Dab Denken Der Lehre
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'DAB DENKEN DER LEHRE. WALTER BENJAMIN, FRANZ JOSEPH MOLITOR AND THE JEWISH TRADITION' by Bram Mertens, Lie. Phil.(Leuven), MPhil. (Keele) Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2001 ABSTRACT This thesis is a dialectical exploration of the importance of the Jewish tradition and theology in the work of Walter Benjamin, primarily through his reading of Franz Joseph Molitor's Philosophie der Geschichte oder aber die Tradition, and secondarily through his close friendship with Gershom Scholem. It also argues that the influence of the Jewish tradition is a constant factor in Benjamin's work, transcending the conventional division between his 'metaphysical' FrUhwerk and his 'Marxist' Spiitwerk. The first chapter presents a historical-philosophical overview of the form and content of the Jewish tradition, with particular emphasis on the seminal importance of language as the medium of tradition. The second chapter offers both an exhaustive philological investigation of Benjamin's contacts with Molitor's book, on the basis of new information gathered from both Benjamin's and Scholem's diaries and correspondence, as well as a selection and discussion of some of the most salient and relevant aspects of Philosophie der Geschichte. The third and final chapter assesses the impact of the foregoing as it cuJrninates in the work of Walter Benjamin. Firstly, it focuses on the early essays Ober Sprache uberhaupt unci aber die Sprache des Menschen and Ober das Programm der kommenden Philosophie, drawing parallels between their conception of language as a medium and Jewish concepts of language and tradition as they are presented by Molitor and Scholem. Secondly, it turns to the Protokolle zu Drogenversuchen and to Benjamin's unfinished magnum opus, Das Passagen-Werk, to illustrate the continuity of his thoughts on language and tradition in the concept of profane Erleuchtung. After each chapter, a short interlude focuses on different forms of Judaism in Benjamin's work, notably the Jewish concept of commentary in the essays on Kafka, the concept of the understated apocalypse and the name of God. Word count: 95,000. B.M -Nottingham, 2001. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, and finally, I should like to thank my loving, long-suffering parents - I promise this will be the last thing I write of the kind that has acknowledgements. Honest. My supervisors, Dr. Josephine Guy and Dr. Steve Giles, took it upon themselves to guide me through every manner of crisis, finding that delicate balance between humouring a fool and weaning him away, ever so gently, from the notion that an in-depth knowledge of classical Hebrew really is quite essential - for this and so much else, I am extremely grateful to them. I would very much like to thank Professor Roger Woods, who beared with me when I suggested that a quick glance at Philosophie der Geschichte might make my argument slightly more coherent, and without whose tenacity this would have been one subject short of a thesis. Dr. Lieven De Cauter I thank for putting the idea into my head in the first place, and I would like to reiterate my gratitude to Dr. Rudi Laermans, who still remains, in many ways, the man without whom. I take great pleasme in thanking Dr. lain Ogilvie and Dr. Macdonald Daly for Scottish wisdom and Belgian beers - despite all the headaches, I still remember a great deal of what they taught me. Over these past few years, my friends, in varying degrees of severity, have tolerated the most improper impositions from my part, and now this thesis is finished, I shall begin to work on some means of repaying them. In the mean time, suffice it here to say that I thank them most heartily: Messrs. Wim Maris, Jeroen Eggermon~ Benjamin James Everitt, JesUs Manuel Alonso, Martyn Saville, and Mss. Alex Harrington, Jenny 'the Slayer' Palmer and Nel Rombaut. Het lijdt echter geen twijfol dat mijn voornaamste dank moet uitgaan naar degene die me door zowat elk uur van de laatste turbulente maanden van dit beest heeft geleid, degene aan wie dit werk altijd al een beetje opgedragen was, maar nooit zoveel als nu: mijn Ellie. B.M - Nottingham, 2001. Es ist dem philosophischen Schrifttum eigen, mit jeder Wendung von neuem vor der Frage der Darstellung zu stehen. Zwar wird es in seiner abgeschlossenen Gestalt Lehre sein, solche Abgeschlossenheit ihm zu leihen aber liegt nicht in der Gewalt des blofJen Denkens. --W. Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels. Eine Erklarung, wie sie einer Schrift in einer Vorrede nach der Gewohnheit vorausgeschickt wird - aber den Zweck, den der Verfasser sich in ihr vorgesetzt, sowie aber die Veranlassungen und das Verhaltnis, worin er sie zu anderen friiheren oder gleichzeitigen Behandlungen desselben Gegenstandes zu stehen glaubt -, scheint bel einer philosophischen Schrift nicht nur aberjlilssig, sondern um der Natur der Sache willen sogar unpassend und zweckwidrig zu sein. Denn wie und was von Philosophie in einer Vorrede zu sagen schicklich ware - etwa eine historische Angabe der Tendenz und des Standpunkts, des allgemeinen Inhalts und der Resultate, eine Verbindung von hin und her sprechenden Behauptungen und Versicherungen aber das Wahre -, kann nicht jUr die Art und Weise gelten, in der die philosophische Wahrheit darzustellen sei. --G. w.F. Hegel, PlUinomenologie des Geistes. Deux injinis. Milieu. Quand on lit trop vite ou trop doucement, on n 'entend rien. ---B. Pascal, pensees. Scripta, qua fragmenta s[iveJ non extantes, cogitationibus in statu nascendi similes sunt r·· J. Quod in imaginibus, est in lingua. ---Pyrrho Atticus, Rhetorica. There is a life oftradition that does not merely consist ofconservative preservation, the constant continuation of the spiritual and cultural possessions of a community. There is such a thing as a treasure hunt within tradition, which creates a living relationship to tradition and to which much of what is best in current Jewish consciousness is indebted, even when it was - and is - expressed outside of the framework of orthodoxy. --Gershom Scholem. CONTENTS Contents .......................................................................................................... i Facsimile of original titlepage ........................................................................ ii Dedicatio ......................................................................................................... iii Preface ............................................................................................................ iv Tradition ......................................................................................................... 1 ~ ...................................................................................................................... 87 Molitor ............................................................................................................ 94 ::1 •.•••••••••••••••••••.••.••..••.•.•.•.••••.••••••••.•••••.••....•.•.•.•.••••..•••.•••••.••••••••••.•••••.•...•••••••.. 172 Benjatnin ......................................................................................................... 178 1....................................................................................................................... 274 Bibliography ................................................................................................... 285 1JrfltpmDllu rintr ktinffi,ellt ~'n ~t~lldpm U-1Jttllmin ~ilftr lltnqimi1lJt, ~11lnR ~It[5t'~ ~It[UtIt[r 1lJt1lJtb bit fnibi5t~t 1J11lbitiIt[1lJt ittfifit Iro Jnm~mf~ Entworfen 1997, VerfafJt 200}, Damals wie heute Seinem Gediichtnis gewidmet. PREFACE PREFACE his poem was written by Gershom Scholem in July 1918 on the occasion of Benjamin's 26th birthday.l From it speaks a maturity and a complexity of critical insight into Benjamin, both as a person and as a writer, the like of which would not often be seen again; one notable exception being Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, who opened the preface of the first edition of Benjamin's correspondence with the words: 'Walter Benjamins Trauemder, nah mir und doch stets verborgen Person war von Nur die Berufung dich am Leben halt, Doch Schweigst duo Auf dein Schweigen ist die Welt Anbeginn derart Gebaut. Die Trauer ist der ewige Morgen, Medium des In dem du stehst. DaB du noch nicht gestorben, das ist das Wunder, das mich uberflillt. Werkes, sein Du bist. Aus deiner tiefen Stille quellt Die Frage, die dich mir, mich dir geworben. Gluck batte er so Du warst bei mir in all den schweren Tagen sehr an seinem und bist doch fem bei dem, der dich besaB. Was mich bewegt, muJ3 stumm ich in mir tragen. Geist, daB, was Denn was an dir geschieht, bat solches MaB 1IIlIIler sonst der ilioBe, daB die Worte, die ich finde, nicht rein genug sind. Drum ist Sprechen SUnde. Unmittelbarkeit des Lebens heiSt, gebrochen wurde.,2 With nearly fifty years between them, the intuitions of Benjamin's two greatest interpreters are not a million miles away from each other. It is indeed remarkable how much Walter Benjamin's 1 Gershom Scholem, Tagebiicher nebst Aujsiitzen und EntwUrfen bis 1923, edited by Karlfried GrUnder und Friedrich Niewohner, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: liidischer Verlag, 1995-2000), vol. 2, p. 297. 2 'Walter Benjamin's person was, from the very outset, so much the medium of his work, and his own happiness was so much on his mind that whatever is usually called the immediacy of life was broken.' (Theodor W. Adorno, 'Benjamin, der Briefschreiber', in Nolen zur LiteratuT (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981),