified violence, and the way he describes it
58:45
Speaker 2: is almost frightening because it is a kind of unjustified,
58:50
Speaker 2: non negotiated momentum. And then it brings in the story
58:55
Speaker 2: of Korrah from the Bible, Korrahus swallowed up to the
59:01
Speaker 2: earth after rebelling against the authority of Moses and our
59:07
Speaker 2: own And you can see that, you can you could
59:13
Speaker 2: discuss even our contemporary actuality in terms of where Benjamin
59:20
Speaker 2: actually situated. Is this justified or is it not? And
59:24
Speaker 2: I had the feeling that there is something there that
59:26
Speaker 2: Benjamin leaves purposely inaccessible, that one can discern the dimensions
59:38
Speaker 2: and the cultures of what he is describing there, but
59:42
Speaker 2: it is not readily accessible so that one could define
59:46
Speaker 2: what is this divine violence and what makes it legitimate.
59:51
Speaker 2: But what one does sense is that in this inaccessibility
59:57
Speaker 2: of this concept, he points to the fact that this
1:00:03
Speaker 2: kind of violence itself is not accessible to humans. So
1:00:10
Speaker 2: there is he does, at the same time introduce this radical,
1:00:16
Speaker 2: total dimension and words off the dangers of it. And
1:00:22
Speaker 2: I think that that's is true for Messianism as well.
1:00:25
Speaker 2: Today Messianism has a very bad press, especially relating to Israel.
1:00:31
Speaker 2: This is precisely so when one talks about Benjamin's Messianism.
1:00:36
Speaker 2: This is maybe the most interesting thing that he at
1:00:40
Speaker 2: the same time does invoke such the idea of redemption
1:00:47
Speaker 2: and at the same time takes it out of human
1:00:50
Speaker 2: hands because of the dangers that this could bring about.
1:00:56
Speaker 2: And the same thing with there's a little sentence of
1:01:00
Speaker 2: in the context of where he talks about divine violence,
1:01:04
Speaker 2: where he says where this actually applies is not available
1:01:11
Speaker 2: to humans. So and with Messianism, where you it radically rejects.
1:01:18
Speaker 2: Benjamin's reflections of Messianism radically reject any kind of theocracy
1:01:24
Speaker 2: and any kind of you know, claiming that for any
1:01:29
Speaker 2: political action.
1:01:33
Speaker 1: Well that is now I was very thorough answer to
1:01:37
Speaker 1: that question.
1:01:38
Speaker 2: The question the question about the reception. Maybe what I
1:01:42
Speaker 2: tried to do is show you asked me. I think
1:01:44
Speaker 2: I answered to one part of your question, which is
1:01:47
Speaker 2: what is at stake in the way one reads Benjamins.
1:01:53
Speaker 2: So I think that maybe I've given some idea of
1:01:56
Speaker 2: what is at stake. I experienced too in in my research.
1:02:01
Speaker 2: Two areas of the reception of Benjamin's reception that I
1:02:08
Speaker 2: found particularly significant. And the one, and this I did
1:02:12
Speaker 2: mention before briefly was when I dealt with a group
1:02:17
Speaker 2: of contemporary philosophers who read Benjamin in a Christian way
1:02:24
Speaker 2: that as a as a kind of Christian anarchist, where
1:02:29
Speaker 2: associating Benjamin with the apostle Paul that brings Benjamin to
1:02:37
Speaker 2: a radically anti Judaic position that I think is very
1:02:44
Speaker 2: dangerous and wrong, not only because it would lose Benjamin
1:02:48
Speaker 2: would lose the Jewish dimension, but because of the kind
1:02:51
Speaker 2: of Benjamin that comes out of this. It is a
1:02:55
Speaker 2: he would then be a radically Antinomian figure, rejecting not
1:03:01
Speaker 2: only state law but all law, and driving into some
1:03:05
Speaker 2: kind of an apocalyptic abyss. And I, yeah, I see
1:03:13
Speaker 2: a completely different Benjamin. There a key moment that illuminated
1:03:18
Speaker 2: me about this is when the contemporary philosopher, and that
1:03:23
Speaker 2: is at the heart of my of my book on
1:03:26
Speaker 2: the Tenuous Legacy of the German Jewish afterlife, it is
1:03:32
Speaker 2: a Gamben, Giorgio Agamben, Italian philosopher who who many consider
1:03:39
Speaker 2: the most important era of Benjamin. He writes about Kafka's
1:03:46
Speaker 2: text before the Law. This the following is a reading
1:03:52
Speaker 2: of Kafka's story in Beniaminian light. So this is in
1:03:58
Speaker 2: the Benyaminian spirit. And then you know, it's the story.
1:04:01
Speaker 2: I'm not going into it in detail, but it's the
1:04:03
Speaker 2: story where a man comes to the law, it has
1:04:05
Speaker 2: no access to it, and waits his whole life in
1:04:08
Speaker 2: front of the entrance to the law. There's a doorkeeper
1:04:12
Speaker 2: who doesn't let him in, and the man whaits all
1:04:17
Speaker 2: his life is negotiating with the doorkeeper. And at the end,
1:04:22
Speaker 2: after seeing a glimmer of light coming through the door,
1:04:25
Speaker 2: he says, how come nobody else passed by here, and
1:04:29
Speaker 2: the doorkeeper says, well, it was meant for you and
1:04:32
Speaker 2: shuts the door. Slams the door shut. A gun Ben
1:04:36
Speaker 2: is the only one who and he says this in
1:04:40
Speaker 2: a Benaminian spirit, this would read as follows and then
1:04:46
Speaker 2: always this had This story has been written mainly as
1:04:49
Speaker 2: the inaccessibility of the law, especially if considered as divine
1:04:55
Speaker 2: law for a modern man and a gun. Ben writes, No, No,
1:04:59
Speaker 2: the key mood moment is when the doorkeeper slams the
1:05:03
Speaker 2: door shut, because finally we are rid of the law,
1:05:06
Speaker 2: and that would be a kind of fulfillment the suspension
1:05:09
Speaker 2: of the law, as Paul did to Jewish law. So
1:05:14
Speaker 2: the law is suspended now, and that would be Benjamini,
1:05:18
Speaker 2: just to give you an idea of how this kind
1:05:22
Speaker 2: of reading really shows how precarious the reception of Viter
1:05:30
Speaker 2: Benjamin and of this Jewish tradition is.
1:05:34
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, We've covered an enormous amount of ground, and
1:05:38
Speaker 1: I wish to cover more. How we're gonna have to
1:05:40
Speaker 1: stop it. We're going to draw the cut down in
1:05:43
Speaker 1: a moment. Before we do, I would like to ask
1:05:45
Speaker 1: a question that I asked many of my guests, which
1:05:47
Speaker 1: goes as follows. If you could sit down tonight for
1:05:50
Speaker 1: dinner with Walter Benjamin, what would you want to ask him?
1:05:53
Speaker 1: What would you be talking to him about? First it
1:05:55
Speaker 1: do you think would be a pleasant experience? And what
1:05:58
Speaker 1: would you what would be chatting to Benjamin about tonight.
1:06:01
Speaker 2: I would ask him the question that he asks of
1:06:09
Speaker 2: the afterlife of a work, that it be torn away
1:06:15
Speaker 2: from the conventions and not be regarded in terms of
1:06:19
Speaker 2: what it meant in its time, but what it would
1:06:23
Speaker 2: do in hours. And I would ask Benjamin whether he
1:06:29
Speaker 2: would agree with me that it is not the radicalism,
1:06:33
Speaker 2: but the simultaneity of the intensity and the subtlety of
1:06:41
Speaker 2: his thinking that would matter today.
1:06:45
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a very it's a very would be very
1:06:48
Speaker 1: interesting thing. And you know, if you ever get an
1:06:50
Speaker 1: answer from him, please do let us know on this
1:06:52
Speaker 1: particular point. Professor Vivian Liska, thank you so very much
1:06:56
Speaker 1: for Johnny yesterday on the podcast Jewish Ideas to talk
1:06:58
Speaker 1: about what Benjamin. This has been a great pleasure, and
1:07:01
Speaker 1: thank you for illuminating this particularly complex and difficult thinker.
1:07:05
Speaker 1: We hope to see you again soon.
1:07:07
Speaker 2: Thank you.
1:07:09
Speaker 1: This has been the podcast of Jewish Ideas by Tora
1:07:11
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1:07:15
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