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Walter Benjamin's Will to Happiness

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Walter Benjamin's Will to Happiness On the Metapolitics of Decay: Walter Benjamin’s Will to Happiness by Jason McKinney A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto © Copyright by Jason Thomas McKinney 2012 On The Metapolitics of Decay On the Metapolitics of Decay: Walter Benjamin’s Will to Happiness Jason Thomas McKinney Doctor of Philosophy Department for the Study of Religion University of Toronto 2012 Abstract This dissertation analyzes the early work of Walter Benjamin (ca. 1916 – 1926). The period under consideration falls between Benjamin’s break from the German Youth Movement (which also coincides with the beginning of the Great War) and his turn to Marxism. Benjamin’s life and work during this period is characterized by, on the one hand, an intensified interest in theological concepts and, on the other hand, the apparent refusal of concrete political engagement. It is the claim of the dissertation that what Benjamin elaborates – in the absence of a concrete political program and with the aid of theological concepts – is a metaphysical conception of politics: what I call a metapolitics of decay . This metapolitics is informed by a certain theological understanding of transience: the decay that attends to a creation which has “fallen” from its original condition. While Benjamin’s metapolitics is oriented towards redemption – to the lossless consummation of historical life – it pursues this goal, not by circumventing transience, but by concentrating on the decay of nature – and by extension, of history. ii On The Metapolitics of Decay The metapolitical limit upon concrete politics, however, does not foreclose the possibility of the latter. In 1919, in a text posthumously named the “Theologico-Political Fragment,” Benjamin does in fact spell out what I call a politics of transience . One of the major historical and conceptual trajectories that the dissertation traces, therefore, is the movement from the metapolitics of decay to the politics of transience. The political significance of transience and decay reveals itself in the profane and melancholic fixation upon the decay of nature and of history. And yet it is only with the concept of happiness that both the metapolitical and the political dimensions of Benjamin’s work become most clear. Happiness ( Glück ), which is manifestly not the bliss ( Seligkeit ) of the prelapsarian condition, is no escape from the melancholy situation of historical life. It remains definitively profane and capable of taking an “elegiac” form. But it is precisely by way of its profanity and its melancholy that happiness comes to signify the idea of redemption. The will to happiness, for Benjamin, is a (weak) messianic force. iii On The Metapolitics of Decay Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 I. On the Metapolitics of Decay .............................................................................................. 1 From the Metapolitics of Decay… .............................................................................................. 4 … to the Politics of Transience ................................................................................................... 7 II. The “Will to Happiness” ...................................................................................................... 9 Indissolubility of Happiness and Redemption........................................................................... 12 III. Summary of the Contents................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2: The Pre-Historical Loss of Bliss ............................................................................. 26 I. The Fall of European Culture ............................................................................................ 26 II. The Creation and Fall of Language ................................................................................... 31 God’s Creative Word; Adam’s Knowing Word; ature’s Mute Word ........................................ 34 The Fall of Language ................................................................................................................ 39 III. Antique and Modern Happiness......................................................................................... 46 IV. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 52 Chapter 3: Tragic Happiness ..................................................................................................... 54 I. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 54 II. Fate and Happiness ............................................................................................................ 55 Fate, Law, and Time .................................................................................................................. 59 Tragedy and Fate ...................................................................................................................... 65 III. “Germans and Other Greeks” ............................................................................................ 67 IV. The Tragic Hero ................................................................................................................. 77 V. Agon/Trial .......................................................................................................................... 80 VI. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 86 Chapter 4: Allegorical Happiness .............................................................................................. 88 I. The German Baroque ......................................................................................................... 88 The Mourning Play ................................................................................................................... 91 A Small History of Secularization ............................................................................................. 93 atural History as Content ....................................................................................................... 97 A theory of Sovereignty: Sovereign as Creature ..................................................................... 101 iv On The Metapolitics of Decay Fate as Original Sin ................................................................................................................ 104 II. Melancholy Dialectic ....................................................................................................... 106 III. Allegory ............................................................................................................................114 Allegory and Happiness ........................................................................................................... 114 Defining Allegory ..................................................................................................................... 117 The Ruin .................................................................................................................................. 121 IV. A Theological Method ..................................................................................................... 123 Christianity and Allegory: Guilt and Redemption .................................................................. 125 The Metapolitics of Decay: “A Hopeless Loyalty to the Creaturely” .................................... 128 Chapter 5: From the Metapolitics of Decay to the Politics of Transience ........................... 133 I. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 133 II. Benjamin’s Profane Theology .......................................................................................... 137 III. Happiness ......................................................................................................................... 140 IV. Barth’s Theology of the Profane ...................................................................................... 143 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 155 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 157 Appendix: “The Happiness of Antique Man” ........................................................................ 160 v On The Metapolitics of Decay – Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 1: Introduction I. On the Metapolitics of Decay [T]he war broke out and robbed the world of its beauties. It destroyed not only the beauty of the countrysides through which it passed and the works of art which it met with on its path but it also shattered our pride in the achievements of our civilization, our admiration for many philosophers and artists and our hopes of a final triumph over the differences between nations and races. It tarnished the lofty impartiality of our science, it revealed our instincts in all their nakedness and let loose the evil spirits within us which we thought had been tamed forever by centuries of
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