WALTER BE

A Gennall philosophel; iVa Iter became aile l1Iost

alld cultllral theorists the twentieth century. He was born into all
ill Berlin, then studied philosophy in im rl1f".Wfl 11.
and Bern.
criticism and translation.
led
doctoral ;1,",tnii'"l1
embarked all a career of liteI'm),
"Goethe's Elective Affinities"
r,-/it,r;"" more specifically, his unconvellfiol1a/
Drama trails.,
an academic career were
rejected his dissertation.
the Nazis came to power in 1933, Germany for Paris.
ill 1940 when the Nazis France. Headillg toward he illtended to
escape to the United States, but was CIIptured; on finding out that he would be turned
he killed the Fmllco-Sprwish border.
all art suggests /lot that art and social are il1extriCilble
but also that to the extent that social life is characterized technology and class, the
the to take politicn[ action cOl/sistellt with his
or her artistic ideals. nlis conviction later into a offascislll
and allY stance.
His other works inclllde Illuminations trans., Reflections: Essays,
Writings The Arcades
alld Understanding Brecht (English trans., His
emergent Soviet Union, written
27, are recorded in the Moscow Diaries (English trans.,
a visit to Moscow i111926-
'111e following essay is
Reflections.
WALTER BEN IN
The task of a of violence can be summarized as that of its
relation to law and For a cause, however becomes violent, in
the sense of the word, only when it bears on moral issues. The sphere of
these issues is defined the concepts oflaw and justice. With regard to the first
it is clear that the most l l V U ~ H P within any system
\
+
I
is that of ends to means, further, that violence can first be
the realm of means, not of ends. These
with more-and
For if violence is a means, a criterion for criticizing it
It itself in the whether in a given case, is a
end. A critique of it would then be
is not so. For what such a it
to be secure
as a principle,
all doubt, would cont<lin is not a criterion for violence itself
the criterion for cases of its use. The would
remain open whether violence, as a principle, could be a moral means even to
ends. To resolve this a more exact criterion is needed, which would
discriminate within the without for the ends
they serve.
The exclusion of this more IS the predomi-
nant feature of a main current of legal philosophy: natnrallaw. It perceives in
the use of violent means to ends no than a man sees in his
to move his in the direction of a desired goal. to this
view (for which the terrorism in the French Revolution provided an ideological
foundation), violence is a as it were a raw material, the use of
which is in no way problematical, unless force is misused for unjust ends. If,
to the of slate of natural up all their violence
for the sake of the state, this is done on the (which for
states in his li'actatus Theologico-Politicus) that the individ-
ual, before the conclusion of this rational contract, has the right to use at
will the violence that is de <lS his these views have been
recently rekindled Darwin's
ner, regards violence as the only original means, besides natural ap-
propriate to all the vital ends of nature. Darwinistic
often shown how short a step it is from this of natural
cruder one of legal philosophy, which holds. that the violence that is, almost
also to natural ends is
This thesis of natural law that violence as a natural datum is di-
to that of positive which sees violence as a of
If natural law can judge all law only in
positive law can all law only in
the criterion of legality is that of means.
its ends, so
its means. If justice is
this
both schools meet in their common basic dogma: just ends can be
attained by means, justified means used for just ends. Natural law
by the justness of the to "justify" the means, positive law to
"guarantee" the justness of the ends through the of the means. This
CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 269
antinomy would prove insoluble if the common assumption were
false, if means on the one hand and just ends on the other were in
irreconcilable conflict. No insight into this problem could be
until the circular argument had been broken, and
both of just ends and of justified means were established.
The realm of ends, and therefore also the of a criterion of justness,
is excluded for the time from this study. the central place is
to the of the of certain means that constitute
Principles of natural law cannot decide this question, but can lead to
bottomless For if positive law is blind to the absoluteness of
natural law is equally so to the of means. On the other the
of law is basis at the outset of this
study, because it undertakes a fundamental distinction between kinds of vio-
lence independently of cases of their application. This distinction is between
historically so-called sanctioned and unsanctioned vi-
olence. If the considerations from this it cannot, of course,
mean that given forms of violence are classified in terms of whether they are
sanctioned or not. For in a critique of violence, a criterion for the latter in
law cannot concern its uses but only its evaluation. The that
concerns us is, what light is thrown on the nature of violence the fact that
such a criterion or distinction can be to it at all, or, in other what
of this distinction? That this distinction supplied positive law
1S based on the nature of violence, and by any
will soon enough be shown, but at the same time light will be shed on the
in which alone such a distinction can be made. To sum up: if the criterion
established
regard to its "".'UUHb' must be criticized with
to its value. For this a standpoint outside legal philosO-
but also outside natural law must be found. The extent to which it can
be furnished a historico-philosophical view oflaw will emerge.
The and illegitimate violence
is not obvious. The which a
distinction is drawn between violence used for and ends must be
it has already been indicated that law
demands of all violence a proof of its historical
conditions is declared sanctioned. Since the of legal
violence is most evident in a deliberate submission to its ends, a
thetical distinction between kinds of violence must be based on the presence or
absence of a historical acknowledgment of its ends. Ends that lack such
may be called natural the other legal ends. The
270 WALTER BENJAMIN
be most clearly traced
sake of the
pean conditions.
can
legal conditions. For the
of these, as far as the individual as is IS
Ihe not to admit the natural ends of such individuals in all those cases
in which such ends in a given situation, be violence.
This means: this legal tries to erect, in all areas where individual ends
be pursued by legal ends that can only be realized by
legal power. Indeed, it strives to limit by ends even those areas in which
natural ends are admitted in principle within wide like that of
education, as soon as these natural ends are with an excessive measure
of violence, as in the laws to the limits of educational to
It can be formulated as a maxim of present-day European
that all the natural ends of individuals must collide with legal ends if
or lesser degree of violence. contradiction between
this and the of self-defense will be resolved in what Prom this
As a
not; for then violence as such would not be
but thaI directed to illegal ends. It will be that a
cannot be maintained if natural ends are
first this is a mere
consider the surprising possibility thai the law's interest in a monopoly of
violence vis-a-vis individuals is not the intention of
legal by that of preserving the law that violence, when
not in the hands of the threatens it not by the ends that it may pursue but by
its mere existence outside the law. The same more if
,
one reflects how often the figure of the criminal, however repellent his
ends may have been, has aroused the secret admiration of the public. This
cannot result from his deed, but from the violence to
witness. In this case, the violence of which
in all areas of activity to the individual appears really and
arouses even in defeat the ",,,nn.,tI',,, of the mass against law. By what funclion
violence can with reason seem so to and be so feared by it, must
be evident where its even in the legal system, is
This is above all the case in the class "r11O"''''>. in the form of the workers'
to strike. labor is, apart from the state,
entitled to exercise violence. Against this view there
CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 271
is the that an omission a UVU"'_,,'''i, which a strike
is, cannot be described as violence. Such a consideration doubtless made
it easier for a state poser to conceive the right to strike, once this was no
avoidable. But its truth is not and therefore not unrestricted. It is
true that the omission of an where it amounts simply to a
nonviolent, pure means. And as in the
view of the state, or the
a to exercise violence
exercised by the strikes
to strike conceded to labor is
rather, to escape from a violence
to this may occur
from time to time and involve only a "withdrawal" or "estrangement" from the
. The moment of violence, 1S introduced, in the
form of into such an omission, if it takes in the context of a
conscious readiness to resume the suspended action under certain circum-
stances that either have whatever to do with this action or only super-
modify it. Understood in this way, the to strike constitutes in the
view of which is opposed to that of the state, the right to use force in
attaining certain ends. The antithesis between the two emerges in
all its bitterness in face of a revolutionary strike. In this, labor will
to its right to strike, and the state will call this appeal an since the
to strike was not "so intended," and take emergency measures. For the state
retains the to declare that a simultaneous use of strike in all industries is
illegal, since the
I n this differen ce
objective contradiction in the
violence whose ends, as natural ends, it sometimes
but in a crisis (the revolutionary general strike) confronts
ever f'CU."UVAJL'-'U this may appear at first sight, even conduct the
exercise of a right can
! violent. More
VI',. ",,"P."<. under certain circumstances, be described as
then may be called violent if it
exerClses a in order to overthrow the system that has conferred it;
when it is nevertheless to be so described if it constitutes extortion in
the sense above. It therefore reveals an contradiction in the
legal situation, but not a contradiction in the if under certain cir-
cumstances the law meets the as perpetrators of violence, with violence.
For in a strike the state fears above all else that function of violence which it is
the of this study to identify as the only secure foundation of its
. For if violence were, as first appears, the means to secure directly what-
ever happens to be it could fulfill its end as predatory violence. It would
be entirely unsuitable as a basis or a modification to, stable condi-
tions. The strike that it can be so, that it is able to found and
272 WALTER BENJAMIN
legal however offended the sense of
may find itself
It will be objected that such a function of violence is fortuitous and
isolated. This can be rebutted by a consideration of military violence.
The of law rests on the same objective contradic-
tion in the legal situation as does that of strike that is to say, on the fact that
sanction violence whose ends remain for the sanctioners natural
and can therefore in a crisis come into conflict with their own or
natural ends. Admittedly, violence is in the first used di-
toward its ends. Yet it is very striking that even-or,
conditions that know hardly the beginnings of
and even in cases where the victor has established
himself in invulnerable possession, a peace ceremony is necessary. In-
deed, the word " in the sense in which it is the correlative to the word
"war" (for there is also a different meaning, similarly and
political, the one used by Kant in of "Eternal Peace"), denotes this a
priori, necessary of all other of every
victory. This sanction consists precisely in the new conditions as a
new "law," quite of whether need de facto any of their
continuation. If, conclusions can be drawn from military as
being of all violence used for natural there is
inherent in all such violence a HHuua'''ll1', character. We shall return later to the
of this insight. It the above-mentioned of mod-
ern law to divest the individual, at least as a
that directed only to natural ends. In the
the law with the threat a new
IJl
times. The state, '"-rur",,,,,,.
even
criminal this violence confronts
a threat that even today, despite its
as it did in primeval
" .... ~ J n - it as lawmaking whenever external powers
to concede them the to conduct and classes the right to strike.
If in the last war the of violence was the point for a
of violence in at least one thing, that
violence is no longer exercised and tolerated violence was
not to criticism for its lawmaking but was also
perhaps more for another of its functions. For a duality in the
function of violence is characteristic which could only come into
being Militarism is the compulsory, universal use
of violence as a means to the ends of the state. This
has been scrutinized as closely as, or still more
violence itself. In it violence shows itself in a function quite different from its
application for natural ends. For the subordination of citizens to laws-
CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 273
in the present case, to the law of general conscription-is a legal end. If that first
function of violence is called the function, this second will be called
lence that is not in from a effective
of it is far less easy than the declamations of pacifists and activists suggest.
coincides with the of all legal violence-that
or executive force-and cannot be performed by any
lesser program. Nor, of course-unless one is to a
childish anarchism-is it achieved any constraint
toward persons and "What
excludes reflection on the moral and historical spheres, and thereby on
any meaning in
the fact that even the
tive, with its doubtless incontestable minimum
at all times you use both in your person and in the person of all others
as an and never as a means-is in itself inadequate for such a
critique. (One might, rather, doubt whether the famous demand does not con-
tain too little, that is, whether it is to use, or allow to be oneself
or another in any as a means. Very good for such doubt could
be For if conscious of its roots, will claim to
and promote the interest of mankind in the person of each incli-
viduaL It sees this interest in the and of an order
by fate. While this view, which claims to preserve law in its very
cannot escape nevertheless all attacks that are made merely in the
name of a formless "freedom;' without being able to this higher order of
freedom, remain against it. And most impotent of all when, instead of
attacking the root and branch, laws
that the law, of course, takes under the
resides in the fact that there is
what belongs
and in
to its order. For law-preserving
violence is a threatening violence. And its threat is not intended as the deterrent
that uninformed liberal theorists it to be. A deterrent in the exact sense
would a that contradicts the nature of a threat and is not
attained by any law, since there is of its arm. This makes it
all the more like which depends on whether the criminal is
purpose of the of the threat will
There is a useful pointer to it in the
the validity of positive law has been called into question, has
274 WALTER BENJAMIN
more criticism than all others. However superficial the arguments
may in most cases have been, their motives were and are rooted in principle. The
"nln()T1Pnrs of these critics perhaps without knowing why and probably
that an attack on not measure,
not laws, but law itself in its For violence crowned by IS
the of law, then it may be readily supposed that where the highest vio-
lence, that over life and death, occurs in the legal the origins oflaw
with this is the fact that
even for such crimes as
the death
offenses against to which it seems quite out of " Its pur-
pose is not to punish the infringement of law but to establish new law. For in the
exercise of violence over life and death more than in any other act, law
reaffirms itself. But in this very violence rotten in law is
above all to a finer because the latter knows itself to be
remote from conditions in which fate have shown itself in
such a sentence. Reason must, however, to approach such conditions all
the more resolutely, if it is to bring to a conclusion of both lawmak-
and violence.
In a far more unnatural combination than in the death in a kind of
mixture, these two forms of violence are in another institution
of the modern state, the police. this is violence for ends (in the right
of disposition), but with the simultaneous authority to decide these ends itself
within wide limits the right of decree). The ignominy of such an authority,
which is felt few because its ordinances suffice seldom for the
crudest acts, but are therefore allowed to rampage all the more in the
most vulnerable areas and thinkers, from whom the state is not pro-
law-this ignominy lies in the fact that in this the separation
and violence is suspended. If the first is required to
prove its worth in to the restriction that it may not
set itself new ends. Police violence is U U ' ' ' ' I ~ ' ' ' ~ ' ' from both conditions. It is
for its characteristic function is not the promulgation of laws but
the assertion of legal claims for any decree, and because it is at
the of these ends. The assertion that the ends of police violence are
identical or even connected to those of law is untrue.
the "law" of the really marks the
from impotence or because of the immanent connections within any legal
system, can no longer through the the empirical ends
that it desires at any to attain. Therefore the police intervene "for security
reasons" in countless cases where no clear when they are
not the citizen
CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 275
as a brutal encumbrance a life regulated by or simply
which aclmowledges in the determined
by place and time a category that it a claim to critical evalua-
tion, a consideration of the police institution encounters nothing essential at all.
Its power is formless, like its nowhere all-pervasive, ghostly presence in
the life of civilized states. And the may, in particulars, ,>'''".",,,'-
appear the same, it cannot be denied that their is less .
where they represent, in absolute monarchy, the power of a ruler in which
legislative and executive supremacy are united, than in democracies where their
elevated by no such bears witness to the greatest conceivable
(lege11er'atJon of violence.
All violence as a means is either or <>W_'W'p<F'r1l'
to neither of these it forfeits all validity. It follows, hnw""",,,,
violence as a means, even in the most favorable case, is
lematic nature oflaw itself. And if the of these problems cannot be
assessed with certainty at this of the investigation, law nevertheless ap-
pears, fi'om what has been in so a moral light that the
poses itself whether there are no other than violent means for
flicting human interests. We are above all obligated to note that a totally non-
violent resolution of conflicts can never lead to a contract. For the
however it may have been entered into leads finally to
possible violence. It confers on hoth the right to take recourse to violence
in some form against the should he break the Not only that;
like the outcome, the origin of every contract also toward violence. It
need not he present in it as hut is represented in it
insofar as the power that guarantees a contract is in turn of violent
even if violence is not introduced into the contract itself. When the conscious-
ness of the latent presence of violence in a legal institution the
institution falls into In our
They offer the '<UHUlal, woeful spectacle because
scious of the revolutionary forces to which
an
have not remained con-
owe their existence. Accord-
In the last manifestation of such forces hore no
fruit for violence is repIe-
sented by of this
violence, but cultivate in
ing with situated within the
of violence, no matter how it may disdain all open violence, became
the effort toward is motivated not but from
the because no compromise, however is COI1-
character. 'It be better otherwise' is the
276 WALTER BENJAMIN
feeling in every comr)romisc ClI.,IJlJlIl.olIiLJlY, the
alienated as many minds from the ideal of a nonviolent resolution
conflicts as were attracted to it by the war. The pacifists are con-
by the Bolsheviks and
a
cannot be concerned with parliamentarianism. For what parliament achieves in
vital affairs can only be those decrees that in their origin and outcome are
by violence.
Is any nonviolent resolution of conflict Without doubt. The rela-
persons are full of examples of this. Nonviolent IS
wherever a civilized outlook allows the means
and illegal means of every kind that are all the same violent may be
confronted with nonviolent ones as
trust, and whatever else
subjective preconditions. Their objective manifestation, however, is determined
by the law (the enormous scope of which cannot be discussed that un-
means are never those of direct, but always those of indirect solutions.
They therefore never to the resolution of conflict between man
and man, but only to matters The of nonviolent
to goods. For this means opens up in the realm of human conflicts
reason technique in the broadest sense of the word is their most particular area.
fu
exclusion of violence in
cant factor: there is no sanction for lying. on earth
originally such a sanction. This makes clear that there is a sphere
human that is nonviolent to the extent that it is inaccessible to
violence: the proper of Only late and in a
peculiar process violence in the
on fraud. POl' whereas the to its vic-
torious power, is content to defeat lawbreaking wherever it to show
itself and deception, itself no trace of power about it, was on the princi-
ius civile v n' IW:t,,-, unistlmenl in Roman and
confidence in its own
violence, no felt itself a match for that of all others. fear of the
latter and mistrust of itself indicate its declining vitality. It begins to set itself
with the intention of sparing law-preserving violence more taxing man-
ifestatiol1s. It turns to not out of moral considerations, but for
CRITIQUE Of VIOLENCE 277
fear of the violence that it might unleash in the defrauded party. Since such fear
conflicts with the violent nature of law derived from its origins, such ends are
ne>"",',.,t"",,,tp to the justified means oflaw. the of its
but also a diminution means. For, in fraud, law
restricts the use of wholly nonviolent means because could produce reac-
tive violence. This tendency oflaw has also played a in the concession of the
right to strike, which contradicts the interests of the state. It grants this right
because it forestalls violent actions the state is afraid to oppose. Did not
resort at once to and set fire to factories? To induce men to
reconcile their interests peacefully without involving the legal system, there is, in
the apart from all virtues, one effective motive that often enough puts into
the most reluctant hands pure instead of violent means; it is the fear of mutual
that threaten to arise from violent whatever the
be. Such motives are visible in countless cases of conflict
of interests between persons. It is different when classes and nations are
in conflict, since the higher orders that threaten to overwhelm equally victor
and are hidden from the feelings of most, and from the
of almost alL Space does not here me to trace such orders and the
to which constitute the most
means. Vlfe can therefore only to pure means in
common interests
motive for a
politics as aUalU'5U
vate persons.
to those which govern peaceful intercourse between pri-
As class in them strike must under certain conditions be
seen as a pure means. Two different kinds the of
which have already been ,-v. """''-''''',
Sorel has the credit-from political, rather than consider-
ations-of having first distinguished them. He contrasts them as the political
and the general strike. are also antithetical in their relation to
violence. Of the of the former he says: "The of state
power is the basis of their in their the politi-
cians (viz. the moderate socialists) are already preparing the ground for a strong
centralized and disciplined power that will be impervious to criticism from the
opposition, capable and of issuing its mendacious decrees."
strike demonstrates how the state will lose none of its
how power is transferred from the to the how the
mass of producers will their masters," In contrast to this political
strike (which incidentally seems to have been summed up the abortive
German the general strike sets itself the sale task of
state power. It "nullifies all the consequences of every
possible social policy; its partisans see even the most popular reforms as bour-
278 WALTER BENJAMIN
strike clearly announces its indifference toward material
by its intention to abolish the state; the state
group, who in all their
" While the first form
an external modification of
as a pure means, is nonviolent. For it takes place
to resume work following external concessions and this or that
but in the determination to resume only a
enforced the state, an that this
the revolution appears as a
either for the sociologists or for the elegant amateurs of
this deep, moral, and genuinely revolutionary con-
no
on of its cata-
consequences, to brand such a strike as violent. Even if it can
said that the modern economy, seen as a resembles much less a
that stands idle when abandoned by its stoker than a beast that goes
as soon as its tamer turns his nevertheless the violence of an action
no more from its effects than from its from the
of its means. State power, which has eyes for opposes
this kind of strike for its alleged as distinct from
actually extortionate. The extent to which
of the general strike as sllch is capable of diminish-
Sorel has with
contrast, an
more immoral and cruder than the akin to a
de, is the strikeby doctors, such as several German cities have seen. In this
revealed at its most repellent an unscrupulous use of violence that is positively
class that for years, without the slightest at
"secured death its prey:' and then at the first abandoned
of its own free will. More clearly than in recent class struggles, the mea ns of
have developed in thousands of years of the history of
ml,r)n1,<>TC in their transactions consist
modifications to legal systems. they entirely on the
logy of between persons, to resolve conflicts case case,
the names of their states, peacefully and without contracts. A delicate task
CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 279
that is more robustly but a method of solution
in
is above that of the referee because it is beyond all
violence. Accordingly, like the intercourse of private
has engendered its own forms and virtues, which were not
even though they have become so.
all the forms of violence
by both natural law and positive
problematic nature,
violence. every conceivable to
human not to of deliverance from the confines of all the world-
historical conditions of existence obtaining
lence is totally excluded in the
time the question of the truth of the basic
ends can be attained justified means,
if vio-
H"!C""'U"l1Y arises as to the
by legal theory. It is at the same
common to both
means used for just ends. How
would it if all the violence 1111DO:5ed justified means,
and if at the same time a
different kind of violence came into view that certainly could be either the
or the unjustified means to those but was not related to them as
means at all but in some different way. This would throw light 011 the curious
ofa11
lems to the possibility of
conclusive pronouncements on
it is never reason that decides on the
t,'!tp_,nl1",<,pr! violence on the former and God on the latter. And
that is uncommon only because of the stubborn habit of
conceiving those
valid (which follows
ends as ends of a possible that is, not only as generally
from the nature of justice), but also of
<lUl-,U'Vlh which, as could be contradicts the nature For
ends that for one situation are just, acceptable, and valid, are so for
no other no matter how similar it may be in other respects. The
nonmediate function of violence at issue here is illustrated by everyday
ence. As regards man, he is impelled anger, for PY,m1"nip to the most visible
outbursts of a violence that is not related as a means to a nrp'rf);nrp end. It is
not a means but a manifestation. Moreover, this violence has thoroughly
tive manifestations in which it can be to criticism. These are to be
found, most above all in myth.
violence in its
form is a mere manifestation of the
Not a means to their a manifestation of their but first of all a
manifestation of their existence. The of Niobe contains an
of this. it appear that the action of Apollo and Artemis is
280 WALTER BENJAMIN
a But their violence establishes a law far more than it
for the of one already Niobe's arrogance calls down fate
itself not because her arrogance offends against the law but because it
challenges fate-to a in which fate must triumph, and can bring to a
How little such divine violence was to the ancients the
in which
fate with courage,
it with varying fortunes, and is not left by the legend without hope of one
a new law to men. It is really this hero and the legal violence of the
native to him that the tries to picture even now in admiring the
miscreant. Violence therefore bursts upon Niobe from the uIlcertain, ambig-
uous of fate. It is not actually destructive. it a cruel
to Niobe's children, it stops short of the life of their
leaves
more guilty than before through the death of the children, both
mute bearer of and as a boundary stone on the frontier
If this immediate violence in manifestations
proves indeed identical to it reflects a prob-
lematic on lawmaking insofar as the latter was characterized
above, in the account of military violence, as a mediate violence. At the
same time this connection further to illuminate fate, which in all cases
and to conclude in broad outline the critique of the
latter. For the function of violence in is in the sense that
lawmaking pursues as its with violence as the means, what is to be e8tab-
lished as law, but at the moment of instatement does not dismiss
at this very moment oflawmaking, it specifically establishes as law not an
end but one and intimately bound to it, under
the title of power. Lawmaking is power making, to that extent, an immedi-
ate manifestation of violence. is the of all divine end
power the of all mythical lawmaking.
An of the latter that has immense consequences is to be found in
constitutional law. For in this the establishing of frontiers, the task of
after all the wars of the age, is the of all
lawmaking violence. Here we see most clearly that power, more than the most
extravagant m is what is guaranteed all lawmaking violence.
Where frontiers are decided the is not simply annihilated; he
is accorded even when the victor's in power is complete. And
these are, in a demonically way, for both to
the treaty it is the same line that may not be crossed. Here appears, in a
primitive form, the same mythical ambiguity of laws that may not be "in-
" to which Anatole France refers when he says, "Poor and rich
CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 281
are forbidden to spend the night under the
" It also appears that
Sorel touches not merely on a cultural-historical but also on a
truth in that in the all was the of the kings
or the nobles-in short, of the and that, mutatis
so as as it exists. For from the point of view which alone can
guarantee law, there is no equality, but at the most equally great violence. The
act of fixing frontiers, however, is also
oflaw in
another Laws and unmarked frontiers at least in
unwritten laws. A man can unwittingly infringe upon them and thus
incur retribution. For each intervention of law that is provoked by an offense
against the unwritten and unknown law is called, in contradistinction to pun-
ishment, retribution. But however unluckily it may befall its vic-
its occurrence is, in the of the not but fate
itself once in its deliberate Hermann Cohen, in a brief
reflection on the ancients' of fate, has spoken of the "inescapable
realization" that it is "fate's orders themselves that seem to cause and
this offense." To this of law even the modern
of a law is not nr,,,,.,c'rt>r.n
communities is to be understood as a rebellion against the spirit of
statutes.
Far from inaugurating a purer
diate violence shows itself
the manifestation of imme-
identical with all and
the latter into of the
historical function, the destruction of which thus becomes
task of destruction poses again, in the last resort, the question of a pure immedi-
ate violence that might be able to call a halt to mythical violence. Just as in all
God opposes violence is confronted the divine. And
the latter constitutes its antithesis in all violence is lawmak-
ing, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter
boundlessly destroys them; if mythical violence brings at once guilt and retribu-
tion, divine power only if the former the latter strikes; if the
the latter is lethal without blood. The of Niobe
maybe as an of this U U H ~ H ' on the
company of Korah. It strikes Levites, strikes them without warning,
without and does not stop short of annihilation. But in annihilating it
also and a connection between the lack of bloodshed and the
character of this violence is unmistakable. For blood is the of
mere life. The dissolution of violence stems, as cannot be shown in detail
here, from the of more natural which consigns the innocent,
282 WALTER BENJAMIN
and unhappy, to a retribution that "expiates" the of mere life-and doubt-
less also purifies the not of guilt, but of law. For with mere life
the rule of law over the living ceases. M,rthlr" violence is bloody power over
mere life for its own divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of
the living. The first demands sacrifice, the second accepts it.
This divine power is attested not only by tradition but is also found
in present-day life in at least one sanctioned manifestation. The educative
power, which in its form stands outside the is one of its manifesta-
tions. These are not by miracles performed by God,
but by the moment in them that strikes without bloodshed and,
by the absence of all lawmaking. To this extent it is to call this
too, but it is so only with to goods,
and suchlike, never absolutely, with to the soul of the
of such an extension of pure or divine power is sure to provoke,
today, the most violent and to be countered by the argu-
ment that taken to its logical conclusion it confers on men even lethal power
one another. however, cannot be conceded. For the
I kill?" meets its irreducible answer in the commandment "Thou shalt not kill."
This commandment the deed, just as God was the deed.
But just as it may not be fear of that enforces obedience, the
injunction becomes inapplicable, incommensurable once the deed is accom-
plished. No of the deed can be derived from the commandment. And
so neither the divine nor ,the for this can be
known in advance. Those who base a condemnation of all violent killing of one
person by another on the commandment are therefore mistaken. It exists not as
a criterion but as a for the actions or commu-
nities who have to wrestle themselves the of it. Thus it
was understood which expressly the condemnation of
in self-defense. But those thinkers who take the opposed view refer to a
more distant theorem, 011 which possibly propose to base even the com-
mandment itself. This is the doctrine of the of which they either
or limit to human life. Their argumen-
in an extreme case by the killing of the op-
pressor, runs as follows: "If I do not kill I shall never establish the world domin-
ion
profess that
existence itself." As
of the intelligent terrorist. . . . however,
of existence stands
indeed ignoble, it
shows the the reason for the commandment no in
what the deed does to the but in what it does to God and the doer. The
that existence stands than a existence is false and
CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 283
HH.LHU'UO, if existence is to mean nothing other than mere life-and it has this
in the argument referred to. It contains a mighty truth, if
Of, life whose is readily analo-
to that of when are referred to two distinct spheres),
means the total condition that is "man"; if the proposition is in-
tended to mean that the nonexistence of man is more terrible than
the (admittedly subordinate) not-yet-attained condition of the just man. To this
ambiguity the above owes its plausibility. Man cannot, at
any be said to coincide with the mere life in no more than with any
other of his conditions and not even with the of his
person. However sacred man is that life in him that is identically present in
earthly life, death, and afterlife), there is no sacredness in his condition, in his
bodily life vulnerable to injury his fellow men. What, then, it
from the life of animals and And even if these were
could not be so by virtue only of being alive, in life. It might be well
worthwhile to track down the origin of the dogma of the sacredness of life.
Perhaps, indeed it is relatively recent, the last mistaken attempt of the
weakened Western tradition to seek the saint it has lost in
of all commandments murder is no
counter because these are based on other ideas than the modern
Finally, this idea of man's sacredness gives grounds for reflection that
what is here pronounced sacred was to ancient thought the
marked bearer of guilt: life itself.
The of violence is the of
this because only the idea of its
discriminating, and decisive approach to its temporal data. A gaze directed only
at what is close at hand can at most perceive a dialectical rising and falling in the
lawmaking and law-preserving formations of violence. The law governing their
oscillation rests on the circumstance that all in its
weakens the violence
onr1""{,",,, of hostile counter-violence. (Various symptoms of this have
been referred to in the course of this study.) This lasts until either new forces or
those earlier triumph over the hitherto
found a new destined in its turn to of this
maintained mythical forms of on the of law with all the
forces on which it as they depend on it, finally therefore on the aboli-
tion of state power, a new historical epoch is founded. If the rule of myth is
broken occasionally in the age is not so
remote that an attack on law is futile. But if the existence of violence
outside the as pure immediate Vln>lPTlrP is this furnishes the proof
284 WALTER BENJAMIN
that revolutionary the highest manifestation of unalloyed violence by
man, is possible, and by what means. Less possible and also less urgent for
Ull"WJV<;U violence has been realized in
will be recognizable as
effects, because the expiatory
power of violence is not visible to men. Once all the eternal forms are
open to pure divine which myth bastardized with law. It may manifest
itself in a true war as in the divine of the multitude on a
But all mythical,
is
too, is the law-preserving, administrative violence that
serves it. Divine which is the sign and seal but never the means of
sacred execution, may be called violence.
CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 285