Purity Benjamin Kant

7/24/2019 Purity Benjamin Kant

1/10

Purity (Benjamin with Kant)

Carlo Salzani *

Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia

Around 1921 Benjamin wrote three seminal essays: Critique of

Violence [Zur Kritik der Gewalt] commenced at the end of 1920,

completed in January 1921 (cf. GB 2:131)1 and published in issue 3

(August 1921) of theArchiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik;

The Task of the Translator [Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers], written in

Autumn 1921 and published in October 1923 as foreword of

Benjamins own translation of BaudelairesTableaux parisiens; and

Goethes Elective Affinities [Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften],

probably composed between Autumn 1921 and Summer 1922,

and published in two issues of Hofmannsthals Neue Deutsche

Beitrage (the first part in April 1924 and the second in January

1925). The three essays, though devoted to different subjects,

present nonetheless a certain unity of tone and a sort of kinship in

the recurrence of some fundamental themes of Benjamins early

theorisation, like myth, representation, morality, law and lan-

guage. One peculiar notion holds them together, not only because

it constitutes, in a sense, the kernel of the respective analyses, butalso insofar as the way this notionis theorised in eachof the essays

can help explain its significance for the other two:purity [Reinheit].

In Critique of Violence, it informs the politics of pure means

[reines Mittel] construed around the notion of pure violence [reine

Gewalt]; in The Task of the Translator, it is present in pure

language [reine Sprache], a notion which informs also the Goethe

essay,wherepurity does notexplicitly appear, butis implicit in the

form of the expressionless [das Ausdruckslose]; in turn, the notion

of the expressionless can be connected back to the essay on

violence, since it is identified with critical violence [kritische

Gewalt] andendowedwithmoralsignificance. It is noteworthy that

History of European Ideas 36 (2010) 438447

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Available online 21 August 2010

Keywords:

Purity

Walter Benjamin

Immanuel Kant

Critique

Violence

Ethics

A B S T R A C T

The essay analyses the notion of purity in the early writings of Walter Benjamin, focusing more

specifically on three essays written around the crucial year 1921: Critique of Violence, The Task of the

Translator, and Goethes Elective Affinities. In these essays, purity appears in the notions of pure

means,pure violence, pure language,and, indirectly, the expressionless. The essay argues, on the onehand, that the purity of these concepts is one and the same notion, and, on the other, that it is strongly

indebted to, if not a by-product of, Kants theorisation of the moral act. In order to make this claim, the

essay analyses Benjamins intense engagement with Kants writings in the 1910s and early 1920s:

purity is a category strongly connoted within the philosophical tradition in which the young Benjamin

moved his first steps, namely Kantian transcendental criticism. The essay argues that the notion of

purity in Benjamin, though deployed outside and often against Kants theorisation and that of his

followers, and moreover influenced by different and diverse philosophical suggestions, retains a strong

Kantian tone, especially in reference to its moral and ethical aspects. Whereas Benjamin rejects Kants

model of cognition based on the purity of the universal laws of reason,and thus also Kants theorisation

of purity as simply non empirical and a priori, he models nonetheless his politics and aesthetics around

suggestions that arise directly from Kants theorisation of the moral act and of the sublime, and uses a

very Kantian vocabulary of negative determinations construed with the privatives-los and -frei (motiv-

frei, zweck-los, gewalt-los, ausdrucks-los, intention-frei, etc). The essay explores thus the connections

that link pure means, pure language and pure violence to one another and to the Kantian tradition.

2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 151 576 85135 (mobile); fax: +49 228 73 3986.

E-mail addresses: [email protected],[email protected] All references to Benjamins and Kants works are made parenthetically in the

text. Allreferences to Benjamins works areprovidedboth to theGerman text of the

Gesammelte Schriften (Collected Writings), ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Hermann Schwep-penhauser, 7 vols. in 15 (Frankfurt am Main, 19721989), or theGesammelte Briefe

(Collected Letters), ed. Christoph Godde, Henri Lonitz, 6 vols. (Frankfurt am Main,

19952000) (hereafter cited as GS and GB, respectively), and to the English

translation of theSelected Writings, ed. Marcus Bullock,Michael W. Jennings,4 vols.

(Cambridge, MA, 19962003) andThe Origin of German Tragic Drama, Trans. John

Osborne (London & New York, 1998) (hereafter cited asSWand OT, respectively).

When no English translation is available, I will use my own. All references to Kants

works are provided both to the German text of the Werke (Works), ed. Wilhelm

Weischedel, 6 vols. (Darmstadt, 1956ff), and to the following English translations:

Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, Trans.Thomas KingsmillAbbott

(Mineola, NY, 2005); Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott

(Mineola, NY, 2004);The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge,

1996); Critique of Judgement, Trans. J.H. Bernard (Mineola, NY, 2005)(hereaftercited

as GMS, KPV, MSand KU, respectively).

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

History of European Ideas

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / h i s t e u r o i d e a s

0191-6599/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.07.003
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.07.003mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01916599http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.07.003http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.07.003http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01916599mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2010.07.003


2/10

the three essays were written within little more than a year, and

the recurrence of purity in them cannot therefore be merely

coincidental. In other words, it can be argued that the purity of

pure means, pure language and pure violence is one and the same

notion.

Purity is also, however, a category strongly connotedwithin the

philosophical tradition in which the young Benjamin moved his

first steps, namely Kantian transcendental criticism. It is my

contention that the notion of purity in Benjamin, though deployed

outside and often against Kants theorisation and that of his

followers, and moreover influenced by different and diverse

philosophical suggestions, retains a strong Kantian tone, especially

in reference to its moral and ethical aspects. Whereas Benjamin

rejects Kants model of cognition based on the purity of the

universal laws of reason, andthus also Kants theorisationof purity

as simply non empirical and a priori, he models nonetheless his

politics and aesthetics around suggestions that arise directly from

Kants theorisation of the moral act and of the sublime, and uses a

very Kantian vocabulary of negative determinations construed

with the privatives-los and -frei (motiv-frei, zweck-los, gewalt-los,ausdrucks-los, intention-frei, etc).2 In what follows, I will attempt to

illustrate the meaning ofpurity in Benjamins three essays and to

explore the connections that link them to one another and to the

Kantian tradition.

Pure means

In Critique of Violence Benjamin proposes a politics of pure

means that would interrupt the instrumental cycle of means-ends

characteristic of Western moral and political thought. The first

paragraph of the essay situates violence in the realm of means, but

at the same time disavows any critique that sought in a system of

just ends its criterion of judgment, for it would merely constitute a

criterion for the uses of violence, and not for violence itself as a

principle. Rather, a critique of violence must seek its criterion

within the sphere of means themselves, without regard for the

ends they serve

3

(GS2.1:179/SW1:236). Benjamin proposes thusto separate means from their natural, instrumental connection to

ends, exclude the realm of ends and the question of justice from its

critique, andexplicitly limit the latterto thequestionof violence as

means in its relation to morality.4 Pure means are put forward, in

this context, as the only possible non-violent instance of conflict

resolution, one that would disengage violence from its law-making

and law-preserving character and from law in general.5 Their

subjective preconditions are located in the culture of the heart

[Kultur des Herzens], in courtesy, sympathy, peaceableness, trust

[Herzenshoflichkeit, Neigung, Friedensliebe, Vertrauen], but their

objective manifestation is restricted to indirect resolution

[mittelbarer Losung], to matters concerning objects [Sachen]:

The sphere of non-violent means opens up in the realm of human

conflicts relating to goods,6 and this means that Technik is their

proper sphere. As example of this technique Benjamin singles out

the conference or interlocution [die Unterredung], and thus

language as the sphere of human agreement absolutely inacces-

sible to violence (GS2.1:1912/SW1:2445). Other examples are

the proletarian general strike as described by Geroges Sorel,

educativepower [erzieherische Gewalt], whichin itsperfected form

stands outside the law7 (GS2.1:200/SW1:250), and the task of

diplomats, since, analogously to the agreement between private

persons, they must proceed case by case and without contracts,

and their actions is thus beyond all legal systems and therefore

beyond violence8 (GS2.1:193, 195/SW1:245, 247).

The notion of pure means, of means purified of their ends, is,

however, highly paradoxical. As Peter Fenves notes, means are by

definition dependent on the idea of end, they are such only if they

serve certain ends; whereas the notion of pure ends inhabits the

Western philosophical tradition, from Aristotle to Kant, means

cannot be easily made independent. Pure ends, or, in Kants

definition, ends-in-themselves, are those which are independent

of means, which find their own perfection in themselves as in

Aristotle and are therefore im-mediate and ab-solute, separatedby the means necessary to achieve them. Pure means cannot, in

this sense, be considered means-in-themselves, since to be in

itself means to be as its own end.9 However, the traditional,

syllogistic10 relationship between means and ends, and specifi-

cally in thecontext of a critique of violence as a means,presents for

Benjamin a constitutive ambiguity [Zweideutigkeit]: the formal

freedom guaranteed by law remains indissolubly bound to the

guilt to which the law inevitably sentences life.11 Moreover, the

existence of thelegal order [das Recht], the realm in which violence

is deployed as a means to the higher ends of civil cohabitation, is

sustained in fact not by the intention of preserving legal ends but,

rather, by the intention of preserving the law itself12 (GS2.1:183/

SW 1:239). This constitutive ambiguity of the law is called by

Benjamin mythic,13

the very same ambiguity which characterisesthe pronouncements of fate and is the final reason for the

ultimate insolubility of all legal problems14 (GS 2.1:196/SW

1:247). To the contrary, the definition of morality must be free of

any ambiguity, andfrom this derives the necessity of dissolving the

mutual implication of means and ends.15 By assigningto God alone

the determination of the justness of ends Benjamin dismantles the

connection between the realm of just ends and the question of

justified means, and thus from any possible law, whose generali-

2 A similar argument is put forward by Benjamin Morgan; however, Morgan

focuses on Benjamins (and Agambens) debt to the Kantian aesthetics for the

development of the politics of pure means, whereas I argue that this aesthetics is

also strictly related to the theorisation of the moral act. Cf. B. Morgan, UndoingLegal Violence: Walter Benjamins and Giorgio Agambens Aesthetics of Pure

Means, Journal of Law and Society 34.1 (March 2007), 4664.3 in der Sphare der Mittel selbst, ohne Ansehung der Zwecke, denen sie dienen.4 The realm of ends, and therefore also the question of a criterion of justness, are

excluded forthe time being from this study.Instead, thecentral place is given to the

question of the justification of certain means that constitute violence [Das Bereich

der Zwecke und damit auch die Frage nach einem Kriterium der Gerechtigkeit schaltet

fur diese Untersuchung zunachst aus. Dagegen fallt in ihr Zentrum die Frage nach der

Berechtigung gewisser Mittel, welche die Gewalt ausmachen] ( GS2.1:181/SW1:237).5 All violence as a meansis eitherlawmakingor law-preserving.If itlays claim to

neither of these predicates, it forfeits all validity. It follows, however, that all

violence as a means, even in the most favourable case, is implicated in the

problematic nature of law itself [Alle Gewalt ist als Mittel entweder rechtsetzend oder

rechtserhaltend. Wenn sie auf keines dieser beiden Pradikate Anspruch erhebt, so

verzichtetsie damitselbstauf jedeGeltung.Darausaber folgt, dassjede Gewalt alsMittel

selbst im gunstigsten Falle an der Problematik des Rechts uberhaupt teilhat] (GS

2.1:190/SW 1:243).

6 In dersachlisten Beziehungmenschlicher Konflikte auf Gutereroffnet sich das Gebiet

der reinen Mittel.7 in ihrer vollendeten Form auerhalb des Rechts steht.8 jenseits aller Rechtsordnung und also Gewalt.9

Cf. P. Fenves, Out of the Order of Number: Benjamin and Irigaray toward aPolitics of Pure Means, Diacritics, 28.1 (Spring 1998), 467.10 B. Hanssen, Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism and Critical Theory

(London and New York, 2000), 20.11 Cf. G. Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, Zur

Theorie der Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeitbei Walter Benjamin (Heidelberg,1979), 910.12 das Interesse des Rechts an der Monopolisierung der Gewalt gegenuber der

Einzelperson sich nicht durch die Absicht erklare, die Rechtszwecke, sondern vielmehr

durch die, das Recht selbst zu wahren.13 Here appear, in a terribly primitive form, the mythic ambiguity of laws that

may not be infringed the same ambiguity to which Anatole France refers

satirically when he says, Poor and rich are equally forbidden to spend the night

under the bridges [Hiermit tritt in furchtbarer Ursprunglichkeit dieselbe mythische

Zweideutigkeit der Gesetze, die nicht ?ubertreten werden durfen, in Erscheinung, von

der Anatole France satirisch spricht, wenn er sagt: Sie verbieten es Armen und Reichen

gleichermaen, unter Bruckenbogen zu nachtigen] (GS 2.1:198/SW 1:249).14 die letztlichen Unentscheidbarkeit aller Rechtsprobleme.15

Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel , 910.

C. Salzani/ History of European Ideas 36 (2010) 438447 439


3/10

sation [Verallgemeinerung] contradicts the nature of justice (GS

2.1:196/SW1:247).

What characterises then pure means? Gunter Figal identifies

three main traits: firstly, they are qualified as non-violent, as what

interrupts the mythical cycle of violence and retribution that

characterises the legal order. Purity is thus an indicator of this

absence,of this interruption,a purificationfrom.16 Secondly, they

are not justifiedby any end or purpose,their purity is not derived

from just ends, but by their absence. They reject thus the very

notion of instrumentality and can be qualified asnon-instrumen-

tal.17 Finally, they cannot be identified with any action that finds

its origin in a subject and are thus subject-less, purified from the

notion of subject itself: as Technik of indirect resolution, they

relate rather to objects, and this means that their morality is

independent purified from any determinable will. What

morality they present must lie in themselves. Thesetraits make for

the medial character of pure means.18 The sphere of mediacy is

therefore the realm of pure means: ends situated outside this

sphere, and which would claim to be removed from, and superior

to it, would only mask in their ambiguity the historicity of their

determination. Werner Hamacher emphasises that mediacy as

mediation, transitionor transmittal,precedes in a certainsensethe

two extremes it links: as a form of interpersonality, it does not

haveas its initiator andits addressee already constitutedsubjects,but [. . .] from the outset constitutes them as mediated.19 This

mediacy, Hamacher continues,is theconditionof possibility of the

transition between the two extremes, but at the same time is also

its interruption: it works simultaneously as condition and

caesura, as will become evident in the analysis of language as

medium.20

The rejection of the realm of just ends takes the Kantian ethics

directly to task. Kants moral philosophy is in fact structuredon the

circular relation between means and ends, upon which both

natural and positive law are based: In Metaphysics of Morals

[Metaphysik der Sitten, 1797], ethics is defined as the system of theendsof the pure practical reason21 (MS, A 5/146, emphasis in the

original) and is based on the notion of just ends. When Benjamin

states that a critique of violence cannot be implied in a system ofjust ends, for it would only contain the criterion for cases of the use

of violence and not forviolence itselfas a principle, he disavows the

systematic construction of the Kantian ethics (cf. GS2.1:179/SW

1:236).22 Furthermore, by restricting to God alone therealm of just

ends, Benjamin implicitly undermines the Kantian system based

on the universality of reason, which constitutes the formal

foundation of universal freedom23: For it is never reason that

decides on thejustification of means andthe justness of ends: fate-

imposed violence decides on the former, and God on the latter24

(GS 2.1:196/SW 1:247, emphasis added). The paragraph that

follows constitutes also a critique of the first formulation of the

categorical imperative in the Fundamental Principles of the

Metaphysics of Morals [Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten,

1785] Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same timewill that it should become a universal law25 (GMS, BA 52/38):

generalization [Verallgemeinerung], which is the constitutive

principle of law, contradicts the nature of justice26 (GS2.1:196/SW 1:247). Explicitly, then, Benjamin attacks the program

established with the categorical imperative as minimalist and

insufficient:the secondformulation of it act in such a waythat at

alltimesyou usehumanity both in your personand in the personof

all others as anend, and never merely as a means27 is inadequate

insofar as positive law too if conscious of its roots28 does claim

to acknowledgeand promote the interest of mankind in the person

of each individual29 through the representation and preservation

of the legal order. In seeking to recognise the interest of humanity

in every individual, therefore, the law merely preserves an order

imposed by fate [schicksalhaften Ordnung]. Moreover, Benjamin

wonders whether this demand does not contain too little and

whether it is permissible to use, or allow to be used, oneself or

another in any respect as a means.30 He claims that good grounds

could be adduced in favour of this point, but, as often happens in

his work, we are left to wonder what these might be (GS2.1:187/SW1:241, 252).

Pure will

If Benjamins politics of pure means sets itself explicitly against

the formal structure of Kants moral philosophy, its indebtednessto Kants theorisation must nonetheless be emphasised. This debt

is usually acknowledged in the literature on Critique of Violence

and on Benjamins early works more in general; however, the

mention is too often limited to underline the fact that the essay

starts off formally following the conventions of transcendental

critique and finally opposes to Kants Enlightenment rationalism a

messianism deep-rooted in the Jewish tradition.31 The early

critical analysis of Gunter Figal and Horst Folkers investigates, on

the contrary, Benjamins debt to the Kantian project, but has not

enjoyed much echo.32 As Figal points out, Benjamins ethical

construction in this early phase must be considered a modification

of Kants moral philosophy, and a look back at Kants system

becomes necessary in order to shed light on it.33 It is not only that

Benjamin adopts Kants fundamental distinction between moralityand legality and disengages the morality of the act from the legal

system; the relation is much deeper and fundamental. What

particularlyinterests me here is the relation that links the notion of

pure means to Kants theorisation of the moral act: in spite of

Benjamins rejection of the Kantian ethics and especially of its

dependence of the means-ends instrumentality, as well as of its

Enlightenment rationalism and legalist metaphors, the notion of

pure means is strongly indebted to, if not a by-product of, Kants

theorisation of the moral act.

16 Haxel Honnet restricts the meaning of purity mainly to this first trait. Cf. A.

Honneth, Zur Kritik der Gewalt, Benjamin-Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkung, ed.

Burkhardt Lindner (Stuttgart, 2006), 204.17 Cf. Hanssen, Critique of Violence, 21.18 Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, 112.19 W. Hamacher, Afformative, Strike, Cardozo Law Review (19911992), 1140.20 Hamacher, Afformative, Strike, 1141.21 System der Zwecke der reinen praktischen Vernunft.22 Cf. Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, 6.23 Cf. Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, 89.24 Entscheidet doch uber Berechtigung von Mitteln und Gerechtigkeit von Zwecken

niemals dieVernunft, sondern schicksalhafte Gewalt uber jene, uber diese aber Gott.25 Handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, dass sie

ein allgemeines Gesetz werde.

26 was diesem Merkmal [der Gerechtigkeit] [...] widerspricht.27 handle so, dass Du die Menschheit sowohl in Deiner Person als in der Person eines

jeden Anderen jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals blo als Mittel brauchest.28

wo es seiner Wurzeln sich bewusst ist.29 das Interesse der Menschheit in der Person jedes einzelnen anzuerkennen und zu

fordern.30 ob es erlaubt sei, seiner selbst oder eines andern in irgendwelcher Hinsicht auch als

eines Mittels sich bedienen zu lassen oder zu bedienen.31 Cf. for example B. Hanssen,Walter Benjamins Other History: Of Stones, Animals,

HumanBeings,and Angels (Berkeley,1998), 130, and Hanssen,Critique of Violence, 3

4. Michael Mack argues, against theusual assumptionof thecommentators,that the

title Zur Kritik der Gewalt harksback notto theKantianmodelof critique,butrather

to his friend Hugo Balls Zur Kritik der deutschen Intelligenz (1918), which highly

criticised Kants theory of law. He acknowledges that Benjamin formally adopts

Kants methodology, but emphasises how he radically undermines the latters

theory of law as secularised Recht issuing not from God, but from autonomous

reason. Cf. M. Mack, Between Kant and Kafka: Benjamins Notion of Law,

Neophilologus85.2 (April 2001), 257.32 Cf. the two essays which constitute Gunter Figal and Horst Folkers, Zur Theorie

der Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit bei Walter Benjamin (Heidelberg: FEST, 1979).33

Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, 2.

C. Salzani/ History of European Ideas 36 (2010) 438447440


4/10

The roots of the politics of pure means must be sought in

Benjamins intense engagement with Kants work during the

1910s, which is testified by a series of fragments.34 The most

complete document is The Moral Lesson [Der Moral Unterricht],

published in July 1913 in Wynekens Die Freie Schulgemeinde, in

which Benjamin takes a strong Kantian approach to ethics in

relation to absolute pedagogical demands. Important for my

argument is the fact that he emphasises a peculiar trait of Kants

distinction between legality and morality: the fundamental

determination of the moral will [sittliches Willen] is that it must

bemotivfrei, free of any motivation, only determined by the moral

law, which commands: act well35 (GS2.1:48). The goal of moral

education is the creation of the moral will, he continues, but

nothing is more inaccessible than this moral will, since as such it is

no psychological variable, which could be achieved throughmeans36 (GS 2.1:49, emphasis added). The moral, pure will is as

inaccessible to the educator as the pure and only valid moral law.

In other words, the will is pure, and thus moral, as long as it is free

of motivations and purposes, and so inaccessible to the means-

ends logic and to subjectivity. The inaccessibility of the pure will

through means, Figal points out, conversely implicates that the

pure will cannot be conveyed or communicated [vermittelt]. The

centre of Benjamins ethics is therefore, for Figal, the quest for a

moral act (Gestaltgewinnung des Sittlichen, shaping of morality, inBenjamins words) that would not be a mediation or instrumen-

tality [Vermittlung]. If the principle of morality is not communica-

ble [vermittelbar], then the form of the moral act cannot be

developed from the notion of means.37 The vocabulary of the

politics of pure means is therefore already contained here in the

play between the termsMittel (means; literally, what stands in the

middle and thus as middle point between two extremes) andVer-

mittlung (mediation, but also instrumentality), which will be

echoed in the discussion ofMitteilbarkeit(communicability) in the

language essays.

Before turning to this point, however, I want to dwell a bit

longer on the structure of Kants ethics. Howard Caygill underlines

how the notion of purity in Kant is usually defined only

negatively, thatis, as non-empirical38

and, only as such, autonomousanda priori. Pure will [reines Willen], as defined in the Fundamental

Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals , is thus one which should be

determined solely froma priori principles without any empirical

motives,39 andthe task of the metaphysicsof morals is preciselyto

examine the idea and the principles of this pure will ( GMS, BA xii/

5). Independent of what it performs or effects, and, most

importantly, of some proposed end, that is, not merely good as

ameansto something else, the good will must be good in itself[an

sich]40 (GMS, BA 4, 6/10, 12). Consequently, a moral act, which is

moral only insofar it is done from duty [aus Pflicht],

derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be

attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is determined,

andtherefore does not dependon therealizationof theobject of

the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the

action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire.41

(GMS, BA 14/16, emphases in the original)

The foundation of the moral act is therefore always a self-

foundation, it has no exterior and could not occur on the basis ofanything external to it:it is pure only insofarit arises from itself and

is identical with the moral law. As such, it presents also no temporal

exterior, that is, it must not be concerned with what comes after it

and is beyond any criterion: it has no purpose outside itself and

constitutes the only purpose of its ownrealisation. Thediscussionof

the imperatives clarifies this point: whereas the hypothetical

imperative represents the practical necessity of a possible action

as means to something else that is willed (or at least which one

might possibly will), the categorical imperative represents an

action as necessary of itself without reference to another end, i.e., as

objectively necessary42 (GMS, BA 40/31). In theCritique of Practical

Reason [Kritik derpraktischenVernunft, 1788],Kant emphasises,then,

that the necessity involvedin the moral lawis not of a physical type;

rather,it can only consist in the formal conditions of the possibilityof the law in general43 (KPV, A 60/35). The paradox of this pure

formalism consists in the fact that the concept of good and evil must

notbedeterminedbeforethemorallaw(ofwhichitseemsasifitmustbe

the foundation), but only after it and by means of it44 (KPV, A 110/66,

emphasis in the original). What is essential in the moral worth of

actions is thus that the moral law shoulddirectly determinethe will45

(KPV, A 127/76, emphasis in the original).

These determinations resound not only in Benjamins descrip-

tion of the purity of means, but also, as we will see, in his

theorisation of language as medium and in the moral value

endowed to his notion of art criticism. This point does not,

however, cushion Benjamins criticism to the Kantian system: Kant

construes his moral philosophy aroundpure reasonand itstribunal

and laws, anduses a language which insists obsessively on juridicalmetaphors; moreover, his notion of law is characterised byobjective universality and necessity, belongs to the Enlightenment

master narrative of universal emancipation and ends up, inevita-

bly, with a justification of the existent power. The Metaphysics of

Moralsis not only based, both in the doctrine of right [Rechtslehre]

and the doctrine of virtue [Tugendlehre], on the notion of end

[Zweck], but finally legitimates the status quo (in the form of the

unquestionability of law) and even authorises the use of

coercion.46 Michael Mack argues that Kants political agenda,

which finally justifies and affirms the authority of the immanent

ruler, is founded on, and is a necessary by-product of, the

immanentist justification of autonomous reason.47 Morality is34 Cf. GS 6, passim, especially the fragments of the section Zur Moral und

Anthropologie.35

einzig bestimmt durch das Sittengesetz, die Norm: handle gut.36 Und doch ist nichts unzuganglicher, als eben dieser sittlicher Wille, da er als solcher

keine psychologische Groe ist, die man mit Mitteln behandeln k onnte.37 Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, 45.38 In Kants philosophy pure is inevitably opposed to empirical, and both are

aligned with a matrix of position which include form-matter, spontaneity-

receptivity, autonomy-heteronomy, original-derived, condition-conditioned, pri-

or-posterior, and a priori-a posteriori.[ . . .] Although it waswidely used by Kant,the

concept itself is rarely thematized; Pure is often used synonymously with terms

such as a priori, form, condition, autonomy and original, but its is also used to

qualify these same terms as in pure a priori (KU, A 85=B 117). On some occasions

a priori concepts and intuitions are pure because they are a priori; on others they

area prioribecause they arepure.One of thefew pointsat which Kant approaches a

self-sufficient definition of purity is in his equation of the pure and the original, H.

Caygill,A Kant Dictionary (Oxford & Cambridge, MA, 1995), 341, 342.39 Eine solchen, der ohne alle empirische Bewegungsgrunde, vollig aus Prinzipien a

priori, b estimmt werde.40

Nicht etwa in anderer Absicht als Mittel, sondern an sich selbst guten Willen.

41

Eine Handlung aus Pflicht hat ihren moralischen Wertnicht in der Absicht,welchedadurch erreicht werden soll, sondern in der Maxime, nach der sie beschlossen wird,

hangt also nicht von der Wirklichkeit des Gegenstandes der Handlung ab, sondern blo

von dem Prinzip des Wollens, nach welchem die Handlung, unangesehen aller

Gegenstande des Begehrungsvermogens, geschehen ist.42 Alle Imperativen nun gebieten entwederhypothetisch, oder kategorisch. Jene

stellen die praktische Notwendigkeit einer moglichen Handlung als Mittel, zu etwas

anderem,was manwill (oder doch moglich ist, dass man es wolle), zu gelangen, vor. Der

kategorische Imperativ wurde der sein, welcher eine Handlung als fur sich selbst, ohne

Beziehung auf einen andern Zweck, als objektiv-notwendig vorstellte.43 Kann also blo in formalen Bedingungen der Moglichkeit eines Gesetzes uberhaupt

bestehen.44 Der Begriff des Guten und Bosen nicht vor dem moralischen Gesetze (dem es dem

Anschein nach so gar zum Grunde gelegt werden musste), sondern nur (wie hier auch

geschieht) nach demselben und durch dasselbe bestimmt werden musse.45 Das moralische Gesetz unmittelbar den Willen bestimme.46 Cf. for example the Introduction to the Doctrine of Right, E.47

Mack, Between Kant and Kafka, 258.



5/10

defined in relation to the laws of autonomous reason, in radical

separation from the religious sphere; these laws are eternal,

unquestionable and static and violence is only envisaged as a

subversion of the rational order of things which the immanent law

of the state must restrain.48 In the end, Mack writes, Kants

autonomous reason works as a justification of the bourgeois state

founded of the rationalisation of money and property: The

violence of the law that upholds such a bourgeois and rational

state of society must not be reasoned against, and thus law must

preclude therevolutionaryviolence of those whorebel against it.49

Moreover, by founding power on the universal and eternal laws of

reason, Kant forbids any exploration into the origins of both state

power and state law: the subjects of the state must not question

the validity of the violence that enforces positive law; rather, they

have to be aware of the debt they owe to the Recht.50 Benjamin,

though formally adopting Kants transcendental method and the

main character of his moral philosophy, undermines the idea of

autonomous reason and substitutes it for his intense messianism.

Macks argument leads to a fundamental point in the discussion

of Benjamins politics of pure means: Benjamin takes issue with

Kants ethics because the cognitive model on which it is founded,

construed around the autonomy of reason, necessarily undermines

the purity of the act and reinserts it into the means-ends cycle.

Already in the 1914 essay on Holderlin, but more explicitly in the1918OntheProgramoftheComingPhilosophy[Uber dasProgramm

der kommenden Philosophie], Benjamin labels Kants (and the Neo-

Kantian) epistemology as mythical because it is based on the

traditional subject-object divide, a conception that he was unable,

ultimately, to overcome, despite all his attempts to do so51 (GS

2.1:161/SW103). The task of future epistemology, he writes,

is to find for knowledge the sphereof totalneutrality in regardto

the concepts of both subject and object; in other words, it is to

discover the autonomous, innate sphere of knowledge in which

this concept in no way continues to designate the relation

between two metaphysical entities.52 (GS2.1:163/SW1:104)

The Kantian foundational myth the new epistemology mustovercome is precisely its methodological point of departure:

subjectivity. It is this cognitive model that establishes the relation

of instrumentality (Vermittlung) between the two metaphysical

entities subject and object, and finally leads to the mythical

circularity of means and ends. The rational subject of the Kantian

tradition is confined within this circularity and the attempt to

construe themoral acton theself-founding, pure will of thesubject

fails insofar as it cannot overcome the divide. The great

transformation and correction the coming philosophy should

perform, Benjamin argues, can be attained only by relating

knowledge to language, as was attempted by Hamann during

Kants lifetime53 (GS2.1:168/SW 1:108). The conclusion of the

Kants essay echoes, and refers to, the 1916 approach of the

language essay and spells Benjamins large-scale plan, in Beatrice

Hanssen words, to exchange the reflection model of the

philosophy of consciousness for the insight of a full-fledged

philosophy of language.54

Pure language

Benjamins philosophy of language is fundamental for an

understanding of his politics of pure means. Not only because

language is singled out, in Critique of Violence, as pure means,but

also because of thefigure of pure language, which appears in both

the 1916 On Language as Such and on the Language of Man [Uber

Sprache uberhaupt und uber die Sprache des Menschen] and the 1921

The Task of the Translator.

Another important text, the famous letter Benjamin sent to

Martin Buber on July 17, 1916, illustrates and emphasises the

political implications of his philosophy of language and helps relate

it to Critique of Violence. Benjamin writes to Buber in order to

explainwhyhe willnot contribute tothe journal DerJude andcentres

his argument on the political function of language. He rejects the

common argument that the written word can influence the moral

world and human action by providing motives for action because

language is here considered merely a means [nur ein Mittel].

Language as mere means [bloen Mittel] is rendered powerless

[ohnmachtige] and debased [herabgewurdigte]; moreover, each

action founded in the expansive tendency of the word-to-word

sequence appears to me dreadful and all the more disastrous where

this whole relation of word and deed increasingly spreads, as in our

country, as a mechanism for the realisation of the right absolute.55

The real impact and agency [Wirkung] of languagerests rather on its

secret [Geheimnis], when it is considered poetic prophetic factual

[dichterischprophetisch sachlich], or, ina wordwhich will recurin the

language essay, magic, that is, im-mediate and un-mediated.56

Effective [wirksam] is language not through the transmission of

contents but rather through the pure revelation of its majesty and

true essence,57 which takes place through the elimination of the

ineffable [Elimination des Unsagbaren]: This elimination of the

ineffable appears to me as coinciding precisely with the properly

factual of pure writing and as intimating the relation between

knowledge and action right within the linguistic magic.58 Only in

this sense is language properly political [hochpolitisch]:notasmeans

of an instrumental conception, but rather as leading towards that

which theword withholds.59

Benjamin insistson theterm Wirkung:really affective is languagewhen the word is intensely directed in

the kernel of inner silence.60 Real [wirklich] actionis the wordin its

purity[Reinheit] (GB1:3257).61

This letter containsin nucethe fundamental trait of Benjamins

language philosophy, developed then in the essay written in the

same year: the mediality of language, or language as medium. The

1916 language essay is construed around the play of a number of

strictly related terms: Mitteilung, mitteilen and mitteilbar(com-

munication, communicate and communicable), unmittelbar andUnmittelbarkeit(immediate and immediacy),MedialeandMedium

(mediacy and medium). All communication of the contents of the

mind, Benjamin states, is language; that is, language commu-

nicates the mental being corresponding to it.62 However, this

48 Mack, Between Kant and Kafka, 264.49 Mack, Between Kant and Kafka, 265.50 Mack, Between Kant and Kafka, 266.51 trotz aller Ansatze dazu nicht endgultig uberwundene Auffassung.52 Es ist die Aufgabe der kommenden Erkenntnistheorie fur die Erkenntnis die Sphare

totaler Neutralitat in Bezug auf die Begriffe Objekt und Subjekt zu finden; mit andern

Worten die autonome ureigne Sphare der Erkenntnis auszumitteln in der dieser Begriff

auf keine Weise mehr die Beziehung zwischen zwei metaphysischen Entitaten

bezeichnet.53 kann nur durch eine Beziehung der Erkenntnis auf die Sprache wie sie schon zu

Kants Lebzeiten Hamann versucht hat gewonnen werden.54

Hanssen,Walter Benjamins Other History, 30.

55 Jedes Handeln das in der expansiven Tendenz des Wort-an-Wort-Reihens liegt

scheint mir furchterlich und um so verheerender wo dieses ganze Verhaltnis von Wort

undTat wiebei unsin immer steigendem Mae alsein Mechanismuszur Verwirklichung

des richtigen Absoluten um sich greift.56 magisch das heit un-mittel-bar.57 nicht durch die Vermittlung von Inhalten sondern durch das reinste Erschlieen

ihrer Wurde und ihres Wesens.58 Diese Elimination des Unsagbaren scheint mir gerade mit der eigentlich sachlichen

der nuchternen Schreibart zusammenfallen und die Beziehung zwischen Erkenntnis und

Tat eben innerhalb der sprachlichen Magie anzudeuten.59 hinzufuhren auf das dem Wort versagte.60 Nurdie intensiveRichtungder Worte inden Kern desinnersten Verstummenshinein

gelangt zur wahren Wirkung.61 For a reading of this letter, cf. the excellent essay by S. Weber, Der Brief an

Buber vom 17.7.1916,Benjamin-Handbuch, 6038.62

teilt das ihr entsprechende geistige Wesen mit.



6/10

mental being communicates itself in language and not through

language.63 In this sense, language has no speaker, is not a means

for a subject to transmit any content. Language, Benjamin

continues, communicates the linguistic being of things, but it is

at the same time the clearest manifestation of this being, that is,

that which is communicable in a mental entity; therefore, all

language communicate itself64 (GS2.1:142/SW1:63). Language is

not something external to the mental being, not a means to its

communication. Put differently:

All language communicates itself in itself; it is in the purest

sense medium of the communication. Mediation, which is theimmediacy of all mental communication, is the fundamental

problem of linguistic theory, and if one chooses to call this

immediacy magic, then the primary problem of language is its

magic.65 (GS2.1:1423/SW1:64, emphases in the original)

Mediationis im-mediate, it is, as Figal puts it, identical with its

presence.66 This notion of language asimmediate mediationrejects

its instrumentality: it knows no means, no object, and no

addressee of communication.67 There is no such a thing as a

content of language: as communication, language communicates a

mental entity something communicable per se

68

(GS2.1:1456/SW1:66, emphasis in the original). This means, as Werner Hamacher

writes, that it precedes any performative utterance as a form of

mediacy, and thus as sheer, preinstrumental technique. Impart-

ing [Mitteilung], he continues, is a means which has no need of

positing and which may underline any established linguistic

political, or legal institution at any time. Language in its mediacy is

pre-positional, preperformative and, in this sense, afformative.69

Or, in Samuel Weber words, Unmittelbar(immediate[ly]) means

not just immediate[ly] but also, more literally, without means or

instrumentality. Language, in short, is to be understood not as a

means to some other goal, but as the immediate possibility of

being imparted.70 This possibility, then, is not to be intended as a

Kantian formal condition of possibility, as Rodolphe Gasche notes,

not as a subjective characteristic, but rather as a real possibility

(dunamis) of potency in language.71 Weber acutely highlights

another fundamental trait of the medium: it is not a means, but

cannot be considered the opposite of a means either, that is, an end

in itself; rather, it retains one decisive aspectof themeans, which is

that it is not self-contained, complete, perfect or perfectible. It is

simply there, but as somethingthat splits offfrom itself, takes leave

of itself.72

Language as medium is the name:

The name is that throughwhich, and in which, language itself

communicates itself absolutely. In the name, the mental entity

that communicates itself is language.73 (GS2.1:144/SW65)

It is only after the Fall, when name becomes human word[menschliches Wort], that language steps out of name-language and

becomes a means: The word must communicatesomething(other

than itself),74 but as such it looses the true knowledge of things

and becomes prattle [Gescwatz]. In stepping outside the purer

language of name,man makes language a means and therefore also

a mere sign. An important consequence is that it is only after the

Fall that judgement[das Gericht] becomes possible: knowledge of

good and evil is in itself nameless [namenlos], is a knowledge from

outside, which abandons the name (GS2.1:1523/SW1:71). In the

Fall, man abandoned immediacy in the communication of the

name and fell into the abyss of the mediateness of all

communication, of the word as means, of the empty word, into

the abyss of prattle.75 The very question of good and evil is in this

sense prattle: The Tree of Knowledge stood in the garden of Godnot in order to dispense information on good and evil, but as an

emblem of judgement over the questioner. This immense irony

marks the mythic origin of law76 (GS2.1:154/SW1:72).

Language as pure mediality is therefore prior to the judgement

on good and evil, it is pure means, and this is why, Benjamin notes

in Critique of Violence, fraud or deceit [Betrug] came only late

under the sanction of law (cf. GS2.1:192/SW1:145). As medium

and articulation of mediacy, language precedes any distinction

between true and false and is not subject to it.77 On the same

basis Benjamin distinguishes between compromise [Kompromi],

diplomatic transactions, and conference or interlocution [Unterre-

dung]: compromise remains embroiled within the means-ends

logic and is therefore violent because, he quotes from Erich Unger,

the effort toward compromise is motivatednot internally but from

outside, by the opposing effort, because no compromise, however

freely accepted, is conceivable without a compulsive character78

(GS 2.1:191/SW 1:244). As such, Figal points out, compromise

presents a law-positing character, oriented towards the realisation

63 dieses geistige Wesen sich in der Sprache mitteilt und nichtdurchdie Sprache.64 jede Sprache teilt sich selbst mit.65 Jede Sprache teilt sich in sich selbst mit, sie ist im reinsten Sinne das ,,Medium der

Mitteilung. Das Mediale, das ist die Unmittelbarkeit aller geistigen Mitteilung, ist das

Grundproblem derSprachtheorie,und wennman dieseUnmittelbarkeit magisch nennen

will, so ist das Urproblem der Sprache ihre Magie.66 Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, p. 12.67 kennt ... kein Mittel, keinen Gegenstand und keinen Adressaten der Mitteilung.68 Einen Inhalt der Sprache gibt es nicht; als Mitteilung teilt die Sprache ein geistiges

Wesen, d.i. eine Mitteilbarkeit schlechthin mit.69 He continues: Even before and even during its performative effects, language

does not initially lay the foundation for anything outside itself, but rather offers

itselfas theform of mediacy between speakers,as their mediacy in a third entity, in

a talk, anUnterredung, aninterof their languages, without which theywould not be

language, Hamacher, Afformative, Strike, 11434.70 S. Weber,Benjamins -Abilities (Cambridge, MA/London, 2008), 117.71 R. Gasche, Saturnine Vision and the Question of Difference: Reflections of

Walter Benjamins Theory of Language, Benjamins Ground: New Readings of Walter

Benjamin, ed. RainerNagele (Detroit,1988),88. Therefore, rather than a category of

possibility, communicabilityis constituted by things yearning to relateto theorigin

of their creation in the Word. In language, in a verbal sense of their expression,

things communicate that they are of divine origin. [. . .] But such yearning, such

intention in language, is not subjective. Not things yearn to be heard: only that part

of them that is spiritual, already linguistic the residue of the creative word does

so. Communicability is, thus, anobjective(metaphysical) category that designates

the difference that expression or language makes to the extent that as expression

and language it communicates all by itself its difference, 89.

72 He continues, stretching Benjamins theory in a strongly deconstructionist

direction: Whatis immediate is thatwhich is defined by the potentiality of taking

leave of itself, of its place and position, of altering itself. In thus being named, the

language of names takes leave of itself, of its nominal character, not by actually

becoming something else but by naming the structural potentiality of such leave-

taking. In short, as medium, language parts with itself and can thus be said to

constitutea medium of virtuality, avirtual medium that cannot bemeasuredby the

possibilityof self-fulfilmentbut by its constitutive alterability, Weber, Benjamins

Abilities, 42. Both Hamacher and Weber relate therefore language to the title of the

second of the two sections which, according to a letter Benjamin sent to Scholem in

December 1920, would have composed the second part of his Politik: teleologywithout final purpose [Teleologie ohne Endzweck] (cf.GB 2:109). This, Weber adds,

only insofar as the word without defines a relation not of simple exclusion or

negation, but of participation with the out-side of an irreducible and yet

constitutive exteriority, Weber, Benjamins Abilities, 197.73 Der Name ist dasjenige, durchdas sich nichts mehr, und in dem die Sprache selbst

undabsolutsichmitteilt. ImNamenist dasgeistige Wesen,das sich mitteilt, die Sprache.74 Das Wort soll etwas mitteilen (auer sich selbst).75 in den Abgrund der Mittelbarkeit aller Mitteilung, des Wortes als Mittel, des eitlen

Wortes verfiel, in den Abgrund des Geschwatzes.76 Der Baum der Erkenntnis stand nicht wegen der Aufschlu sse uber Gut und Bose, die

er zu geben vermocht hatte, im Garten Gottes, sondern als Wahrzeichen des Gerichts

uber den Fragenden. Diese ungeheure Ironie ist das Kennzeichen des mythischen

Ursprung des Rechts.77 Cf. Hamacher, Afformative, Strike, 1144.78 weil die zum Kompromi fuhrende Strebung nicht von sich aus, sondern von auen,

eben von der Gegenstrebung, motiviert wird, weil aus jedem Kompromi, wie freiwillig

auch immer aufgenommen, der Zwangscharakter nicht weggedacht werden kann.



7/10

of a superordinate end: compromise is a form of law-positing

which has no law-preserving violence at disposition.79The work of

diplomats lacks this law-positing character because it is beyond all

legal systems and therefore beyond violence80 (GS2.1:195/SW

1:247). In Unterredung, finally, language as medium is not

determined von auen, from outside, but rather it wraps

and involves, in a way, the speaker; it is the speaker

who is referred to by language, and not the other way round,

and it is this objectiveness of language which constitutes it as

techne.81 When Beatrice Hanssen writes thus that in Unterredung

Benjamin seemingly retained the legacy of liberalism, she misses

the mark.82

The notion of language as pure means relates to another

fundamental notion: pure language. In the language essay

Benjamin states that language itself constitutes the mental being

of man, who therefore cannot communicate himself by it, but onlyin it:

The quintessence of this intensive totality of language as the

mental being of man is the name. Man is the namer; by this we

recognize that through him pure language speaks.83 (GS

2.1:144/SW1:65)

Pure language is identified here with the name-language:

language, and in it a mental entity, only expresses itself purely

where it speaks in name84 (GS2.1:145/SW1:65). This language as

the paradisiacal language [paradiesische Sprache] is one of perfect

knowledge (GS2.1:144/SW1:71).In the 1921 translation essay this

notion takes a slightly different connotation: pure language is here

defined as the totality of their [all human languages] intentions

supplementing one another85 (GS4.1:13/SW1:257). The kinship

[Verwandtschaft] of languages resides in the fact that what is

meant [das Gemeinte] in all of them is the same; they only differ in

the way of meaning [die Art des Meinens]. Das Gemeinte is in a

constant state of flux [Wandel] an historical flux which

translation helps developing by transposing each time the

language of the original into a higher and purer linguistic air86

until it is able to emerge as the pure language from the harmony

of all the various ways of meaning.87 Pure language corresponds

therefore to the messianic end of the history of all historical

languages, a final, conclusive, decisive stage of all linguistic

creation88 (GS4.1:14/SW 1:257), a tensionless and even silent

depository of the ultimate secrets forwhich all thoughtstrives, the

language of truth or the true language89 (GS4.1:16/SW1:259). It

is at the same time present, as a nucleus [Kern], albeit hidden and

fragmentary, in the life and transformation of historical languages,

and thus also stands, Hanssen argues, simultaneously in a relation

of immanence and transcendence to empirical languages.90

Language, therefore, pure insofar as beyond its utilitarian and

symbolic functions, that which is purely language, nothing but

language.91 Neither a Ursprache nor a universal language, pure

language signifies the messianic end (telos and not Zweck) of the

historical movement of all languages, a teleological movement

(but an intentionless one,92 without final purposes, ohne End-

zwecke) of progressive purification towards a sort of cumulative

totality which constitutes nevertheless the empty space of

universal linguisticity.93

Hamacher interestingly relates the notion of pure language to

Benjamins critique of Kant: what in the1918 Kants essay Benjamin

called pure epistemological (transcendental) consciousness

[reinen erkenntnis-theoretischen (transzendentalen) Bewusstsein]

(GS2.1:162/SW1:104),for which he advocated against subjectivism

and the consequent subject-object divide, could also be called,

Hamacherargues,a theoryof a puretranscendental language.In thesame way that the pure transcendental consciousness would

overcome the relation between subjects and objects, pure language

overcomes that between languages and subjects, or languages and

objects, and refers rather to relations internal to languages and

between languages, to relations of communication [Mitteilbarkeit],

translation, linguisticality [Sprachlichkeit], in a word, to the medial

character of language and thus to its Wesen.94 However, Hamacher

also underlines an important commonality with Kant, especially in

the notion of translatability: because it structurally transcends the

limits of finite subjectivity, and is as such a possibility that does not

need to refer to any actual reality, translatability presents the

character of a demand [Forderung] analogous to the Kantian moral

law. Like the moral law, translatability is not moulded on the

conditions of its fulfilment, but is a demand which arises from theessence [Wesen] of each work, and thus from language itself.95 A

similar point is made by Figal when he argues that Benjamin is still

strongly Kantian in his systematic determination of the morality in

language on its intensive totality.96 We could stretchthe argument

to argue that the tension on which pure language is construed (like

the politics of pure means, and finally also pure violence) still

presents a strong affinity with Kants formulation of the moral act.

Pure language is related to another fundamental notion: the

expressionless [das Ausdruckslose]. In the language essay the

79 Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, 189.80 jenseits aller Rechtsordnung und also Gewalt.81 Cf. A. Hirsch, Gewalt jenseits der Gewalt: Zu Walter Benjamins Theorie der

Gewaltlosigkeit, nebst einigen Anmerkungen zu einer Kritik der Reprsa ntation,

Etudes Germaniques, 51.1 (JanuaryMarch 1996), 22.82 Cf. Hanssen, Critique of Violence, 22.83 Der Inbegriff dieser intensiven Totalitat der Sprache als des geistigen Wesen des

Menschen istder Name.Der Menschist derNennende, daranerkennenwir, dass ausihm

die reine Sprache spricht.84 Die Sprache und inihr ein geistiges Wesen spricht sich nur da rein aus, wo sie im

Namen spricht.85

die Allheit ihrer einander erganzenden Intentionen.86 in einen gleichsam hoheren und reineren Luftkreis der Sprache hinauf.87 bis es aus der Harmonie all jener Arten des Meinens als die reine Sprache

herauszutreten vermag.88 ein letztes, endgultiges und entscheidendes Stadium aller Sprachfugung.89 Wenn anders es aber eine Sprache der Wahrheit gibt, in welcher die letzten

Geheimnisse, um die alles Denken sich muht, spannungslos und selbst schweigend

aufbewahrt sind, so ist diese Sprache der Wahrheit die wahre Sprache90 Pure language, then, as the movement of language, was immanent to the

diversity of empirical languages, yet it transcended them. At the risk of pressuring

the limits of the German language, one could perhaps say that in Benjamins essay

the German term for translation (Ubersetzung) no longer only denoted transfer or

transposition, as it does etymologically, but also pointed to a transcendence, to a

law (Gesetz) that transcends, that is uber, above. Inasmuch as this transcendence

manifested itself in translation, it was also at once immanent. As such, its ur-image

(Urbild) was the interlinear version of the scriptures. Pure language as translation

was that which inhabited and exceeded singular languages and idioms, Hanssen,

Walter Benjamins Other History, 35.

91 Cf. Gasche, Saturnine Vision and the Question of Difference, 92, and C. Jacobs,

The Monstrosity of Translation, MLN90 (1975), 7601.92 Cf. T. Dorr, Kritik und Ubersetzung: Die Praxis der Reproduktion im Fruhwerk

Walter Benjamins (Gieen, 1988), 11920, and A. Hirsch, Die Aufgabe DesUbersetzers,Benjamin-Handbuch, 614.93 Cf. V. Vitiello, Il linguaggio: Benjamin e Heidegger a confronto,Aut Aut: Rivista

di Filosofia e Cultura, 2734 (MayAugust 1996), 110. Samuel Weber writes:

language that is pure of everything that is outside it is a language that would

consist of pure signifying, something that is aporetical, to be sure, since signifying

always entails a signified and hence cannot be entirely pure. But a relation to

language in which syntax the sequential arrangement of words takes

precedence over the time-and-space transcending rues of grammar and semantics;

in which the ways of meaning, their distribution and relations, have priority over

what is meant this would be a language that seems to approach what Benjamin

means by pure language. This would be a language that performs by signifying

without being absorbed or determined by entities that appear to exist

independently of all signifying, Weber, Benjamins Abilities, 745.94 W. Hamacher, Intensive Sprachen,Ubersetzen: Walter Benjamin, ed. Christiaan

L. Hart Nibbrig (Frankfurt a.M, 2001), 1756.95 Hamacher, Intensive Sprachen, 180.96

Figal, Die Ethik Walter Benjamins als Philosophie der reinen Mittel, 15.



8/10

question of the inexpressible and the inexpressed [das Unauspre-

chliches, das Unausgesprochene] is connected to the concept of

revelation [Offenbarung]: revelation is thelinguisticstate where the

most expressed is at thesame time thepurelymental97 (GS2.1:146/

SW 1:67). This does not entail, however, a pure correspondence

between language and communication: For language is in every

case not only communication of the communicable but also, at the

same time, a symbol of the noncommunicable98 (GS 2.1:156/SW

1:74). This thought is developed in the translationessay precisely in

relation to pure language:

In this pure language which no longer means or expresses

anythingbut is, as expressionlessand creative Word, thatwhich

is meant in all languages all information, all sense, and all

intention finally encounter a stratum in which theyare destined

to be extinguished.99 (GS4.1:19/SW1:261)

Weber points out that pure language is essentially described

negatively, as meaning-less, intention-less and expression-less.100

It is the messianic, transcendent telos in which all languages are

destined to be extinguished and this will be a fundamental point

for the analysis of pure violence. At the same time, however, it is

also the immanent unexpressed and inexpressible which inhabitsall historical languages and as such disarranges and interrupts the

continuum of signification. On this aspect Benjamin will found the

power of critique.

Critical violence

The years which separate the language essay and the translation

essay saw Benjamins intense engagement with Kants work, an

engagement which became critical counterposition and led him to

attempt a peculiarAufhebungof theKantian critical project along the

lines of the philosophy of language exposed in the language essay,

combined with the criticism of art he found in the Early German

Romantics.101 The critical model elaborated in these crucial years

will remain a constant in Benjamins later work and will be appliedto the most diverse fields, from literature to history to politics; the

cornerstones of this critical project are represented by the essay on

Goethes Elective Affinities and the book onthe German Baroque Play

of Mourning [Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, written between

May 1924 and April 1925]. The former recasts pure language in the

aestheticfield as theexpressionless[das Ausdruckslose].Theworkof

art, Benjamin writes, as form enchants chaos momentarily into the

world102andbecomes mere semblance[bloer Schein]intheforms

of mere beauty and mere harmony [bloe Schonheit and bloe

Harmonie] (GS 1.1:181/SW1:340). Semblance, Winfried Mennin-

ghaus notes, endows beauty with the main trait of myth: ambiguity

[Zweideutigkeit] (GS 1.1:175/SW 1:335).103 What arrests this

semblance and interrupts the harmony is the expressionless: it

compels the trembling harmony to stop and through its objection

immortalises its quivering.104 Benjamin defines the expressionless

as critical violence [kritische Gewalt] insofar as it possesses violence

asa moraldictum [moralisches Wort]: it is only the moral word that

can dispel the ambiguity of semblance and introduce what is

presentedas thecharacteristicof truth andjustice: unequivocalness

[Eindeutigkeit] (GS1.1:162,174/SW1:326,335).105 This moral word

appears as sublime violence:

In the expressionless, the sublime violence of the true appears

as that which determines the language of the real world

according to the laws of the moral world. For it shatters

whatever still survives as the legacy of chaos in all beautiful

semblance: the false,errant totality the absolute totality. Only

the expressionless completes the work, by shattering it into a

thing of shards, into a fragment of the true world, into the torsoof a symbol.106 (GS1.1:181/SW1:340)107

A passage from HolderlinsAnmerkungen zum Odipus [Annota-

tions to Oedipus] helps Benjamin clarify the concept: the

expressionless emerges in the Holderlin quotation as the caesura,

the pure word, the counter-rhythmic rupture,108 in which, along

with harmony, every expression simultaneously comes to a

standstill, in order to give free reign to an expressionless power

inside all artistic media109 (GS 1.1:1812/SW 1:3401). The

expressionless shatters [zerschlagt], destroys and reduces

semblance that semblance which is the aesthetic correlate of

myth to shardsand fragments. The violent caesura constitutedby

the pure word entails a moral force; or, better, the violence which

constitutes the moral word is caesura, rupture, insofar as it

introduces the unequivocalness of truth and justice purity into

the ambiguity of appearance and myth. This moral word,

Burkhardt Lindner writes, is no word and entails no signification;

rather, it is interruption of the mythical unity of expression,

semblance and signification.110 Or, as Hamacher famously argued,

the purity of this expressionless violence pure word as

immanent pure language, that which remains unexpressed and

inexpressible is never positing, forming, or transforming, but

afformative. As objection [Einspruch], it is not itself a word, not a

97 das Ausgesprochenste zugleich das reine Geistige ist.98 Es ist namlich Sprache in jedem Falle nicht allein Mitteilung des Mitteilbaren,

sondern zugleich Symbol des Nicht-Mitteilbaren.99 In dieser reinen Sprache, die nichts mehr meint und nichts mehr ausdruckt, sondern

als ausdrucksloses und schopferisches Wort das in allen Sprachen Gemeinte ist, trifft

endlich alle Mitteilung, aller Sinn und alle Intention auf eine Schicht, in der sie zu

erloschen bestimmt sind.100 Weber,Benjamins Abilities, 77.101 Benjamins correspondence helps outlining this development: if in October

1917he still harbouredthe idea of writing hisdoctoraldissertationat theuniversityof Berne on Kant and history (GB 1:3901), when he finally read Kants relevant

works on thesubject,namely Idee zu einerallgemeinen Geschichtein weltburgerlicher

Absicht[ Idea For a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, 1784] andZum

ewigen Frieden[Perpetual Peace, 1795], he was strongly disappointed. In December

of the same year he wrote to Scholem: The issue in Kant is not much history but

certain historical constellations of ethical interest. In addition, precisely the ethical

side of history as specific observation is made inaccessible and the postulate of an

analytical mode proper to the natural sciences is established [Es handelt sich bei

Kant weniger um die Geschichte als um gewisse geschichtliche Konstellationen von

ethischem Interesse. Und noch dazu wird gerade die ethische Seite der Geschichte als

einer besondern Betrachtung unzuganglich hingestellt und das Postulat einer

naturwissenschaftlichen Betrachtungsweise und Methode aufgestellt] (GB 1:408). He

maintains the necessity of an engagement with the letterof Kants philosophy (GB

1:4023) and considers and later discards the hypothesis of a doctoral

dissertation on the Kantian notion of unendliche Aufgabe (infinite task). Kant

remains the fundamental reference,but as thegreat opponent[dergrote Gegener],

as Benjamin writes in a letter to Ernst Schoen in May 1918 (GB 1:4556).

102 verzaubert (Chaos) auf einen Augenblick zur Welt.103 W. Menninghaus, Das Ausdruckslose: Walter Benjamins Metamorphosen der

Bilderlosigkeit,Fur Walter Benjamin: Dokumente, Essays und ein Entwurf, ed. Ingrid

und Konrad Scheurmann (Frankfurt a.M., 1992), 175.104 zwingt das Ausdruckslose die zitternde Harmonie einzuhalten und verewigt durch

seinen Einspruch ihr Beben.105 Cf. Menninghaus, Das Ausdruckslose, 175. There is no truth, for there is no

unequivocalness andhence no error in myth[Es gibt keine Wahrheit,dennes gibt

keine Eindeutigkeit und also nicht einmal Irrtum im Mythos] ( GS1.1:162/SW1:326).106 Im Ausdruckslosen erscheint die erhabne Gewalt des Wahren, wie es nach Gesetzen

der moralischen Welt die Sprache der wirklichen bestimmt. Dieses namlich zerschlagt

was in allem schonen Schein als die Erbschaft des Chaos noch uberdauert: die falsche,

irrende Totalitat die absolute. Dieses erst vollendet das Werk, welches es zum

Stuckwerk zerschlagt, zum Fragmente der wahren Welt, zum Torso eines Symbols.107 This page is taken almost literarily from an early fragment written in 1919

1920, On Semblance [Uber Schein]. Cf. GS 1.3:8323/SW 1:2245.108 Casur (...), das reine Wort, die gegenrhythmische Unterbrechung.109 jeder Ausdruck sich legt, um einer innerhalb aller Kunstmittel ausdruckslosen

Gewalt Raum zu geben.110 B. Lindner, Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften. Goethe im Gesamtwerk,

Benjamin-Handbuch, 48990.



9/10

positing, but the interruption of propositional utterance by

something which neither speaks nor posits; pure, wordless

word, it does not belong to any spoken language, but, as pure

language, it constitutes the very possibility of language and social

life themselves.111 It is perceptible in tragedy as the falling silent

of the hero [als Verstummen des Helden] (GS1.1:182/SW1:341).112

The sublimity of the true word constitutes the secret

[Geheimnis] at the core of the critique of beauty: the expressionless,

though contrasting with the semblance, stands in a necessary

relationship to it, and this makes for the unity of veil and veiled

which constitutes beauty (GS1.1:1956/SW 1:3501). As it has

been noted, Kantian suggestions are here very strong, and they are

acknowledged by Benjamin himself.113 As Uwe Steiner writes,

Kants third critique is here revisited along the lines of Benjamins

philosophy of language, whereby the dialectics between expres-

sionless and revelation takes on the traits of the third moment of

the Analytic of the Beautiful: the purposiveness without any

purpose [Zweckmaigkeit ohne allen Zweck]114 (KU, B 62 = A 61/

54), which for Kant expresses the agreement of the form with the

subjective harmony of imagination and understanding, becomes

the main trait of revelation [Offenbarung] as sublime disclosure

[Enthullung].115 The expressionless, then, presents evident traits of

the Analyticof theSublime, especially in itsnegative character (cf.

KU, B 118 = A 116/81), which Kant explicitly relates to the JewishBilderverbot, and in its symbolic analogy to morality in us (cf.KU, B

125 = A 123/86).116 More generally, Menninghaus points out, das

Ausdruckslose explicitly resonates with a number of aesthetic-

theological concepts which sustain Kants project and all end with

the syllable-los [-less]: zwecklos [purposeless], interesselos [disin-

terested], begriffslos [non-conceptual] and more importantly

bilderlos, in the form of the JewishBilderverbot, of which it would

play a series of variation.117 As in Kant, and strongly influence by

his work, purity stands in Benjamin as some form of sublime losigkeitat the core of his philosophical project.

Pure violence

Hamacher famously related the critical violence of the

expressionless of the Goethe essay to the pure violence of

Critique of Violence. Using the terminology of speech-act theory,

he called afformative the deposing [Entsetzung] which charac-

terises pure violence, since, like the expressionless, it does not

perform any signification or positing [Setzung], but rather

interrupts it. As such, pure violence is non-violent and non-

instrumental and may at any time if not universally at anytime

break through the cycle of laws and their decay.118

The notion of pure violence arises as a response to the quest for

a different kind of violence [. . .] that certainly could be either the

justified or the unjustified means to [just] ends but was not related

to them as means at all but in some different way 119 (GS2.1:196/SW1:247). It is the ultimate task of a politics of pure means to

identify such pure, immediate violence [reinen unmittelbaren

Gewalt] that might call a halt to the mythic violence of law. The

language Benjamin uses to describe this pure violence became

suspicious to many readers, notably to Derrida,who sawit haunted

by the spectre of radical destruction120: Benjamin speaks of

destruction or annihilation [Vernichtung] of legal violence/power

and describes pure violence non only as divine [gottliche Gewalt],

but as law-destroying [rechtsvernichtend], striking [schlagend],

lethal without bloodshed [auf unblutige Weise letal] and as not

stopping short of annihilation [macht nicht Halt vor der Vernich-

tung] (GS 2.1:199/SW 1:24950); moreover, this revolutionary

violence [revolutionare Gewalt] is also said to possibly manifest

itself in a true war and in the crowds divine judgement on acriminal121 and is not recognizable as such with certainty. Slavoj

Zizek conceives it thus as divine in the sense of the Latin motto vox

populi, vox dei, pure, revolutionary outburst of violence which

strikes out ofnowhere and has noend in sight.122 The last sentence

of theessay describes itas thesignandsealbut never the means of

sacred dispatch123 and calls itdie waltende, translated by Edmund

Jephcott as the sovereign (GS2.1:2023/SW1:252). It is no means,

and in this sense has no meaning: like language as medium, it does

non signify anything, it is a pure sign.

The difficulty in interpreting this figure has led to the most

diverse reading. Vittoria Borsospeaks of an ambivalence of both

pure violence and pure language, but this is a dangerous term,

because it resonates with that ambiguity [Zweideutigkeit] which

rather characterises, for Benjamin, law and myth.124

It is importantthus to clarify this point. Giorgio Agamben importantly calls the

attention to a letter Benjamin wrote to Ernst Schoen on 29 January

111 Hamacher, Afformative, Strike, 11534.112 The theme of silence can be traced back to Benjamins early writings at the

time of his involvement in the Jugendbewegung. In The Conversation [Das

Gesprach], thefirstpartof the1913 unpublished Metaphysicsof Youth[Metaphysik

der Jugend], Benjamin writes that conversation strives toward silence [Das

Gesprach strebt zum Schweigen]; in silence, the listener holds true language [die

wahreSprache] in readinessand leads the conversationto theedge of language,and

the speaker creates the silence of a new language, he, its first auditor [der Horend e

fuhrte das Gesprach zum Rande der Sprache und der Sprachende erschuf das Schweigen

einer neuen Sprache, er, ihr erster Lauscher]. Silence is the internal frontier of

conversation and greatnessis the eternal silence afterthe conversation [Schweigen

ist die innere Grenze des Gespraches a nd Groe ist das ewige Schweigen nach dem

Gesprach] (GS2.1:913/SW1:67). This theme traverses, as a subterranean current,the following writings on language and aesthetics and finally re-emerges in the

Goethe essay and, more powerfully, in the Trauerspiel book. Here tragic silence as

speachlessness [Sprachlosigkeit] intensifies the condition of the tragic hero;

Benjamin quotes from Rosenzweigs Stern der Erlosung[Star of Redemption, 1921]:

the tragicherohas only onelanguagethatis completely properto him: silence[ Der

tragische Held hat nur eine Sprache, die ihm vollkommen entspricht: eben das

Schweigen] (GS 1.1:286/OT 108). Silence represents the sublimity of linguistic

expression [einer Erfahrung vom Erhabnen des Sprachlichen Ausdrucks ] (GS1.1:288/

OT109). As Menninghaus notes, it is precisely the absence of words that represents

the maximum of communication [Mitteilung]: it is an articulation of the non-

articulation. But more importantly, this silence is sublime [erhabne], like the

violence of truth which appears in the expressionless. Cf. Menninghaus, Das

Ausdruckslose, 174.113 Kants doctrine, that the foundation of beauty is a relational character,

accordingly carries through victoriously, in a much higher sphere than the

psychological, its methodical tendencies. Like revelation, all beauty holds in itself

the orders of the history of philosophy. For beauty makes visible not the idea butrather the latters secret [Kants Lehre, dass ein Relationscharakter die Grundlage der

Schonheit sei, setzt demnach in einer sehr viel hohern Sphare als der psychologischen

siegreich ihre methodischen Tendenzen durch. Alle Schonheit halt wie die Offenbarung

geschichtsphilosophische Ordnungen in sich. Denn sie macht nicht die Idee sichtbar,

sondern deren Geheimnis] (GS 1.1:1956/SW1:351).114 Schonheit ist Form der Zweckmaigkeit eines Gegenstandes, sofern sie, ohne

Vorstellung eines Zwecks, an ihm wahrgenommen wird.115 U. Steiner, Kritik,Benjamins Begriffe, ed. Michael Opitz and Edmut Wizisla, vol.

2 (Frankfurt a.M., 2000), 509.116 Perhaps there is no sublimer passage in the Jewish Law than the command,

Thou shaltnot make to thyself anygraven image,nor thelikenessof anythingwhichis in

heaven or on the earth or under the earth, etc. [. . .] The same is true of the moral law

and of the tendency to morality in us [Vielleicht gibt es keine erhabenere Stelle im

Gesetzbuche der Juden, als das Gebot: Du sollst dir kein Bildnis machen, noch irgend ein

Gleichnis, weder dessen was im Himmel, noch aud der Erden, noch unter der Erden ist

u.s.w. (...) Eben dasselbe gilt auch von der Vorstellung des moralischen Gesetzes und der

Anlage zur Moralitat in uns] (KU, B 125=A 123/86). Cf. Steiner, Kritik, 508.

117 Menninghaus, Das Ausdruckslose, 170.118 Hamacher, Afformative, Strike, 11389.119 eine Gewalt anderer Art[...], die dannfreilichzu jenenZweckennicht dasberechtigte

noch das unberechtigte Mittel sein konnte, sondern uberhaupt nicht als Mittel zu ihnen,

vielmehr irgendwie anders, sich verhalten wurde.120 Cf. J. Derrida, Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority, Cardozo

Law Review 11 (19891990), especially the Post-scriptum, 11405.121 im wahren Kriegeand im Gottesgericht der Menge am Verbrecher.122 Cf. S. Zizek,Violence (New York, 2008), 178205.123 Insignium und Siegel, niemals Mittel heiliger Vollstreckung.124 Cf. V. Borso, Walter Benjamin - Theologe und Politiker: eine gefahrliche

Verbindung,Theologie und Politik: Walter Benjamin und ein Paradigma der Moderne ,

ed. Bernd Witte and Mauro Ponzi (Berlin, 2005), 645.



10/10

1919 and in which he gives a definition of purity. Benjamin

writes:

The purity of a being is neverunconditional, or absolute; it is

always subjected to a condition. This condition varies depend-

ing on the being the purity of which is at issue; however, this

condition is neverto be found in the being itself. In other words,

the purity of any (finite) being does not depend on itself.125 (GB

2:112, emphases in the original)

Agamben calls this conception of purity relational rather than

substantial and argues therefore that the purity of pure violence is

not a substantial characteristic belonging to the violent action in

itself; in other words, the difference between pure violence and

mythico-juridical violence does not lie in the violence itself, but in

itsrelationto somethingexternal, that is,in itsrelationto law. This

relation, however,cannot be that of meansand end, but only that of

the medialityof thepuremedium identified in thelanguageessays.

In fact, like many other interpreters, Agamben underlines the

relation between pure violence and pure language: pure violence

is that which does not stand in a relation of means toward an end,

but holds itself in relation to its own mediality. As such, he argues,

pure violence is finally attested to only as the exposure anddeposition of the relation between violence and law.126 Pure

violence, he concludes, exposes and severs the nexus between law

and violence and can thus appear in the end not as violence that

governs or executes (die schaltende) butas violence that purelyacts

and manifests (die waltende).127 The expression purely acts

[puramente agisce] needs though a specification: acts cannot be

read performatively, as Hamacher would say, but as the

afformative interruption of the expressionless pure language.

Samuel Weber acutely notes, however, that, if purity is not a

substantial but a relational notion, then how can it consist in an

action that manifests violence itself or as such, as distinct from

everything other than itself? Or, he continues, is there a kind of

manifestation, a kind of act that is defined precisely through just

such a relation to something other than itself? What, in short, is

involved in a violence that is waltend but not schaltend? Can the

twobe as clearly separatedor distinguished as Agamben, following

Benjamin, seems to believe?128 Weber might have in mind the

peculiar utilisation of the verb walten in German: used alone, it can

mean to rule, as inthe expressionuber jemanden oder etwas walten

(to rule over somebody or something); it is however used often in

combination with the verb lassen (to let, allow, make), as in the

expressions Vernunft walten lassen (to let reason prevail),

Vorsicht/Milde walten lassen (to exercise caution/leniency), Gnade

walten lassen (to show mercy), jemanden walten lassen (to let

somebody have a free rein, to let somebody do as he pleases); as

noun, it is used in expressions like das Walten der Naturgewalten/

Gottes (the workings of the forces of nature/of God), and the

expression das walte Gott means simply amen, so be it. It is

interesting to note that walten is commonly used in combination

withschaltenin the idiomatic expression schalten und walten (to

bustle around) andfrei schalten und walten (to do what one wants,

to have a free hand). The common usage, we could argue, testifies

of the intimate relation of the two terms, precisely that relation

which is at issue in the purification of violence.

The perspective that must be adopted in finally assessing the

purity of violence is that invoked by Benjamin at the beginning of

the last paragraph of the essay:

The critique of violence is the philosophy of its history the

philosophy of this history because only the idea of its

development makes possible a critical, discriminating, and

decisive approach to its temporal data.129 (GS 2.1:202/SW

1:251)

The pivotal term is here Ausgang, which Jephcott renders as

development, but which could also be translated as outcome,

exit, egress,or, in relation to a story or to history (both Geschichtein German), as denouement or conclusion. The idea of thisAusgangis to be read neither as a Kantian regulative idea nor as

the idea of the Platonic tradition, but rather as the idea as

constellation of the Trauerspiel book, intimately related to the

notion of Ursprung, origin.130 Ursprung and Ausgang, in their

correlation, define the philosophy of history which informs and

connects both Critique of Violence and The Task of the

Translator.We can, therefore, recur again to theanalogy with pure

language: pure violence can be described as the messianic,

transcendent telosin which, like pure language at the end of the

history of languages, the connection betweenschaltenandwalten,

and thus the mythic bound which unites law and violence, is

destined to be extinguished. It is important, though, not to forget

also the immanent side of pure language: at the same time, we

must read pure violence as the immanent critical violence that, like

the expressionless within every linguistic expression, disarranges

and thus exposes the continuum of this connection; as pure

language constitutes the potency of language as dunamis, insofar as

it interrupts and dissolves the signification of every historical

language, so pure violence constitutes the dunamis of the

deposition of the schalten-walten connection and thus the

messianic idea of a new historical epoch [ein neues geschichtliches

Zeitalter] (GS2.1:202/SW1:252).

125 Die Reinheit eines Wesens istniemals unbedingt, oder absolut, sie ist stets einer

Bedingung unterworfen. Diese Bedingung ist verschieden je nach dem Wesen um dessen

Reinheit es sich handelt; niemalsaber liegt diese Bedingung in dem Wesen selbst. Mit

anderen Worten: Die Reinheit jedes(endlichen) Wesenist nichtvon ihmselbst abhangig.126 G. Agamben,State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago and London, 2005),

612. Axel Honneth seems to mean something similar when he writes that its

function is to prepare the terminology with which Benjamin will asses the relation

be

Documents

Purity Benjamin Kant