ON THE CONCEPT OF HISTORY
Reflection on history seems a constant theme in Benjamin’s thought. From his early works to his last texts, this
concern constitutes a continuous thread, which grants to his diverse work a secret unity. For Benjamin, the principal question
seems to be how to interweave “the theory of historiography with the theory of the real course of history in the same
way in which history itself is referred to its ‘making’—political praxis.” In Benjamin’s terms, the question is how to “generate”
an “interrelationship between historiography and politics.” This question refers us not to the nature of the historical process but
to the way we acquired historical knowledge, not to historiography but to philosophy of history. Here the implicit matter
is the construction of a new concept of history.
Benjamin discovers the idea that in history the past is transformed according
to the present of the subject of historical knowledge, to the time and space where his discourse is produced. He was more
concerned with the interpretation (construction) of the past than the reconstruction of it; moreover, he always claimed that
our representation of the past is only comprehensible through the narration we make starting from our present. Benjamin’s
intention to have a certain conception of the present is to allow the subject of historical knowledge to develop the concept of an alternate political praxis
and to improve his position in the political struggle.
When Benjamin stresses the role of the subject of knowledge in the constitution
of history, and understands the latter not as a basic element, but as the product of a heuristic activity, that is, as a function
of the “the present instant,” he is moved to posit the question of the categories of historical knowledge. This
question is not in the methodological point of view, but in the metaphysical sense. Benjamin draws, through the evolution
of his thought, three differentiated answers: On a first phase, the two texts, On Language
as Such and on the Language of Man (1916) and The Task of the Translator (1923),
propound a ethico-theological paradigm of history. Later, in The Origin of German Tragic
Drama (1928), he develops, concerning history, an aesthetics paradigm. And finally, starting from 1925-1926, Benjamin
steadily develops a political paradigm of history.
Nevertheless, we cannot understand these three phases as radically
separated one from the other. For Benjamin, the formulation of another paradigm does not mean to reject the fundamental categories
of the last paradigm but to maintain them in a subordinate role with regards to the new categories. If we want to measure
the importance of these three paradigms in Benjamin’s thought, we could say that the ethico-theological paradigm is
the most stable since it is present—explicit or implicitly—in the three phases. However, the political paradigm
is the most complex in the sense that it provides the synthesis of his conception of history.
Benjamin’s conception of history, focusing on the articulation of
the ethico-theological and political paradigms, is clearly illustrated in two dialectical images: the automaton that plays
chess and the Angelus Novus. For Benjamin, these are the thesis and antithesis—the
clash of two conceptions of history—, which provide a synthesis—a new concept of history. These dialectical images
represent Benjamin’s intention to radicalize dialectic, in such a way that it would sharpen his concept of history toward the linkage
between philosophy and theology, and to express his political views. The general aspects of these two elements—philosophy
and theology—can be qualified. Benjamin’s theological assumptions have to be referred to his Jewish background.
For philosophy, Benjamin is referring to historical materialism, especially in its Marxist view version, free of any imposition
Benjamin, in thesis XVII of the Theses,
distinguishes between a philosophy of history, which in “its method is additive; it musters a mass of data to fill the
homogeneous, empty time,” and another by virtue of which “thinking suddenly stops in a configuration pregnant
with tensions, it gives that configuration a shock, by which it crystallizes into a monad.”
In thesis I, Benjamin illustrates the relation between these two models
of philosophy of history with a chess game between an automaton perfectly programmed to win (progress) and a Turkish puppet
moved by a little hunchback, cleverly camouflaged, which is an expert chess player (ethos-theologia). The puppet can win the chess game provided that it can make use of something
underestimated by enlightened reason, that is, an ethical and theological reason. That is why Benjamin represents this image
by a little hidden hunchback clown hidden so as to avoid hurting the sensitivity of his contemporary fellowmen. Here is Benjamin’s
account of the two models of philosophy of history: on the one hand, there is a philosophy of history that refers to historicism (the Enlightenment’s idea of progress), and on the other hand, there is an “irruptive”
philosophy of history (messianic or apocalyptic).
According to Benjamin, the notion of the past turns into the keystone of
all conception of history. We could think that the future might dissolve the priority of the present. But the future is really a new radical possibility, when it becomes something
else than just the continuity of the present. The future then assumes the breakdown of the present, but the breakdown of the
present is only a matter between the present and the past. “In order for […] the past to be touched by the present
[…] there must be no continuity between them.” Here Benjamin’s concern is to dissipate the illusion of continuity in history,
and that it is possible only if the past and the present are polarized, or in other words, if the past puts in critical condition the present. This is Benjamin’s view of history as interruption. He breaks, then, with
the classical model of the philosophy of history, with its central issue, the theory of progress. Philosophy
of history’s idea of progress is a unilinear, continuous process capable of self-fulfillment. The telos of history is precisely this self-fulfillment. This immanent progress might be called by Kant, mankind,
by Hegel, absolute spirit, by Marx, classless society. But all these abstractions reveal that what really counts for all modern
philosophies of history is not the details of everyday life, but the history of events, not the individual destiny, but mankind. In other words, what constitutes the heart of these philosophies is not the historical subject, but the
subject of history—the ultima ratio of history.
Everyday life and the transient, the grief and the misery, are just
temporary elements—all this material has no historical interest.
Benjamin does not stop with an ideal model of progress that would identify the historical process with the endless process
of history leading to self-realization. Moreover, Benjamin breaks from this kind of history.
Nothing has corrupted the German working class so much as the notion that
it was moving with the current. It regarded technological developments as the fall of the stream with which it thought it
was moving. From there it was but a step to the illusion that the factory work which was supposed to tend toward technological
progress constituted…[an] achievement.
What Benjamin does not accept is the belief in progress, in a kind of indefinite self-realization that determines almost naturally
the evolution of mankind. According to Benjamin, in light of the experience of the twentieth century, we have forgotten that
progress in terms of proficiency and information does not necessarily mean progress for mankind itself, and that progress
in the domination of nature corresponds to social regression.
The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from
the concept of its progression through a homogeneous, empty time. A critique of the concept of such a progression must be
the basis of any criticism of the concept of progress itself.
Consequently, Benjamin demanded “a philosophy of history that at
all points has overcome the ideology of progress.”