Fate, Guilt, and Messianic Interruptions:

Ethics of Theological Critique in Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin

by

Annika Kristina Thiem

M.A. (University of California, Berkeley) 2004

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Rhetoric

in the

Graduate Division

of the

University of California, Berkeley

Committee in charge:

Professor Judith Butler, Chair

Professor Anthony Cascardi
Professor Wendy Brown

Fall 2009
 UMI Number: 3411051

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Fate, Guilt, and Messianic Interruptions:
Ethics of Theological Critique in Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin

2009

by Annika Kristina Thiem

 Abstract

Fate, Guilt, and Messianic Interruptions:

Ethics of Theological Critique in Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin

by

Annika Kristina Thiem

Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Judith Butler, Chair

Fate, Guilt, and Messianic Interruptions: Ethics of Theological Critique in

Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin examines both the criticisms and

appropriations of theology by these two German-Jewish thinkers to demonstrate the

ethical implications of theological concepts for shaping experiences, affects, and

actions. As opposed to viewing the contribution of theology to ethics primarily as one

of normative precepts, I foreground the influence of theology on our conceptions of

life and history, where the normative force of theology is tacit and hence more

difficult to criticize and reshape. Cohen and Benjamin criticize the Christian doctrine

of original sin and Christian eschatological views of history for their intensification of

a primary sense of guilt and doom. As an alternative, these two thinkers draw on

Jewish messianism to insist that we embrace and transform life in this world, marked

as it is by transience, failures, and suffering. In this dissertation, I seek to demonstrate

1
that theological concepts need not compel dogmatic, moralistic closures, but can

enable a critical opening to orient our everyday experience and conduct.

This dissertation begins with two chapters examining Cohen's and Benjamin's critique

of theologically stoked moralism and concludes with two chapters considering the

critical and ethical force of their appropriations of messianism. Chapter 1 draws on

both Cohen and Benjamin to argue that original sin inculcates a fated, moralistic

perspective on life, because every failure or misfortune is taken as evidence of this

primordial guilty state. Chapter 2 considers Cohen's criticism of the perception of evil

as an historical force and reads this together with Benjamin's criticism of

eschatological conceptions of history to show how these theological concepts

perpetuate a sense of impending threat and moral urgency that narrows the

possibilities for critique. Chapter 3 weighs the prospects for rethinking accountability

through Cohen's messianic idea of an open futurity and his reading of humaneness in

teshuva (repentance, literally "turning"). Finally, Chapter 4 problematizes Cohen's

idealizing of ethical progress through Benjamin's interpretation of messianism as

transient interruptions that expose injustices of the past and foster political action

against continued exploitation in the present.

2
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ii

Introduction: Theology, Critique, Ethics 1

1: Original Sin and Fated Life 26

Corrupt Imperfections of Nature and Freedom
Sinful Salvation
Fated Time, Penitent Demise
Mythical Moralism

2: Fated Orders, Manichean Evil, and Eschatological Urgencies 77

Diabolic Evil and Its Threats
Fateful Transgressions and Mythical Investments in Law as Order
Perpetual Urgency as "Skeletal Eschatology"
Eschatological Urgencies, Displaced Responsibility, and Expected Failures

3: Cohen's Ambivalent Responsibilities:

Expiation, Accountability, and Ethical Futurity 132
Messianic Time and Ethical Futures
Tarrying with Fault and Guilt
Legal Expiation and Menschlichkeit

4: Benjamin's Transient Messianism:

Experience, Demise, and the Critique of History 185
Benjamin's Messianic Metaphysics of Transience
Messianic Undoing: Eingedenken and Profanation

Works Cited 253

I
 Acknowledgments

This work would not exist without those who saw me through this process at various

stages and thought the project along with me. I am deeply grateful to my dissertation

chair, Judith Butler, for the generosity of her support and for her advice and

encouragement throughout my studies at Berkeley. I would also like to thank my two

readers, Wendy Brown and Tony Cascardi, for their guidance and the different but

important roles they each played in seeing this project to completion. I am greatly

honored to have learned from each member of my committee during my years at

Berkeley. Their scholarship and mentorship contributed greatly to Berkeley's being

such an intellectually inspiring and rewarding experience for me.

My university career to date has not been a strictly linear progression, but instead

has consisted of overlapping degree programs and pursuits, at Tubingen, Harvard,

Berkeley, and Villanova. Francis and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza at Harvard

encouraged me to pursue my intellectual interests and see where they might take me.

My advisors at the University of Tubingen, Hille Haker and Dietmar Mieth,

wholeheartedly embraced the resulting project begun at Harvard and saw to it that this

project became my first dissertation, completed in 2004, even though by that time I

had already begun my studies in Rhetoric at Berkeley. Likewise, that first dissertation

would not have been possible, had it not been for the support of my professors in the

Rhetoric Department at Berkeley. In particular, I am most grateful to Judith Butler for

her help and judicious advice along the way. Similarly, my time in the Rhetoric

ii
Program at Berkeley ended up overlapping with my appointment as an assistant

professor in the Philosophy Department at Villanova beginning in 2007. Many thanks

are due to my colleagues and to my chair, John Carvalho, for their support and

friendship, and in particular for their patience. My gratitude extends especially to Julie

Klein for reading chapters and bit of chapters at various stages of completeness and

for working through ideas with me when I was at a loss as to how to proceed. I am

deeply thankful to Chris Adams and Rebecca Kennison, who read and commented on

several drafts of the work, and to Michael Allan, Diana Anders, Libby Anker, Nima

Bassiri, Marianne Constable, Hille Haker, Sara Kendall, Ursula Konnertz, Hagar

Kotef, Helen Lang, Katherine Lemons, Penny Pether, Gabriel Rockhill, Charis

Thompson, Corinna Unger, Johannes Vorster, James Wetzel, Yves Winter, and

Benjamin Wurgaft, who have discussed ideas with me and encouraged me throughout

the process. Without the enduring support and unrelenting kindness of Maxine

Fredericksen, I could not have completed this projectand my experience at Berkeley

would not have been half of what it was. Finally, my family has always been crucial to

the success of all my educational pursuits through their unflagging emotional

encouragement. To them I am especially grateful.

in
 Introduction: Theology, Critique, Ethics

Mein Denken verhalt sich zur Theologie

wie das Loschblatt zur Tinte. Es ist ganz
von ihr vollgesogen. Ginge es aber nach
dem Loschblatt, so wiirde nichts, was
geschrieben ist, ubrig bleiben.
Walter Benjamin, Passagen-Werk

In "Dialog uber die Religiositat der Gegenwart," written in 1912, Walter Benjamin

(1892-1940) stages a discussion between an "I" and "The Friend" on the roles of and

relationship among religion, ethics, and culture in the present age ("Dialog" 16-35).1

While "The Friend" seems to promote the idea that religion has lost its sway and to

welcome this, the "I" argues with the friend, insisting on the continuing tacit

persistence of religion and the losses inherent in religion's passing into a ghostly after-

life. "I" insists that with the loss of religion, public life turns into merely a practice of

respectability: "I: [Our social activity] has lost its metaphysical seriousness. It has

become a matter of public order and respectability. To nearly everyone who is socially

engaged it has become only a matter of being civilized, like the electric light"

("Dialog" 19).2 Soziale Tatigkeit (public actions and life in society; literally, social

activity) relies on religion for their deeper meaning; without religion, argues "I," these

actions are merely the window-dressing of "civilization." "The Friend" contends that

1
This essay, "Dialog tiber die Religiositat der Gegenwart" (Gesammelte Schriften: Band 1-2, ed. Rolf
Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974], 16-35), was
unpublished during Benjamin's lifetime. There is no English translation to date. All translations here
are mine.
2
"ICH: [Unsere soziale Tatigkeit] hat ihren metaphysischen Ernst verloren. Sie ist eine Sache der
offentlichen Ordnung und der personlichen Wohlanstandigkeit geworden. Fast alien denen, die sich
sozial betatigen, ist das nur eine Sache der Zivilisation, wie das elektrische Licht" ("Dialog" 19).

1
while modern society has recognized the key contribution of religion to ethics, the task

now is to discard all religious content and thereby attain an ethics that is independent

of a religious context. "I" recoils from this notion; such "independence" would render

ethics only a technique and reduce ethical experience to that of merely following the

rules.3 "The Friend" concedes that there is an aesthetic and emotional dimension in

religion that might be important to retain, as a singular sense of vitality and an

intensity of emotion providing a sense of individuality. "I" rejects this reduction of

religion to individuality and corrects "The Friend": "That is art, is edification, but not

the Gefuhl (affect, emotion, sense) that can ground our life as a community

religiously. And that after all is the task of religion" ("Dialog" 21).4 Religion is more

than the aesthetic rendition of an exalted experience, insofar as religion provides the

affective grounding of the life of the community.5 Both religion and ethics, the "I"

argues, are combined in human experience, where religion is experienced and passed

on as tradition. The discussion carries on for a while longer and then ends as "My

friend smiled skeptically but amiably and accompanied me in silence to the front

3
"DER FREUND: Die Religion, die Huterin sittlicher Inhalte wurde als Form erkannt, und wir
sind dabei unsere Sittlichkeit als ein Selbstverstandlicb.es zu erobern. Noch ist unsere Abeit nicht
vollendet, noch haben wir Ubergangserscheinungen.
ICH: Gott sei Dank! Mir graust vor dem Bild sittlicher Selbstandigkeit, das Sie beschworen. ...
Wie Sie es meinen, ist die sittliche Selbstandigkeit ein Unding, Erniedrigung aller Arbeit zum
Technischen" ("Dialog" 20).
4
"Das ist Kunst, ist Erbauung, aber nicht das Gefuhl, was unser Gemeinschaftsleben religios
griinden kann. Und das soil wohl die Religion" ("Dialog" 21).
5
The context of the passage here reads: "ICH: MiBverstehen Sie mich nicht, man kann
niemandem sein Recht auf Gefuhle streitig machen, aber der Anspruch auf mafigebliche Gefuhle ist zu
prufen. ... Und ein GefUhl,das nur moglich ist auf dem Gipfel seiner Gestaltung, zahlt nicht mehr als
Religion. Das ist Kunst, ist Erbauung, aber nicht das Gefuhl, was unser Gemeinschaftsleben religios
griinden kann. Und das soil wohl die Religion" ("Dialog" 21).

2
door" ("Dialog" 35).6 By keeping open the disagreement between the two

interlocutors, in this account, Benjamin outlines issues he would continue to debate

throughout his life: the connections among religion, culture, and experience and their

critical potential and ethical implications.7

Benjamin came to argue for the continuing importance of attending to religion in

society as something of an outsider to both. Benjamin, like Gershom Scholem and

Franz Rosenzweig, was a German Jew raised in an assimilated family, one in which

their Jewishness was that of cultural practice, but was an identity that was secondary

to their considering themselves German.8 All three thinkers struggled with how to

6
"Mein Freund lachelte skeptisch aber liebenswiirdig und begleitete mich schweigend an die
Haustiire" ("Dialog" 35).
7
Ethical critique is threaded throughout Benjamin's work; the critical approach is ethical for
Benjamin. See, for example, Benjamin's note (99) in "Die Bedeutung der Zeit in der Moralischen Welt"
(Gesammelte Schriften: Band 6, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1985], 97-100; "The Meaning of Time in the Moral Universe," trans. Rodney
Livingstone, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and
Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 1996], 286-287). On Benjamin's
critical approach as ethical, see also Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Der friihe Walter Benjamin und
Hermann Cohen: Judische Werte, kritische Philosophie, vergdngliche Erfahrung (Berlin: Vorwerk 8,
2000).
8
On German Jewish intellectuals and theology as a cultural and intellectual practice during the
Weimar Republic, see Benjamin Lazier, God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination
Between the World Wars (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008) and Noah W. Isenberg, Between Redemption
and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1999). Scholem
(1897-1982) gives an account of his friendship with Benjamin in his Walter Benjamin: Die Geschichte
einer Freundschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975). For Scholem's interpretation of Benjamin's
relation to theology, see his Walter Benjamin und sein Engel: Vierzehn Aufsdtze und kleine Beitrage
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983). For Scholem's examination of Jewish messianism, see The
Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays in Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971). On
Rosenzweig (1887-1929) and his relation both to Judaism and German philosophy, see Peter Eli
Gordon's Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy (Berkeley: U of
California P, 2003). On the relation between Scholem's, Benjamin's, and Rosenzweig's thinking and
experience, see Stephane Moses' L'Ange de I'histoire: Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem (Paris: Seuil,
1992). Other German-speaking Jewish intellectuals with whom Benjamin was in contact moved along
different trajectories; Martin Buber (1878-1965) came from an observant Austrian family, broke with
the practice of religion as a student, and returned to it later. Ernst Bloch (1885-1977), primarily a
German Marxist thinker, thoroughly engages theology and theological themes in his philosophical
work, however, not necessarily with particular attention to Jewish thought. Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
and Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) also share a German Jewish background, but are not considered

3
understand religion and theology; for them theology and religious practice had (at

least initially) been severed from lived experience, while they nevertheless

experienced religion and theology as something that could not be disavowed, denied,

or left behind, even as it was no longer readily accessible. While Scholem and

Rosenzweig decided to actively practice Judaism, Benjamin's involvement with

Judaism was limited to the study of theologybut throughout his life, he continued to

be interested in how theological concepts and their historical transformations shape

experience. In his own work, he himself drew particularly on the concept of

messianism as providing critical potential for his rethinking and reworking of

experience in history.

While the experiences and the question of the relationships between and among

religion, ethics, and theology were different for Benjamin and his generation than for

the generation before them, Benjamin's cohort was both deeply influenced by and

reacted strongly against the ideas of Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), the most

prominent and influential German Jewish philosopher in the nineteenth century and

founder of Marburg School of neo-Kantian thought, also renowned for his writings in

Jewish philosophy.9 Cohen's engagement with Jewish thought does not stand apart

Jewish or (more generally) theological thinkers in the same sense as the others, since Jewish religion
and theology, as well as their participation in Jewish traditional practice, do not play the same central
role in their philosophical and theoretical work as they for Benjamin, Bloch, Buber, Rosenzweig, and
Scholem.
9
For an incisive account of the development of neo-Kantianism in Germany and Cohen's role in it
see Klaus Christian Kohnke's Entstehung und Aufstieg des Neukantianismus: Die deutsche
Universitdtsphilosophie zwischen Idealismus und Positivismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986);
in English this appears as The Rise of Neo-Kantianism: German Academic Philosophy between Idealism
and Positivism (trans. R. J. Hollingdale [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991]). For book-length studies on
the Marburg School and Cohen's role in it, see Helmut Holzhey's Cohen und Natorp (Basel: Schwabe,
1986), Alexis Philonenko's L'Ecole de Marbourg: Cohen, Natorp, Cassirer (Paris: J. Vrin, 1989), and

4
from his reworking Kantian philosophy.10 Throughout his work, Cohen sought to

demonstrate the ethical core of Judaism and the critical philosophical contributions of

the Jewish tradition, arguing against the anti-Semitic prejudice of his time that

denounced Judaism as a religion of ritual and constraints that had not risen to the same

ethical heights as has Christianity (in particular, Protestantism).11 Cohen's relationship

to the German Protestantism of his time was a complicated one.12 In his major work

Henri Dussort's L 'Ecole de Marbourg (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963). For a systematic
examination of Cohen's philosophy, see Andrea Poma's The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen/La
fllosofia critica di Hermann Cohen (Albany: State U of New York P, 1997). On Cohen's theoretical
philosophy, see Geert Edel's Von der Vernunftskritik zur Erkenntnislogik: Die Entwicklung der
theoretischen Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Freiburg im Breisgau: Alber, 1988). The interest in Cohen
in the contemporary secondary literature mostly centers on Cohen as a Jewish philosopher and on the
influence of religion on his philosophy. Within the broader philosophical context, interest in neo-
Kantianism in general seems to be limited. Moreover, the availability of Cohen's work in translation in
English is limited to selections from Judische Schriften (Berlin: Schwetschke u. Sohn, 1924), translated
as Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen by Eva Jospe (Cincinnati:
Hebrew Union College Press, 1993); Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Leipzig: G.
Fock, 1919; hereafter RV), translated by Simon Kaplan as Religion of Reason out of the Sources of
Judaism (Atlanta: American Academy of Religion, 1995) (hereafter RR); and "Charakteristik der Ethik
Maimunis" (221-289), which appears in Zur jiidischen Religionsphilosophie und ihrer Geschichte (Vol.
3 of Judische Schriften [Berlin: Schwetschke u. Sohn, 1924]) and has been translated as Ethics of
Maimonides by Almut S. Bruckstein (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2004). With the exception of these
works, Cohen's extensive systematic philosophical studies remain untranslated into English at this time.
10
On Cohen as a Jewish thinker and neo-Kantian, see Gillian Rose's "Hermann Cohen: Kant
among the Prophets" (Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays [Oxford: Blackwell, 1993], 111-
125) and Nathan Rotenstreich's "Hermann Cohen: Judaism in the Context of German Philosophy"
(Essays in Jewish Philosophy in the Modern Era, ed. Reinier Munk [Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1996],
86-101).
11
On the anti-Semitism of Cohen's time and Cohen's own fight against it, see especially
Holzhey's Cohen und Natorp and Deuber-Mankowsky's Der fruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann
Cohen, especially "Hoffentlich neukantischDualismus und Judentum" (282-379).
12
Cohen considered himself allied with the Kulturprotestantismus (cultural Protestantism) of his
time. The proponents of Kulturprotestantismus argued that religion should not carry more weight than
politics, but that the ethical values of Protestantism should provide a guiding impulse for politics in
order to realize the German state as both cultural (Kulturstaat) and constitutional (Rechtsstaaf). In his
preface to Cohen's Judische Schriften (Ethische und religiose Grundfragen, Vol. 1 of Judische
Schriften [Berlin: Schwetschke u. Sohn, 1924]), Franz Rosenzweig emphasizes that Cohen considered
moral autonomy and making possible "morally enlightened" religion the accomplishment of the
Reformation and Kant: "Die kulturgeschichtliche Bedeutung des Christentums besteht darin, daB es in
der dogmatischen Hulle der Humanisierung Gottes der Menschheit die Humanisierung der Religion
hebracht hat und damit die Grundlage des modernen 'Gedankens der sittlichen Autonomic', wie er
zumal in der deutschen Reformation und in der Kantischen Philosophie ausgebildet ist" (xxviii).
Rosenzweig continues to argue that insofar as the Reformation and Kantian critical philosophy provided

5
on ethics, Ethik des reinen Willens (Ethics of Pure Will), Cohen lauds Martin Luther

for breaking with the ritual-centered practice of Catholicism and its subservience to

ecclesiastical authority and dogmatism.13 However, Cohen's thinking cannot be seen

as merely a Jewish version of Kulturprotestantismus. At the same time as Cohen

asserts enlightened Judaism and Protestantism as correlative, he criticizes Christian

tenets of faithespecially that of original sin and eschatologyfor the values and

ethical imperatives they inculcate, and he looks to Jewish theology to provide a

corrective.14 In his account of philosophical ethics, Cohen in particular draws on

Jewish messianism to develop an account of temporality as ethical progress and

ethical labor for this progress.

Cohen was likewise committed to a project of revising Kantianism by completing

its epistemological focus and eliminating all remaining metaphysical commitments,

such as Kant's presupposition of the subject as a given. For Cohen, this

epistemological focus on rational concepts and so excluding any material or empirical

references provided a foundation for developing a critical perspective against the

the framework for the modern attitude and culture in nineteenth-century Germany, "All modern Jews,
particularly German ones, are Protestants (sind alle modernen, zumal deutschen, Juden Protestanten)"
(xxviii; my translation). See also David N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in
German-Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003), 46-48.
13
Cohen in Ethik des reinen Willens (Ethics of Pure Will) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1907;
hereafter ErW) lauds Luther as a critic of institutionalized religion akin to the prophets: "Wie die
Propheten das Opfer bekampfen, so bekSmpft Luther mit seinem Glauben die Werke, namlich die
Werke der Kirche; nicht etwa das Werk der sittlichen Arbeit, der Ausubung der Sittlichkeit" (301).
Cohen also argues for the correlation among Protestantism (especially Kantian Protestantism),
Germanness, and Jewish thought in the problematic 1915 work Deutschtum und Judentum (GieCen:
Alfred Topelmann, 1915). For a critical philosophical reading of this essay, see Jacques Derrida's
"Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German" in Acts of Religion (ed. Gil Anidjar [New York:
Routledge, 2002], 137-188).
14
On Cohen's critique of Christian theology as a critique of its cultural influence, see Michael
Zank's "Unterscheiden und Zusammendenken: Hermann Cohen als kulturphilosophischer
Gestaltversuch" (Rationalitat der Religion und Kritik der Kultur: Hermann Cohen und Ernst Cassirer,
ed. Hermann Deuser and Michael Moxter [Wurzburg: Echter, 2002], 55-68).

6
rising empiricism (especially Volkerpsychologie) and Protestant inwardness of late-

nineteenth-century Germany.15 As Cohen states in the preface to his first edition of

Ethics of Pure Will, he saw the task of ethics as that of providing a critical

philosophical tool for reflecting on the mores of human practices and culture, in order

to provide conceptual clarity by which to criticize, reorient, and guide these

practices. Methodologically, his aim is therefore to elaborate ethics according to a

"method of exact concepts {Methodik der exakten Begriffe)" (ErW vii) and to rid it of

those concepts that reintroduce a material basis for ethics, such as the concept of

7
original sin as foundational for a description of human nature. Consequently, Cohen

argues for a critique of theology by demonstrating not only how ethical ideas are at

work in theology but how certain theological elaborations fall short and are in need of

reinterpretation:

Ethics ought not to be ceded to religion in whatever disguised form. Religion

also ought not be granted primacy. Philosophy has to find out and ascertain

15
On Cohen's relation to psychology and the discourse on Volkerpsychologie in particular, see
also Myers (45-48).
16
Cohen emphatically concludes the preface: "Die Ethik aber hat keine andere Aufgabe, als gegen
das Irrewerden und das Irremachen der sittlichen Kultur an sich selber, an ihrer Wahrheit und
Wahrhaftigkeit, sowie an dem unvergleichlichen Werte ihres hochsten Gutes die Menschheit zu
verwahren" (ErW ix).
17
A discussion of Cohen's commitment to fully epistemologizing ethics is beyond the scope of
this work, but I would suggest that to address this issue would require a critical approach similar to the
methodology Helmut Holzhey argues for in his essay "Vernunft in der ReligionReligion in der
Kultur: Hermann Cohens kritische Kulturphilosophie aus den Quellen des Judentums" (Rationalitdt der
Religion und Kritik der Kultur: Hermann Cohen und Ernst Cassirer, ed. Hermann Deuser and Michael
Moxter [Wurzburg: Echter, 2002], 21-38). Holzhey suggests that a reading of Cohen's philosophy of
religion needs to take into account his cultural philosophy, since, as Holzhey argues, Cohen's attempt to
ground religion systematically within conceptual necessity fails. In light of Holzhey's approach, we
might examine Cohen's anti-metaphysical fervor in the Ethics of Pure Will in the context of his
opposition to the affect of patriotism and the racism of romanticized nationalism, what Cohen calls "the
poisons of nationalism and racist conceit (Gifte des Nationalismus und des Rassendunkels)" (ErW 255;
my translation). Cohen seems to have considered a radically epistemologized philosophy as an answer
to tendencies of naturalizing differences that he saw as extremely dangerous.

7
 {ergrunderi) according to its own methods what ethics {Ethik) may be; and so

only philosophy has to determine what ethics may be. Religion first has to

learn from [philosophical] ethics what morality {Sittlichkeit) may be within

religion. Theology has to become ethico-theology. {ErW 2l).l&

Cohen takes a strong stance against the subordination of ethics to religion and the

eventual dissolution of the one into the other, considering the two of them inexorably

linked as "ethico-theology" and firmly grounded within the concept of pure reason.

This places him at odds with his Protestant philosophical contemporaries insofar as

they attribute a central role to a passionate subjectivity that remains beyond rationality

and that grounds both faith and a religious ethos.19 Theological concepts and

commitments have to be subjected to critique by testing them against ethical ideas,

which for the Kantian Cohen aim for universal validity by virtue of their rational

foundation. However, Cohen maintains a crucial role for theology that cannot be taken

over by ethics, since ethics cannot draw on empirical sources and thus must aspire to

the status of universality. Theology introduces concepts and ideas by means of

historical elaboration and, Cohen argues, only theology introduces the notion of the

concrete individual in relation to concrete others.20 For Cohen, this systematic

"Nicht an die Religion in irgend welcher verlarvten Form darf die Ethik abgtreten werden. Auch
darf jener der Vortritt nicht eingeraumt werden. Was Ethik sei, hat die Philosophie nach ihren
Methoden zu ermitteln und zu ergriinden, und also auch erst festzustellen. Was in der Religion
Sittlichkeit sei, das hat die Religion selbst erst von der Ethik zu lernen. Die Theologie muss Ethiko-
Theologie werden" (ErW2\).
19
On this point see also Andrea Poma's introduction (7*-49*) to Cohen's Begriffder Religion im
System der Philosophie (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1996).
20
In Religion of Reason, Cohen argues that ethics remains abstract because of its aim for
universality, making religion the genuine site where the other is revealed as another person, a concept
that is tied to the need to pay attention to the other as a concrete suffering other: "Und es entsteht die
Frage, ob nicht gerade durch die Beachtung des Leidens bei dem Anderen dieser Andere aus dem Er in

8
specificity of theology is necessitated by his Kantian commitment to ethics as derived

out of pure reason. As I will discuss in the fourth chapter, Benjamin affirms this idea

of theology as a site of historically elaborated and transmitted knowledge and

experience, in order to reintroduce a richer understanding of experience, not, however,

as did Cohen, to test theological concepts for their ethical contributions by

ascertaining the rational core of theology through philosophy. For Cohen, ethics is

grounded in the theoretical question of what one ought to do and in its conceptual

delimitations through rational ideas as norms to guarantee the condition of possibility

of ethical progress, but he also sees theologyparticularly Jewish theologyoffering

a critical perspective on ethics.21 In this dissertation, I will focus a large part of my

argument on Cohen's critique, paying attention to his use of theological concepts in

grounding ethics. I hope to show that theological concepts can work non-

moralistically by interrupting and reorienting rather than uncritically reinforcing

the ways in which we evaluate our actions.

While taking up many ideas and much of his theological terminology from

Cohen, Benjamin offers a very different critical perspective on the ethical implications

das Du sich verwandelt. Bei bejahender Losung dieser Frage tritt die Eigenart derReligion in Kraft" (RV
19). For an elaboration of Cohen's relation to Kant through Cohen's theological thoughts on God and
the human, see Kenneth Seeskin's "The Height of Modernity: Kant and Cohen" {Autonomy in Jewish
Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001], 149-181).
21
There are two major collections of critical essays systematically dealing with Cohen's
philosophy, Robert Gibbs' Hermann Cohen's Ethics (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006) and Reinier
Munk's Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005). On the
systematic relationship between ethics and theology in Cohen, see Michael Zank's The Idea of
Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2000) and
William Kluback's The Idea of Humanity: Hermann Cohen's Legacy to Philosophy and Theology
(Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1987).

9
of theology. Benjamin's critical engagement with Cohen and neo-Kantianism has

long been underestimated, in large part because one of Benjamin's closest friends,

Scholem, who himself was rather disenchanted with Cohen, claimed that Benjamin

was not impressed at all with Cohen's thinking.23 Even now, the critical literature on

Benjamin tends to reference Cohen only briefly; a rare exception is the careful and

comprehensive study Der frtihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen: Mdische

Werte, kritische Philosophie, vergangliche Erfahrung by Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky

that lays out the influence of Cohen on the early Benjamin.24 As a less-prejudiced

Cohen's influence on Benjamin's thinking and Benjamin's criticism of Cohen reaches beyond
what Benjamin's footnotes actually document in their direct references to Cohen. For example,
Benjamin explicitly cites Cohen's ideas in the "Erkenntniskritische Vorrede" ("Epistemo-Critical
Prologue") of his The Origin of German Tragic Drama ("Ursprung des deutschen Trau'erspiels,"
Gesammelte Schriften: Band 1-1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1974], 203430; The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne [London:
Verso, 1998]). (Because the English translation by Osborne is often problematic, I have adapted several
citations, as indicated.) In this work on the German baroque mourning drama, Benjamin's interpretation
of Socrates' death offers a critically different interpretation than Cohen's interpretation in Ethics of
Pure Will. Benjamin also explicitly invokes Cohen in the essay "Zur Kritik der Gewalt" (Gesammelte
Schriften: Band 2-1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1977], 179-203; "Critique of Violence," trans. Edmund Jephcott, Walter Benjamin: Selected
Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA:
Belknap P-Harvard UP, 1996], 236-252). For a more comprehensive account of Benjamin's
appropriations, see DeuberMankowsky's Derfruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen.
23
Scholem offers this assessment in his Geschichte einer Freundschaft (76). Deuber-Mankowsky
(Derfruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen) argues for a different assessment in examining the
different expectations and reactions that Scholem and Benjamin had to Cohen (64-80).
24
My thinking in this dissertation is greatly indebted to Deuber-Mankowsky's book-length study
and the concerns it presents as central for a critical study at the crossroads of Erkenntniskritik, ethics,
and theology. On the need for more examination of the relation between Cohen's and Benjamin's
thought, especially among Cohen scholars, see also Deuber-Mankowsky's "The Ties between Walter
Benjamin and Hermann Cohen: A Generally Neglected Chapter in the History of the Impact of Cohen's
Philosophy" (Hermann Cohen's Ethics, ed. Robert Gibbs [Leiden,Netherlands: Brill, 2006], 127-146).
While the secondary literature on Benjamin abounds, the engagement with Cohen is limited and
with the exception of Deuber-Mankowsky's workBenjamin scholars usually only devote a few pages
to Cohen as one of Benjamin's sources. Among Cohen scholars, the only other author besides Deuber-
Mankowsky who is engaged in providing a detailed reading of both Cohen and Benjamin in connection
with each other is Pierfrancesco Fiorato in his essay "Die Erfahrung, das Unbedingte und die Religion:
Walter Benjamin als Leser von Kants Theorie der Erfahrung" (Hermann Cohen's Philosophy of
Religion: International Conference in Jerusalem, 1996, ed. Stephane Moses and Hartwig Wiedebach
[Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1997], 71-84). Nikolas Lambrianou studies Benjamin's messianism in

10
examination of Benjamin's work than Scholem's shows, Benjamin often referred to

Cohen and offered an elaboration of his own philosophical commitments through

implicit and explicit critiques of Cohen, especially during his early years. Benjamin

takes issue with Cohen's formalism and his idealization of progress, rejecting the

formal systematic elaboration of ethics. He insists that critique is in itself morality

insofar as morality implies a critical reflection on actions in their consequences (see

"Bedeutung der Zeit" 99 ["Meaning of Time" 287]), but what enables ethical freedom

and ethical responsiveness exceeds systematic representation and elaboration.

Instead, Benjamin offers a critique of experience that bears ethical consequences and

insights, taking up Cohen's critique of theology not to demonstrate that theology has a

relation to Cohen's notion of origin in his "Neo-Kantianism and Messianism: Origin and Interruption in
Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin" (Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, ed.
Peter Osborne [London: Routledge, 2004], 82-106). Pierre Bouretz in his Temoins du futur:
Philosophic et messianisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2003) offers a substantive engagement with both Cohen
and Benjamin in relation to their appropriations of the messianic, but the chapter on Benjamin does not
elaborate at all on Cohen's influence on Benjamin's thought.
25
On Benjamin's insistence that only actions, not character traits, are relevant for ethics, see his
essay "Schicksal und Charakter" (Gesammelte Schriften: Band 2-1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann
Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977], 171-179), translated as "Fate and Character"
(trans. Edmund Jephcott, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926, ed. Marcus
Bullock and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 1996], 201-206).
Benjamin's study of German Trauerspiel renders the ban on images as central for the nature of ethical
agency in human individuals. Benjamin argues in that piece, "Die menschliche Gestalt der Dichtung, ja
der Kunst schlechtweg, steht darin anders als die wirkliche, an der die in so vieler Hinsicht nur
scheinbare Isolierung des Leibes wahrnehmungsmafiig gerade als der Ausdruck moralischer
Vereinsamung mit Gott ihren untruglichen Gehalt hat. 'Du sollst dir kein Bildnis machen'das gilt
nicht der Abwehr ds Gotzendienstes allein. Mit unvergleichlichem Nachdruck beugt das Verbot der
Darstellung des Leibs den Anschein vor, es sei die Sphare abzubilden, in der das moralische Wesen des
Menschen wahrnehmbar ist" (284). In his essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities ("Goethes
Wahlverwandtschaften," Gesammelte Schriften: Band 1-1, ed. Rolf and Hermann Schweppenhauser
[Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974], 123-201; "Goethe's Elective Affinities," trans. Stanley
Corngold, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1:1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael
W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 1996], 297-360), Benjamin criticizes the
aesthetcizing of ethical individuality out of a commitment to a critique of representation. On this point
of the relationship among ethics, aesthetics, and critique, see also Deuber-Mankowsky's Der friihe
Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen, Richard Lane's Reading Walter Benjamin: Writing through the
Catastrophe (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005), and my article "Adorno's Tears: Textures of
Philosophical Emotionality" {MLN 124.3 [2009], 592-613).

11
rational kernel, but rather that the importance of theology is in providing critical

concepts for ethics and emphasizing the theological interruption of ethical norms and

ideas.

Working with Cohen's and Benjamin's critiques of theology and its ethical

implications, on the one hand, this dissertation argues against a religious moralism that

deduces moral norms out of theological resources and then strives to encode these

norms in legislation. On the other hand, my dissertation also seeks to dislodge

arguments that relegate theological arguments toat the mosta private inspirational

discourse, at the same time insisting that ethics and politics can be grounded only in

accounts of rational subjectivity and agency. Avoiding these two extremes, relying

philosophically more on Benjamin than on Cohen, my work suggests how the

understanding of redemption through messianism might offer resources for shifting

our attention from the idea of ethical conduct as exclusively grounded in rational

agency to examining how our conceptions of history and experience shape our

everyday practices and experiences.

My central argument is that furnishing explicit normative precepts is not the only

or most persistent contribution of theology to ethics. Instead, I argue that we should

pay attention to a different, more indirect way in which theology comes to bear on

ethics. Theological concepts have ethical implications when they shape our

understanding of life and history as the temporal continuum of our experiences,

encounters, and actions. As the normative force of theology shapes experience in tacit

12
ways, so it tends to be more difficult to criticize and reshape. Through Cohen and

Benjamin's criticism of theological concepts as well as their own appropriations of the

messianic as a critical resource, I seek to demonstrate that theological concepts need

not compel dogmatic, moralistic closures of thought, but can enable a critical opening

to orient our everyday experience and conduct.

When they criticize Christian theological concepts, especially dogmas such as

original sin, both Cohen and Benjamin refer to "myth" to capture the problematic

epistemic framework these concepts outline. Despite the differences in the conclusions

they draw from the analysis, Cohen and Benjamin share the belief that "myth" is

problematic because it produces a sense of fatedness and eliminates contingency and

so restricts the possible sense of agency.27 In Ethics of Pure Will and his posthumously

publishes Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums (Religion of Reason

In taking this approach, I am influenced by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein's "The Power of Prejudice and
the Force of Law: Spinoza's Critique of Religion and Its Heirs" (Epoche 7.1 [2002], 51-70).
27
On Cohen's understanding of myth, see also Almut S. Bruckstein's commentary accompanying
her translation of Cohen's Ethics of Maimonides. Cohen's understanding of myth is taken up and
extended by several of his students, especially by his collaborator Ernst Cassirer. Benjamin indicates in
a letter to Hugo von Hofmansthal (Gesammelte Briefe: Band 3: 1925-1930, ed. Christoph Godde and
Henri Lonitz [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995], 104-106) on December 28, 1925, that he read with
great interest Cassirer's "Die Begriffsform im mythischen Denken" (Aufsdtze und kleinere Schriften:
1922-1926, Vol. 16 of Gesammelte Werke, ed. Birgit Recki [Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2003], 3-104). It
seems to me that Benjamin's comment on Cassirer can be extended as well to his relationship with
myth in Cohen's work: "Cassirers Arbeit ... habe ich vor langerer Zeit mit viel Interesse gelesen.
Fraglich aber blieb mir, ob der Versuch durchfuuhrbar ist, das mythische Denken nicht nur in
Begriffend.h. kritischdarzustellen, sondern auch durch den Kontrast gegens Begriffliche
hinreichend zu erleuchten" (106). On myth in Benjamin, see Winfried Menninghaus' essay "Walter
Benjamin's Theory of Myth" (trans. Gary Smith, On Walter Benjamin: Critical Essays and
Recollections, ed. Gary Smith [Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1988], 292-325) and his Schwellenkunde:
Walter Benjamins Passage des Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986). In Walter Benjamin's
Other History: Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels (Berkeley: U of California P, 1998)
Beatrice Hanssen (131-132) offers a brief gloss on Benjamin's "Fate and Character" as a reading of
Cohen's section "Das Schicksal und die Schuld" ("Fate and Guilt") in Ethics ofPure Will (362-364).

13
out of the Sources of Judaism), Cohen positions myth as proto-rational explanatory

schemes that humans invented to make sense of the world and experiences around

them.28 He interprets "mythical thinking" as an epistemic frameworkas a form of

faith or belief (Glaube)that perceives life as subject to a fate that no one can resist,

withstand, or evade: "Mythical faith enchains just as believing in oracles. For mythical

faith there is only surrendering to fate" (RR 190).29 Within this view, there is no event,

no action, nothing that one undergoes, does, or experiences that is ungoverned by fate.

In Cohen's narrative of cultural progress, myth is subsequently superseded by

theology and ethics, which, however, overcome myth only to varying degrees, since

they may continue to harbor concepts that still retain the sense of fatedness that Cohen

calls mythical thinking. Cohen aligns religion and theology proper with ethics and

equates myth with a kind of thinking that vitiates ethics, because the belief in fate at

the heart of myth excludes freedom and inculcates instead a sense of doom and guilt.30

In his comprehensive Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), Hans

Blumenberg comments very briefly on Cohen's and the neo-Kantian'sespecially Cassirer's
appropriation of myth as a category for critique. Blumenberg does not mention Benjamin in his work
and cites only Cohen's Das Prinzip der Infinitesimal-Methode und seine Geschichte: Ein Kapitel zur
Grundlegung der Erkenntniskritik (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1984). Nonetheless, the limitations he
attributes to Cohen's conceptually focused approach are very valid concerns. Blumenberg's rich
analysis is beyond the scope of this dissertation, but warrants further examination by those interested in
the ways in which Benjamin's work, especially in the Arcades Project (Das Passagen-Werk,
Gesammelte Schriften: Band 5-1 und Band 5-2, ed. Rolf Tiedemann [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1982]; The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, ed. Rolf Tiedemann
[Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 2002]), reworks the understanding of myth at work. On
myth in Benjamin's Arcades Project, see Susan Buck-Morss's The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter
Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1989).
29
"Der mythische Glaube fesselt, wie der Orakelglaube. Fur ihn gibt es nur Ergebung in das
Schicksal" (RV222).
30
In the brief section in Ethics of Pure Will entitled "Fate and Guilt," Cohen sums up what he sees
as the central problem of mythical thinking: "Den Grundbegriff, der den eigentlichen Kern des
Schicksals bildet, haben wir im Begriffe der Schuld zu erkennen. ... Das Bose ist die Schuld. Und die
Schuld ist das Verhangnis. Der Mythos nimmt an dieser Verbindung keinen Anstoss" (ErW 363). I will
discuss Cohen's logic of fatedness further in the next two chapters.

14
Under mythical thinking, events are experienced as manifestations of a secret rationale

that has already been fixed and determined, but that becomes recognizable to us only

ex post facto. The mythical interpretation of lived experiences consequently eclipses

agency and any deliberations about what we ought to do, because mythical thinking

assumes a comprehensive and underlying Schuldzusammenhang (nexus of guilt) and

doom that is secretly and inescapably betrayed by every event.

Especially in his early texts, such as The Origin of German Tragic Drama and

"Critique of Violence," Benjamin takes up Cohen's approach in opposing theology

and ethics to myth and sees in myth a framework of experience that relies on

understanding history as a nexus of events determined by forces beyond human

control.31 Unlike Cohen, Benjamin does not position myth not as a backdrop for a

narrative outlining the historical progress of reason. Hence, Benjamin does not

conclude that the problem with mythical thinking is one of insufficient progress in

overcoming mythical elements in our thinking. Instead, Benjamin's interest lies in

how mythical images and ideas emerge from a particular historical time and

circumstances, but then live on beyond their concrete historical contexts and appear in

different guises throughout history, while retaining their affective force.32 This

persistent reiteration of these ideas that shape experience is precisely the problem of

31
In "Fate and Character" and "Critique of Violence," which I will discuss in more detail in
Chapters 1 and 2, Benjamin aligns myth and law in opposition to theology, justice, and ethics. His
inclusion of law on the side of myth can be read as a direct critique of Cohen. On this point, see also
Menninghaus' Schwellenkunde and Deuber-Mankowsky's Der friihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann
Cohen.
32
In "Critique of Violence," Benjamin draws on the mythical figure of Niobe to elucidate the
violent rationale in the founding of law. On the Arcades Project as a study in myth, especially of
progress, see Buck-Morss' Dialectics of Seeing and Menninghaus' Schwellenkunde.

15
what Benjamin considers the mythical sense of history. Whereas the lack of autonomy

within mythical thinking is the main problem for Cohen, for Benjamin it is the

teleology of experience and history that renders both fateful. In particular, Benjamin

considers myth to be in opposition to ethics because mythical thinking eliminates

contingency through a seamless framework of quid pro quo, so that the causal relation

between events comes to be morally overdetermined as either debt or guilt.

Consequently, as a framework of experience, myth in Benjamin and Cohen's

understanding suffuses the past and present with guilt, thus rendering the future an

interminable, fated one caught between the need for atonement and the hope for a

better world beyond this one. So through the lens of mythical rationality, Cohen and

Benjamin enable a critique through discovering howabsent explicit normative

injunctionstheological concepts, such as original sin and evil, intensify a sense of

guilt and fatedness and hence produce vacuous conceptions of agency.

Both Cohen and Benjamin draw on theology and on Jewish messianism in

particular to disrupt such a closure of thought and experience.33 Cohen derives his

interpretation of messianism out of the Maimonidean rationalist tradition in order to

frame an account of history and temporality as eternal openness toward forging a new

In addition to Scholem's work on messianism, which clearly influenced Benjamin, see for
background on the various strands of messianism in the Jewish traditions the essays and especially the
introduction in Leo Landman's collection Messianism in the Talmudic Era (New York: Ktav Publishing
House, 1979) as well as Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1979); Marc
Saperstein, ed., Essential Papers on Messianic Movements and Personalities in Jewish History (New
York: New York UP, 1992); and Steven S. Schwarzschild, "On Jewish Eschatology," The Human
Condition in the Jewish and Christian Traditions (ed. Frederick E. Greenspahn [New York: Ktav,
1986], 171-211). For a brief outline of the difference between Protestant and Catholic approaches to
eschatology, see the companion essays to Schwarzschild's in the same volume (edited by Frederick E.
Greenspahn), particularly Monika K. Hellwig's "The Life of the World to Come: Eschatological Hopes
in Catholic Tradition" (212-234) and Clark H. Pinnock's "Eschatological Hopes in the Protestant
Tradition" (235-255).

16
futurenot beyond this world, but both within this world and in the completion of this

world. In his commentary on Maimonides in Ethics of Maimonides, Cohen

emphasizes as the distinctive difference between Jewish messianism and Christian

eschatology that "The messiah does not represent the redeemer of human beings in the

other world, but the redeemer of human beings in this world" (173).35 Cohen then goes

on to explain that we encounter the ethical significance of the messianic through

Maimonides' further elaboration of redemption in this world as the age of good

governance in this world, not as a promised paradise in the next world.36 In Ethics of

Pure Will, Cohen expands on this understanding of the messianic idea as the

philosophy of history through which he frames his account of ethical progress as an

individual and collective Aufgabe (task) of establishing a socially just future in this

world. Cohen follows Maimonides in insisting that ethics must concern itself with

justice in this world and not with the next world, because we cannot know anything

about the next world. Through taking up Maimonides, Cohen differs from Kant by

introducing the messianic to delimit a positive task for ethics, while Kant introduces

God as a postulate of practical reason ex negativo, to avoid despair. In Critique of

On Cohen's relation to Maimonides' philosophy and to his messianism in particular, see Martin
Kavka's "Nonbeing as Not-Yet-Being: Meontology in Maimonides and Hermann Cohen" {Jewish
Messianism and the History ofPhilosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004], 66-128).
35
"Der Messias ist nicht der Erloser des Menschen im Jenseit, sondern der Erloser der Menschen
im Diesseit" ("Charakteristik der Ethik Maimunis" 281).
36
On Maimonides and messianism, see Aviezer Ravitzky's History and Faith: Studies in Jewish
Philosophy (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 1996). In the chapter '"To the Utmost
Human Capacity': Maimonides on the Days of the Messiah," Ravitzky explains the relationship
between Maimonides' philosophy and his interpretation of messianism: "Maimonides' political
philosophy and anthropology direct his positive Messianic models: the political realization of the Torah
within Israel and the intellectual actualization of the spiritual power within the human species. His
ontology and theology, on the other hand, dictate his negative emphasesthe restrictions and
limitations imposed upon Messianism: the rejection of cosmic, apocalyptic redemption, and the setting
of Messianic hope within the domain of human existence" (74).

17
Practical Reason, Kant argues that practical reason is compelled to postulate the

existence of a good God to ensure that ethical conduct makes sense. Ethical conduct

can only accomplish Gluckswurdigkeit (the worthiness of happiness) in this world, but

not Gliickseligkeit (the reality of happiness), which must be postulated for the next

world. Unlike Cohen's ethics based in a messianism focused on this world, the

Kantian theological register refers the motivation for ethical conduct beyond history

and life in this world and to the next. Cohen's account converges with the Kantian

one, however, in that both idealize history as progress and end up dissolving concrete

historical experience into this general idea of progress.38

In Derfruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen, Deuber-Mankowsky shows

that Benjamin's interpretation of the messianic as redemption within demise provides

a critique and corrective of Cohen's idealization of redemptive futurity.

Destructiveness and demise as interruptive and disorienting experiences are crucial to

Benjamin's interpretation of messianism. This interpretation differs from Cohen's

Maimonidean interpretation and is more in line with Scholem's emphasis on the

revolutionary and cataclysmic rather than reformist element in the Jewish messianic

tradition. Unlike Cohen, for whom the messianic ensures an ineradicable opening of

See section V on "The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason" in the dialectic
part of Kant's Critique ofPractical Reason (the first book in the pairing Kritik der praktischen Vernunft
and Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1956]; Critique ofPractical Reason, ed. Mary Gregor [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997]).
38
For an incisive analysis of this problematic in Cohen and Benjamin's critical perspective on
Cohen's idealization of progress, see the first two parts of Deuber-Mankowsky's Derfruhe Walter
Benjamin und Hermann Cohen, "I. Kritische Philosophic und vergangliche Erfahrung" and "II. Das
Ideal und die unendliche Aufgabe" as well as Nikolas Lambrianou's "Neo-Kantianism and Messianism:
Origin and Interruption in Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin."
39
In his essay "The Messianic Idea of Judaism" in The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other
Essays in Jewish Spirituality (1-36), Scholem emphasizes: "Jewish Messianism is in its origins and by

18
the present towards the future, for the early Benjamin the messianic manifests itself in

this world as the continuous Vergdngnis (passing away, demise, downfall) of this

world, where it can pass away under circumstances of Gltick (happiness).40 This

awareness introduces a critical perspective on the present, insofar as it commands we

pay attention to the conditions of this passing away and the ruins that cannot yet pass

away in happiness. In his later work, Benjamin emphasizes the disruptive quality of

the messianic more so than the rhythm of demise, but he retains the element of

destructiveness and transience in happiness as central to his interpretation of

redemption. For Benjamin the interruption of time as a homogenous continuum that

occurs when an unredeemed moment of the past enters into a constellation with the

present. For Benjamin, this interruptive moment is ripe with potential as it gives rise to

an experience that inspires a refusal of the present social and political conditions under

which exploitation continues in the present. As does Cohen, Benjamin introduces the

messianic to elaborate a critical understanding of history, one that contains an ethical

valence by insisting on the recognition of the present as unredeemed as well as in

severing this ethical insight from inculcations of a sense of guilt. Differently from

Cohen, Benjamin opposes the messianic precisely to idealizations of progress that

its naturethis cannot be sufficiently emphasizeda theory of catastrophe. This theory stresses the
revolutionary, cataclysmic element in the transition from every historical present to the Messianic
future" (7). See also Michael Lowy and Renee B. Lanier's "Jewish Messianism and Libertarian Utopia
in Central Europe (1900-1933)" (New German Critique 20.2 [1980], 105-115) and Anson Rabinbach's
"Between Enlightenment and Apocalypse: Benjamin, Bloch and Modern German Jewish Messianism"
(New German Critique 34 [1995], 78-124).
40
See also Deuber-Mankowsky's "Walter Benjamin's Theological-Political Fragment as a
Response to Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia" (The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 47 [2002], 3-19] and
her "The Image of Happiness We Harbor: The Messianic Power of Weakness in Cohen, Benjamin, and
Paul" (New German Critique 35.3 [2008], 57-69) as well as the first chapter on the early Benjamin in
Eric Jacobson's Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom
Scholem (New York: Columbia UP, 2003).

19
diffuse the need for collective political action in the present. Instead, Benjamin's

messianic itself is a momentary, vanishing experience that carries within it the chance

of infusing the present moment with a sense of urgency for collective action in the

present.

To take up the messianic philosophically, as Cohen and Benjamin do, as a

concept to elaborate messianism's ethical potential in insisting on redemption of the

unredeemed world does not, however, therefore commit us to a religious ethics in the

sense of deducing moral guidelines from religious doctrine. Rather, I argue throughout

this dissertation that both Cohen's and Benjamin's appropriations of the theological

concept of the messianic allows for, but does not require, individual faith or belief,

because the theological concept carries the force of its ethical implications through the

way in which it bears on and orients the understanding of history and experience in the

present irreducible to individual belief and faith.

Before concluding with two chapters that consider the critical and ethical force of

Cohen's and Benjamin's appropriations of messianism, I begin with two chapters

examining their critiques of theologically stoked moralism. The first chapter considers

Cohen's and Benjamin's criticism of the Christian doctrine of original sin as a

description of human nature and show how original sin produces a problematic

circumscription of human freedom, entangling ethical theory within metaphysical

inquiries into the origin of evil. In particular, the emphasis on original sin as the basis

for Christian eschatology orients our perspective on life in this world toward seeking

20
salvation from human life rather than in the affirmation of being human. In this first

chapter, I argue that the focus on the irredeemable corruption of life in this world

renders ethical action problematic by infusing all actions with an element of

intractable uncertainty, since the consequences and stakes of any action are eternal and

thus remain forever out of reach of temporal existence.41 Through Benjamin's critique,

I elaborate how the concept of original sin lives on through a framing of the

ontological condition of life as constitutive indebtedness. This constitutive

indebtedness "arrests" and unduly moralizes past, present, and future experiences,

because the framework that anchors them and ensures their meaning is the originary

condition of debt. Through reading Cohen and Benjamin on original sin as "mythical,"

I argue that the moralism stoked by the theological concept of original sin is one of an

"arrested" responsibility. Original sin offers a view of a subject that is always, but also

never quite wholly, guilty, so that there is no moral superiority in which the subject

could take refuge, only an anxious hope for the next world in overcoming this

inescapably corrupt life.

Extending the discussion of original sin as producing a fated view of life, in

Chapter 2, I will examine Cohen's and Benjamin's indictments of the quasi-

Manichean understanding of history as "mythical," because encapsulated within this

idea is a fated view of history and the present in which catastrophe is always looming,

ready to strike at any moment. Manicheanism in particular outlines a cosmic struggle

41
In the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (English translation: Groundwork of the
Metaphysics of Morals, trans, and ed. Mary Gregor [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997]), this
constitutive uncertainty remains implicitly at the heart of Kant's ethics as the motivation for ethical
action, as we can never know, according to Kant, whether we act out of dutyand so truly ethically
or only in accordance with duty.

21
between good and evil that ends in a still-pending but imminent final battle. Although

Cohen and Benjamin argue against different aspects of this viewCohen against the

personification of evil, Benjamin against both perpetuating and deferring the

supposedly looming catastrophe as an evil to be both argue that this view, which has

persisted into the present day, narrows the possibilities for critique and equates

criticism of the status quo with abetting evil. Cohen criticizes this view of world

history as a cosmic struggle because this belief looks for evil and personifies it as an

external threat to the existing order, while removing systemic and historical conditions

for this threat from further inquiry or discussion. Through Benjamin's expansion of

Cohen's critique, I argue that the resulting investment in law and order as a perceived

unquestionable good thrives on a fear of anarchy, which is based in the Manichean

equation of anarchy with chaos. Benjamin suggests this fear is stoked by a sense of

urgency intensified by eschatological expectations of the end of history. Drawing on

these points, I argue that the concept of evil in history under this Manichean-

eschatological perspective renders history as an ever-urgent struggle against evil and

impedes critique by moralizing the urgency of the situation.

Rather than assuming that theological concepts in general inhibit ethical conduct

by instilling guilt and a sense of history as fate, both Cohen and Benjamin contend that

the problem is instead with the specific moral overdetermination of these particular

concepts and not with theology as such. Engaging with their affirmative approach to

theological concepts in the third and fourth chapter, I explore Cohen's and Benjamin's

22
appropriations of messianism from the Jewish tradition to elaborate a critical sense of

time, history, and ethical agency.

In the third chapter, I consider how Cohen applies the idea of messianism to think

about the question of fault and guilt as an ethical problem and allows us to rethink

accountability as something other than a moralistic perpetuation of guilt. For Cohen,

the idea of messianic time allows us to see events in time as contingent, to assess their

merits and failures, and to take responsibility and move forward in working toward a

more just future. To continuously renew the possibility of a better future,

responsibility must be limited to our own actions and to our own time; therefore,

Cohen suggests that assuming accountability for the past requires expunging the

record of the old self in order to move past previous actions into a new future.42

Cohen's approach is limited by his decision to ground ethics and accountability in the

law and by his rendering individual agency as central to ethics. To consider how

Cohen's attention to theology can allow us to refigure the juridical framework of

accountability, I draw from Cohen's reading of the practice of teshuva (turning,

repentance) but shift the focus away from a legal perspective on our fault and guilt to

the practices that enable reconciliation with others.43 Reconciliation and futurity are

the key to ethics for Cohen, enabled through introducing a theological perspective to

the discussion. As I critically consider this approach in the final chapter, Cohen

42
This reinterpretation as a revision of autonomy expands on Seeskin's concern in Autonomy in
Jewish Philosophy. On Cohen's reinterpretation of autonomy, see also Holzhey's "Ethik als Lehre vom
Menschen: Eine EinfUhrung in Hermann Cohens Ethik des reinen Willens" {Hermann Cohen's Ethics,
ed. Robert Gibbs [Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006], 17-36] and Deuber-Mankowsky in Der friihe
Walter Benjamin and Hermann Cohen.
43
For a detailed study on teshuva in relation to atonement, see Zank's The Idea of Atonement in
the Philosophy ofHermann Cohen.

23
remains focused on individual, rational agency and accountability upon which to

ground his ethical project.

In the final chapter, I argue that Benjamin takes issue with Cohen's focus on

rational agency, individual accountability, and the idealization of progress, all of

which rely upon the exclusion of experience from the philosophical account of ethics.

In particular, Benjamin views messianism as history seen through transience, demise,

decay, whereas Cohen's messianism focuses on a futurity of ethical labor and

progress. Benjamin views the experience of transience as demise and fleetingness and,

as such, as imbued with a critical and interruptive quality. Through the concept of the

messianic, Benjamin brings theology to bear as a critique of the present. Parting with

deconstructive readings,44 I suggest that we need to read the theological concepts in

Benjamin as sites where truth and affect converge; in other words, it is through such

concepts that Benjamin attempts to craft an historical metaphysics of experience.45 In

particular, I show that Benjamin positions theology as a discourse and a tradition of

knowledge that forms and transmits the underlying conceptions of life and history that

shape our experience, and I argue more broadly for a theological critique that aims to

Such readings tend to focus on retrieving the messianic as a constitutive openness and both a
possibility as well as an impossibility of redeemability in history, a stance that epistemologizes too
readily the sense of materiality and experience at stake in Benjamin's approach. For interpretations that
seek to offer a deconstructive reading of Benjamin, see Werner Hamacher's '"Jetzt: Benjamin zur
historischen Zeit" (Benjamin Studien/Studies 1.1 [2002], 145-183; epublished in translation as "'Now':
Walter Benjamin on Historical Time," trans. N. Rosenthal, Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew
Benjamin [London: Continuum, 2005], 38-68) and Dimitris Vardoulakis' "The Subject of History: The
Temporality of Parataxis in Benjamin's Historiography" {Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew
Benjamin [London: Continuum, 2005], 118-136).
45
On the conjunction between metaphysics and theology in Benjamin, see especially Jacobson's
Metaphysics of the Profane and Buck-Morss' Dialectics of Seeing. On Benjamin's philosophical
critique of experience Howard Caygill's Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience (London:
Routledge, 1998) and Deuber-Mankowsky's work.

24
elaborate an affective register to transform those ideas that orient our experience. The

chapterand the dissertationconclude with a discussion of the ethical impulse in

Benjamin's late work in which he argues for his concept of messianic interruption as

an encounter with the past and as a recognition of the past as an unredeemed

exploitation and the present as a continuing injustice. Finally, I argue that Benjamin's

insistence on redemption found in demise and undoing also ascribes transience to the

ethical insight as a momentary insight that the specific encounter with the past

provides. The messianic provides neither new ethical norms nor a permanent ethical

project. The messianic is not a saving grace, but an interruption where theology is

redeem

25
 Chapter One:

Original Sin and Fated Life

Guilt, evil, and original sin are not particularly inspiring concepts for an inquiry into

ethics and the role that theological concepts play in such an inquiry. But as I will show

in this chapter, the concept of original sin proves very productive in examining the

bearing that theological concepts have on ethics beyond contributing explicit

normative precepts. In turning to Cohen's discussions of guilt and evil in the context

of his rejection of "original sin" across his work, I neither seek to reintroduce nor to

foreground once again the concept of sin in our ethical vocabulary.46 Rather, my

purpose is to consider original sin as a problematic but exemplary theological trope

through which the anthropological presuppositions of ethics are both framed and

obscured in their ethical valence. Much as it might seem that the idea of original sin is

for the most part dead or at least retired from many daily discourses, it endures in the

ghostly form of tacitly conceiving the human condition as constitutively imperfect,

deficient, and for that reason prone to moral evil.47

For contemporary arguments emphasizing the need for reintroducing sin into our moral and
political vocabularies, see Denis Miiller's "The Original Risk: Overtheologizing Ethics and
Undertheologizing Sin" (Christian Bioethics 13:1 [2007], 7-23). In "Taking Sin Seriously" (Journal of
Religious Ethics 31.1 [2003], 45-74), Darlene Fozard Weaver "argues that inattention to sins
undermines the theological referent of sin as a discourse that concerns more than moral culpability,
obscures God as the source of freedom and value, and neglects the way in which acts express and
sustain sin and fashion a personal orientation" (45).
47
On the reworking of original sin as a human condition, see Alan Jacobs' Original Sin: A
Cultural History (New York: HarperOne, 2008) and John Portmann's A History of Sin: Its Evolution to
Today and Beyond (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). Portmann explains that, following
Christian theologians such as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Karl Rahner, contemporary Protestant and
Catholic theologians widely argue that "original sin itself simply symbolizefs] the inevitable chance of
evil manifesting itself in human activity" (12).

26
 The Christian theological narrative that ties original sin and the origin of evil

together is the story of the Fall.48 In that narrative, the disobedience of Adam and Eve

that resulted in their expulsion from paradise marks as "fallen" both the beginning of

human knowledge as well as of human nature in this world. After Augustine, the

doctrine of original sin (Erbsunde) is interpreted as an original fault {Erbschuld) of

every individual that nonetheless did not result from any personal choice or

wrongdoing.49 Thus original sin inscribes a kind of fault that is neither a psychological

state of mind nor a consequence of one's actions, but rather constitutes the condition

from which one acts and that remains central the Christian understanding of the human

condition.

When Cohen and Benjamin reference original sin, they consider it as a key

element of a kind of thinking and world-view that they indict as "mythical."

Throughout their work Cohen and Benjamin invoke "myth" often also as a cipher to

reference and criticize a number of Christian theological commitments. As I briefly

discussed in the introduction, myth in Cohen and Benjamin denotes a sphere and kind

On original sin and the differences in conceptions of human nature in the Christian and Jewish
traditions, see Samuel S. Cohon's essay "Original Sin" (219-272) in his Essays in Jewish Theology
(Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College P, 1987) and several essays in The Human Condition in the Jewish
and Christian Traditions (edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn): Richard L. Rubenstein's "The Human
Condition in Jewish Thought and Experience" (3-25), Robert L. Kress' "The Catholic Understanding of
Human Nature" (26-72), and David F. Wells' "The Protestant Perspective on Human Nature" (73-
100).
49
Augustine views original sin as the condition of individual guilt that characterizes human nature
as depraved. This depravity is inherited qua being conceived and born, rather than caused by the
individual's own actions, but constitutes nonetheless a fault or guilt. On these issues, see William
Mann's "Augustine on Evil and Original Sin" (The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore
Stump and Norman Kretzmann [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001], 40-48).

27
of thinking that is opposed to religion, theology, and ethics. Cohen characterizes

"mythical thinking" as an epistemic framework, as a form of faith or belief (Glaube),

which perceives life as inescapably bound by forces to which one cannot but

surrender.51 Within this view, events are experienced as manifestations of a secret

rationale that has already been fixed and determined, but becomes recognizable to us

only ex post facto. Cohen and Benjamin criticize the sense of guilt and doom that such

thinking inculcates. For both Cohen and Benjamin original sin resides at the heart of

mythical thinking as the condition that governs our fate in this life. As a naturalized

condition of depravity or corruption, it manifests itself throughout our lives in what we

experience with and without our own doing. Original sin and its vision of humanity

foreground guilt and evil as motifs for life in this world.

In Cohen's Ethics of Pure Will and Religion of Reason out of the Sources of

Judaism, this concept of original sin provides a polemical backdrop for Cohen on the

grounds of its evacuation of agency and rational individuality. In The Origin of

German Tragic Drama, Benjamin is interested in the connections between the

Articulating the criticism of Christian theology through the critique of "mythical" concepts and
thinking allowed Cohen to present Jewish and Christian thought as joined against these problematic
remnants of "myth." In the third section of Deuber-Mankowsky's Der friihe Walter Benjamin und
Hermann Cohen, entitled "Hoffentlich neukantischDualismus und Judentum," she demonstrates
how the political debates over conservativism, socialism, and Marxism were intertwined with debates
over the relationship between Jewish and Christian German citizenry in the late-nineteenth and early-
twentieth century. In her lecture "Benjamin's Monadology," presented at the Graduate Student/Faculty
Colloquium of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of
Pennsylvania on April 23, 2009, Paula Schwebel offered an account of how the readings of Gottfried
Leibniz' monad as a mystical unity according to the infinitesimal has to be understood as a rhetorical
strategy in relation to the political discourse of the time on assimilation and integration of Jews into the
German state. On Cohen's critique of original sin as mythical remnant in Kant's philosophy, see also
Michael Mack's German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner Anti-Semitism of Philosophy and German
Jewish Responses (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003).
51
"Der mythische Glaube fesselt, wie der Orakelglaube. Fur ihn gibt es nur Ergebung in das
Schicksal"(flK222).

28
anthropological assumptions original sin commands and their relation to the

philosophy of history, especially insofar as history is conceived through eschatology.

In numerous essays and shorter studies of that time, Benjamin obliquely criticizes

original sin and its secularized versions, such as constitutive indebtedness, for setting

up life as endless impossible atonement for a metaphysically produced debt.

My argument over the course of this chapter will proceed in four steps. I will first

discuss Cohen's and Kant's commentaries on original sin as central to the human

condition and show how original sin produces a problematic circumscription of human

freedom, as original sin entangles ethical theory in metaphysical inquiries into the

origin of evil. I will argue that this focus on the root cause of evil is particularly

problematic in the case of original sin, because that particular concept frames human

nature as irreparably corrupt and ethical theory then is refrained to center on protecting

us from the worst of our tendencies rather than on addressing the problems found

outside ourselves.

In the second section, I turn to Cohen's argument that original sin responds to and

foregrounds the individual's fear about the future and fits too neatly into the

theological promise of salvation. The emphasis on original sin orients our perspective

on life in this world toward seeking salvation from being human rather than in

affirmation of being human. I will argue that the focus on the irredeemable corruption

of life in this world renders concerns with ethics and justice in particular into an

afterthought that is subordinated to the theological focus on individual salvation.

29
 In the third section, I will examine Benjamin's appropriation of Cohen's critique

of original sin as rendering life fated. Benjamin criticizes the concept of a constitutive

Schuld (fault, guilt, debt) as giving rise to a fateful or "inauthentic" understanding of

time, because this original fault never passes away, but rather is a kind of ongoing debt

for which all life subsequently has to atone. I turn to Benjamin's analysis because it is

particularly helpful as we consider the aftereffects of the originally theological concept

of original sin as it now lives on in framing the ontological condition of life as

indebtedness. This constitutive indebtedness "arrests" past, present, and future

experiences, because the framework that anchors them and ensures their meaning is

the trans- or ahistorical originary condition of debt.

In the concluding section of this chapter, I will argue that Cohen's and

Benjamin's criticisms of original sin allow us to formulate a moralism of "arrested"

responsibility. This moralism differs from a Nietzschean understanding. Instead, the

moralism of original sin offers a view of a subject that is always, but also never quite,

guilty. This moralism does not equip the subject with new superiority, but with

humility in the face of guilt, sin, and suffering that all only manifest this subject's

ontological state of guilt.

Corrupt Imperfections of Nature and Freedom

In this section, I will elaborate how original sin implicitly delimits the

circumscription of freedom and situates the task of ethics problematically because the

concept of original sin focuses ethics on questions about human nature and the origin

30
of evil. To highlight Cohen's implicit criticism of Kant's reinterpretation of original

sin in Kant's theory of radical evil, I will begin by looking at Cohen's reading of Kant

and then turn to the basis for this reading, Kant's Religion of Reason Within the

Bounds of Mere Reason. Attending to Kant's text allows us to examine how original

sin continues to live on in Kant's framing of freedom against nature. Moreover, even

when the direct continuities are severed between the theological concept of original

sin and moral guilt, the interest that drives Kant's account, namely, an interest in the

origins of evil remains problematic because such interest severely limits the focus of

consequent moral concerns and how we understand moral agency.

Over the course of his Ethics of Pure Will, Cohen repeatedly repudiates Christian

and "mythological" elements and theological concepts for framing false

presuppositions for ethical deliberation or problematic goals. One of the concepts that

he opposes most stridently is the concept of original sin, because its claims about

human nature introduce a naturalistic, material basis into ethics and so retains a

metaphysical element which Cohen rejects as unfounded and unhelpful, because such

metaphysical claims naturalize historically specific conditions.53 In this context,

Immanuel Kant, Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blofien Vernunft {Die Metaphysik der
Sitten, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1956], 645-879; Religion within the
Boundaries of Mere Reason in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings,
trans, and ed. Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998], 31-191). For a
careful examination of the relation between Kant's and Cohen's philosophy of religion, see Ann-
Kathrin Hake's Vernunftreligion und historische Glaubenslehre: Immanuel Kant und Hermann Cohen
(Wurzburg: Konigshausen u. Neumann, 2003).
53
Cohen rejects original sin as the human condition, but embraces individual sin as a religious
concept through which to understand individual agency and the individual's capacity to gather ethical
insight and begin anew after having done wrong. In his essay "Religion Within the Limits Alone and
Religion of Reason" (Essays in Jewish Philosophy in the Modern Era, ed. Reinier Munk [Amsterdam:
J. C. Gieben, 1996], 102-114), Nathan Rotenstreich argues that Cohen's affirmation of individual sin
contains a polemic against Kant, who rejects Judaism as a religion of heteronomy. On the larger

31
Cohen turns to and lauds Kant's rereading of original sin through his concept of

radical evil as a repudiation of a metaphysical evil force or nature, which in turn

makes ethical agency possible. In the final chapter of Ethics of Pure Will, "Die

Humanitat" (Humanity, Humaneness), Cohen suggests that the question of radical evil

is usually the flip side of the question whether humans are predisposed to love and to

Herzensgiite, goodness of the heart. For Cohen the very dispute over the reality of

these principles is problematic, because it entangles us in metaphysical questions

about human nature and seeks in ethical conduct the expressions of more primary

interior realities of either love or hatred.54 Distinguishing Kant's position from such

naturalized emotional presuppositions, Cohen embraces what he presents as Kant's

reinterpretation of the "Christian Ur-idea" of radical evil:

Kant has demonstrated his deep religiosity as well as his free ethical wisdom

in the interpretation that he gives to this Christian fundamental idea [i.e.,

radical evil]. Radical evil consists only in the reversal of the incentives

[Triebfeder] toward morality, which the human individual commits [literally:

of which the human individual becomes guilty, der der Mensch sich schuldig

macht]. Egoism is not the true incentive of human individuals. This belief in

problem of sin in relation to ethics, see Zank's comprehensive study, The Idea of Atonement in the
Philosophy ofHermann Cohen.
54
Cohen rejects any attempt that makes emotional dispositionsor any kind of interiority
central to ethics. Instead, Cohen considers Menschlichkeit (humaneness) and Freundlichkeit (kindness)
as key for ethical conduct, since they articulate benevolence toward others as an ethical principle, but
also disarticulate ethical conduct from emotional pathos and individual authenticity: "Sie
[Freundlichkeit] ist nicht bloss nicht Giite; dieser Anmassung bedarf sie nicht; sie ist auch nicht Liebe,
von dieser Zweideutigkeit bleibt sie frei" (ErW 627).

32
 evil, in the power of evil is the root of all evil in human individuals. (ErW

627)55

Cohen suggests that the only radical evil is the belief in evil as a real force that is

innate. Cohen lauds Kant for breaking with a metaphysical approach to ethics that

assumes evil as the natural and primary inclination of humans. Instead, Cohen as well

as Kant asserts the capacity to be moral as primary, but insists we become morally

guilty when we turn against our more primary disposition to be moral. Cohen parts

with Kant when he denounces the belief in evil by indicting the belief in a

metaphysical evil force as the primary evil, whichas I will show belowis different

from Kant's interpretation of radical evil as the choice to give in to our own self-love.

For Cohen, evil as such, even as an ineradicable temptation, does not exist. It is a

superstition. If we want to talk about radical evil, says Cohen, then what is radical is to

adhere to this superstition. Instead, Cohen advocates using evil only as an attribute to

describe and evaluate actions by which humans inflict suffering on others (see ErW

452). In its focus on inclinations and human nature, the discussion of evil only leads

into assumptions about nature, which Cohen rejects as contaminating ethical theory.

However, Cohen's own polemical efforts to excise all "naturalism" from ethics

are problematic as well, since he allows for no room to bring considerations on

psychology, emotions, and affects to bear on ethical theory. So rather than strictly

following him, I would like to focus on the theological quandary at stake. As I will

55
"Kant hat ebensosehr seine tiefe Religiositat, wie seine freie ethische Weisheit in der Deutung
bewiesen, die er diesem christlichen Urgedanken [des radikalen Bosen] gibt. Es sei die Umkehrung der
Triebfedern zur Sittlichkeit, der der Mensch sich schuldig macht, in der allein jenes radikale Bose
bestehe. Es ist nicht der Egoismus die wahre Triebfeder des Menschen. Dieser Glaube an das Bose, an
die Macht des Bosen ist die Wurzel des Bosen im Menschen" (ErW 627).

33
show through turning to the passage on radical evil in Kant that Cohen addresses,

Cohen's commentary helps us see how theological commitments cannot be so easily

declared as private matters. The central theological concepts are more than tenets to be

embraced or rejected ad libitum, because these concepts have systematic consequences

beyond individual religious practices. So while for Cohen original sin is

philosophically unacceptable because it introduces substantive claims about human

nature, for me the naturalism he abhors is not the main issue at stake. Rather, the key

for me lies in understanding the effects of theological underpinnings of

presuppositions and concepts in ethical theory, such as the human condition, even or

precisely where the theological dimensions are no longer clearly marked or

comprehensively embraced. By examining the Christian echoes in Kant, we can see

how the explicit separation of theology from ethics is subverted by the implications of

original sin for the framing of human nature.

Cohen praises Kant for breaking with original sin as a theory of moral guilt that

we inherit for Adam's sin. Kant rejects the indictment qua inheritance as morally

unacceptable, because such an assumption would mean that we were to be held

responsible for a transgression we did not commit ourselves. Although not indicating

he has done so, Cohen actually transforms Kant's own position here and thus lauds not

so much Kant's own argument but what it should have been according to Cohen.

However, the difference between Cohen's unmarked reinterpretation and Kant's own

position allows us to see how their differing approaches to original sin inflect their

understanding of freedom. While Cohen rejects original sin as "myth," Kant seeks to

34
salvage the concept. Kant's attempts reveal how remnants of theological

commitments implicitly inflect his concepts of freedom and ethical agency, because

his perspective on theology delimits his philosophical assumptions about human

nature.

Even though Kant breaks with original sin as an inherited moral fault, in Religion

within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, he attempts to salvage original sin for ethics

and theology by refiguring it in his interpretation of "radical evil." Kant continues to

conceive human nature as fundamentally and originally corrupt because of humans'

tendency toward self-love, and he frames ethical freedom and ethical life as the

constant struggle to overcome this evil.

Kant lays the groundwork for his articulation of human freedom in the Third

Antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason.5 This antinomy poses the question whether

there is only causation according to the laws of nature or whether there is additionally

causation out of freedom. For Kant, the critical solution to the antinomy relies on

understanding human nature as split or duplicated. Human nature is, on the one hand,

physical, such that it is subject to the laws of nature and driven by desires and

inclinations. On the other hand, human nature can and must transcend the realm of

physical necessity and desire, and this capacity for transcendence and acting outside

On Kant and original sin, see also Robert Merrihew Adams' "Original Sin: A Study in the
Interaction of Philosophy and Theology" in The Question of Christian Philosophy Today (ed. Francis J.
Ambrosio [New York: Fordham UP, 1999], 80-110).
57
Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (ed. Wilhelm Weischedel [Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1956]; Critique of Pure Reason, trans, and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood [Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1998]). For an explication of the third antinomy and its crucial importance for Kantian
moral philosophy, see Theodor Adorno's fourth lecture in his Probleme der Moralphilosophie (ed.
Thomas Schroder [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997], 54-68).

35
natural necessity is precisely the character of freedom. For Kant, the body, desires, and

inclinations are matters of physics and nature. Reason, and hence morality, must

transcend the natural realm and separate itself from contamination by materiality.

Nature itself, for Kant as well as for Cohen, is neither good nor evil in itself. In

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant argues that our tendency toward

self-love and the subsequent choice of self-love are what it means to become evil.

Human nature is characterized by a tendency toward degeneration. Accordingly, we

must cultivate our rationality, which predisposes us toward the good (see Boundaries

6465).58 Absent vigilant cultivation, we will always act on our degenerative desires.

For Kant "radical evil" means giving in to desire, desire that corrupts all our maxims

of action that follow. Kant explains,

Now if a propensity to this [subordination of morality to self-love] does lie in

human nature, then there is in the human being a natural propensity to evil;

and this propensity itself is morally evil, since it must ultimately be sought in

a free power of choice, and hence is imputable. This evil is radical, since it

corrupts the ground of all maxims; as a natural propensity, it is also not to be

extirpated through human forces. ... Yet it must equally be possible to

overcome this evil, for it founds in the human being as acting freely.

{Boundaries 59, emphasis added).

58
See Kant, Grenzen 693-694.
59
"Wenn nun ein Hang dazu in der menschlichen Natur liegt, so ist im Menschen selber ein
naturlicher Hang zum Bosen; und dieser Hang selver, weil er am Ende doch in einer fireien Willkur
gesucht werden muB, mithin zugerechnet werden kann, ist moralisch bose. Dieses Bose ist radikal, weil
es den Grund aller Maximen verdirbt; zugleich auch, als naturlicher Hang, durch menschliche Krafte
nicht zu vertilgen. ... [G]leichwohl muB er zu iibenviegen moglich sein, weil er in dem Menschen als

36
Kant's position here is complex. It is not the propensity for self-love that is

intrinsically evil. Rather, it is the choice not to overcome that propensity that

constitutes evil. Because we are free to choose, failing to choose restraint is a failure

for which we can be held responsible. Even if morality can never fully eradicate the

human tendency for self-love, morality attains its dignity in overcoming this natural

tendency. The remnant of original sin in Kant's understanding of freedom and

morality appears in his claim that both freedom and morality become manifest in

countering desire as the natural propensity to self-love.

"This evil" that is radical is not solely but mainly a natural propensity, so desires

and inclinations such as predisposing to give pleasure to the self are aligned with evil.

Kant does indeed clarify later on in the text that "[CJonsidered in themselves natural

inclinations are good, i.e. not reprehensible" {Boundaries 78, emphasis in the

original).60 While this endorsement of natural inclinations as "non-reprehensible" is

already rather lukewarm, the endorsement is subsequently revoked again, when Kant

states that inclinations are "opponents of the basic principles in general (Gegner der

Grundsdtze iiberhaupt)" (Boundaries 78 [Grenzen 710]), rather than an equally

potentially positive impulse for ethical action. So while Kant does not state that

desires as such are evil, desires as natural inclinations end up aligned with evil insofar

as they corrupt our maxims.

frei handelndem Wesen angetroffen wird" (Grenzen 686; emphasis in the original). On Kant's
interpretation of radical evil, see also Richard Bernstein's "Radical Evil: Kant at War with Himself in
his Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation ([Cambridge: Polity P, 2002], 11-46) and Christoph
Schulte's Radikal Bose: Die Karriere des Bosen von Kant bis Nietzsche (Munich: WilhelmFink, 1991).
60
"Natiirliche Neigungen sind, an sich selbst betrachtet, gut, d.i. unverwerflich" (Grenzen 710).

37
 Consequently, Kant's partial rejection and attempted transformation of the

doctrine of original sin amounts to its re-subscription, albeit a less obvious one, than

an outright endorsement of the theological doctrine. Original sin haunts Kant's

account of ethics, as he delimits our natural desires through this propensity toward evil

and then defines ethics and free choice in relation to this natural inclination. Unlike

Cohen's revised position of Kant that attempts to rid Kant of all metaphysical and

material remnants, Kant's own moral philosophy remains beholden to this theological

concept in its framing of the anthropological preconditions for ethics. Taking a

different stance from Cohen's, however, in my view the problem is not the material

presuppositions about human nature as such, but that Kant ends up with the body,

desires, and inclinations as naturally inimical to freedom and reason. In Groundwork

of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant admits that the rational determination of our

actions need not necessarily be opposed to our inclinations, but duty commanded by

reason and inclinations can go hand in hand.61 Yet there is no certitude about our

motivations in that case; such certitude about the ethical dignity of our motivation can

be attained only where duty collides with desire and we choose to overcome our

inclinations. Ethical freedom becomes most clearly defined in the moment when we

overcome our desires and inclinations. Even though there is no mention of the

theological concept of original sin in the Groundwork, it is implicitly reasserted in this

61
In the first section Kant explains that in the case in which duty and inclination go hand in hand,
the moral quality of the maxim is harder to determine. Hence the moral quality is most certain when we
are not inclined to do the action, but follow through with it nonetheless out of a sense of duty. Kant
finds the most striking example in the duty not to commit suicide: "[I]f an unfortunate man, strong of
soul and more indignant about his fate than despondent or dejected, wishes for death and yet preserves
his life without loving it, not from inclination or fear but from duty, then his maxim has moral content"
(Groundwork 11).

38
concept of ethical freedom and self-determination. Oriented by the concept original

sin, ethical life in Kant involves a continuous struggle to overcome the self. Yet in this

struggle there can be no certainty as to whether or when the "natural propensity to

evil" is truly overcome, since it cannot be eradicated by human power.

This negative definition of freedom against desires and inclinations has broad

implications for framing ethical theory, as this approach determines the good only ex

negativo by discovering and denouncing evil first ahead of concluding what the good

means. Cohen sharply criticizes this approach as detrimental to ethical theory, because

the positive questions of ethical goals end up a derivative interest. In the remainder of

this section, I will show how the question from which we begin an inquiry is crucial in

setting the trajectory for what kind of theoretical perspective will ensue. To engage

productively in reflections on ethical life and principles for action, Cohen insists we

must refuse to frame these inquiries by asking about the origins of evil and its relation

to freedom:

Usually one is primarily interested in the origin of evil; and hence one

understands the question of the freedom of causal thinking preferentially and

primarily as the question of voluntarily breaking the moral law [Sittengesetz].

That way the problem of freedom in self-determination turns into the

question, or rather into the interest in the production of evil. ... This is the

wrong starting point [Ausgang] for ethics, which in developing its

fundamental concepts rather has to start on every new level again only from

39
 the positive problem [i.e., the problem of the good as what ought to be done].

(ErW361)62

Cohen does not specify who this "one" is who engages in this ordinary interest in the

origin of evil. But he indicts such a focus on the metaphysical question of the origin of

evil as the wrong Ausgang (starting point and outcome) for ethical theory, which

inhibits a more constructive approach. He explains that if we begin by asking why

there is evil, we already commit ourselves to thinking human freedom of will

primarily in terms of willful wrongdoing. If our first interest is to understand what in

our nature enables us to do wrong and inflict injuries, then our ethical reflections end

up moving immediately to metaphysical questions. Ethical theory then turns from

analyzing the specific situations and circumstances, which includes understanding

specific wrongdoing, to understanding the nature of evil as the origin of all

wrongdoing. By focusing on the nature of evil, we fail to grasp the specific

problematic that we face in thinking about responsibility and accountability, because

the immediate inquiry into the nature of evil takes us directly to the metaphysical

question of the corruption of human nature instead of allowing us to focus on specific

actions. The causes of wrongdoing that ethical reflection needs to identify are

historically concrete actions rather than metaphysical conditions.

"Gewohnlich interessiert man sich in erster Linie fur den Ursprung des Bosen; und daher
versteht man die Frage nach der Freiheit des kausalen Denkens vorzugsweise und in erster Linie als die
der freiwilligen Verletzung des Sittengesetzes. So wird das Problem der Freiheit in der
Selbstbestimmung zu der Frage, vielmehr zu dem Interesse an der Erzeugung des Bosen. ... Dies ist ein
falscher Ausgang fur die Ethik, die vielmehr auf jeder neuen Stufe in der Entwickelung ihrer
Grundbegriffe stets nur von dem positiven Problem auszugehen hat" {ErW 361).

40
 The metaphysical query concerning the origin of evil not only detracts from an

examination of concrete and social circumstances, but also tends to situate and

implicitly justify suffering as a consequence of the original corruption of life in this

world. This approach leads to metaphysical justification of suffering and indicts those

who suffer as deserving of that. In Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism,

Cohen rejects the interest in the origin of evil because it approaches misfortune and

suffering presuming they are justly deserved:

[I]t is superficial for, and damaging to, morality, if a correspondence is

assumed between wickedness {Schlechtigkeit) and ill fortune (Ubel), or even

between virtue and well-being. If the question of the cause of ill fortune

(Ubel) should not be a theoretical question for ethics, much less can the

question of the origin of evil become a theoretical problem. (RR 19)63

Cohen argues that ethical philosophy ought not to take even a theoretical interest in

the question of why there is evil. Such inquiries inevitably also seek a reason to

explain suffering as justly deserved and would require that he "address the question to

my fellowman, whom I would have to make into a carrier of evil" (RR19).M Apart

from a practical concern of the priority of addressing the circumstances that inflict

suffering, Cohen's prohibition against an interest in the origin of evil is a theological

one. No individual is to be turned into a "carrier of evil," because human nature is and

63
"[E]s ist oberflachlich und die Sittlichkeit schadigend, wenn eine Korrespondenz angenommen
wird zwischen der Schlechtigkeit und dem Ubel, wie zwischen der Tugend und der Wohlfahrt.
Wenngleich es fur die Ethik keine theoretische Frage sein darf, worin das Ubel seinen Grand habe, so
darf erst recht nicht die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Bosen zu einem theoretischen Problem werden"
(RV22).
64
"Denn das theoretische Interesse wiirde ja diese Frage [nach dem Ursprung des Bosen]
unmittelbar auf den Mitmenschen richten, den ich zum Trager des Bosenmachen mtifite" (RV22).

41
continues to be God's creation and human nature simply exists and is capable of

failing, but this condition itself makes us not prone to evil. All the capacity to fail

indicates is that there is a certain amount of freedom to act and make decisions. For

Cohen, human nature as such is affirmed by God qua the act of creation. It is the

situation from which we act, and our ethical deliberations must therefore focus on

justice, individual and collective well-being, and social and individual change to

alleviate rather than increase suffering.

The ethical problem at stake is that original sin sets up and leads into a theodical

discourse.65 Even though theodicy focuses on the question of suffering, it nonetheless

suspends the ethical (in the sense of practical) concerns about suffering in favor of

metaphysical questions. If we only understand wrongdoing as the manifestation of

metaphysical corruption, suffering is always potentially justified as the consequence of

our natural condition and freedom becomes reduced to the capacity to act against this

corrupt nature. Consequently, ethical reflection focuses on how we must orient our

actions to restrain our tendencies and urges, which we must within this view perceive

as human as well as corrupt. Ethics then becomes strictly an exercise in curbing

impulses of individuals, instead of guiding us to take broader systemic and historical

perspectives into view and to scrutinize the social conditions in which we live and act.

Paul Ricoeur makes a case for understanding the theodical question as ineradicable challenge to
philosophy and theology in his Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology (trans. John Bowden
[London: Continuum, 2004]).

42
Sinful Salvation

Kant's attempt to reinterpret original sin reveals how this theological concept

plays out in his positioning of human nature against human freedom and agency.

Building on the explicitly metaethical implications of the previous section, in this

section I would like to consider how the focus on original sin is tied to problematic

ways of framing the role of religion more generally. If original sin situates ethics as

mainly an effort to curb the effects of our corrupt nature in this world, this same

concept of original sin focuses the role of religion on our salvation from this world. In

this argument, I will first turn to Cohen's analysis in Ethics of Pure Will, which

elaborates how the concept of original sin in Christian theology denies human agency

in relation to our salvation. Then I will attend to the conclusion that Cohen draws from

how this inescapable guilt renders the human condition as the tragic situation of this

life, but also promises salvation and the after-life precisely on the basis of our this-

worldly inability to earn our salvation. Using Cohen's analyses, I will argue that the

theological consequences of original sin position religion problematically, because

original sin introduces a focus on salvation from what ethics cannot help us

accomplish, namely, salvation from this life.66 In turn, individual salvation becomes

the central concern in this life, so that ethical concerns are narrowed onto or at least

always mediated by questions pertaining to one's individual fate. This constellation

sediments into a very limited version of ethical concerns and agency in this world that

66
On this conjunction between Kantian ethics and its denigration of human finitude in this world,
see also the chapter "1st das Reich des Menschen von dieser Welt?" (120-129) in Deuber-Mankowsky's
Derfriihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen. Deuber-Mankowsky elaborates as well in this chapter
on the connection between Kant and Kierkegaard through their reinterpretations of original sin as
accounts of the human condition.

43
turns on accepting the situation of our earthly life as fundamentally tragic and

redeemable only by hoping for a life after this one.

Cohen's analysis begins akin to Feuerbach's, Marx', Nietzsche's, or Freud's

critiques of religion. Like those accounts, Cohen's indicts theological concepts as a

psychological defense mechanism in response to human misery and to human fear of

death. Cohen criticizes this psychologism as a mythical motif and extends this

criticism to Christianity for taking up this mythical element, which renders the

doctrine of individual salvation central to Christianity:

This is the most natural question of the human individual, his most natural

suffering: that his existence will end. ... Christianity took up this mythical

fundamental motif, when it addressed itself to the heathens. The fear of the

end, the terror of death is the heathen's mene tekel. ... When Paul makes

salvation [Erlosung] dependent on Christ's resurrection, he also wants to

guarantee the afterlife; salvation from the severe fear of the earthly, from

perdition in death [vom Untergange im Tode]. (ErW 305)68

See Ludwig Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentums (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1969); Karl
Marx's introduction to "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie" (Marx-Engels Werke: Band 1
[Berlin: Dietz, 1961], 378-391); Sigmund Freud's "Die Zukunft einer Illusion" (Gesammelte Werke,
Band 14: Werke aus den Jahren 1925-1931 [Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1948], 323-
380); Friedrich Nietzsche's Jenseits von Gut undBose: Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft and Zur
Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift (appearing together in Jenseits von Gut und Bose; Zur
Genealogie der Moral: Kritische Studienausgabe [Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1999]), translated
respectively as Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (trans. R. J. Hollingdale
[Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973]) and On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic (trans. Walter
Kaufman and R. J. Hollingsdale, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, ed. Walter Kaufman
[New York: Vintage-Random House, 1967], 13-163).
68
"Das ist die nattirlichste Frage des Menschen, sein natiirlichstes Leiden, dass sein Dasein ein
Ende nimmt. ... An dieses mythische Grundmotiv hat das Christentum angeknupft, als es den Heiden
sich mitteilte. Die Angst vor dem Ende, der Schrecken des Todes ist das Mene tekel des Heiden. ...
Wenn Paulus die Erlosung von der Auferstehung Christi abhangig macht, so will er damit auch das

44
Humans invent religion not only as an escape from our wretched earthly situation, but

also to deal with the prospect of death. Introducing Christ as the savior who guarantees

salvation does not result in a break with the mythical focus on the fear of death,

because the salvation that Christianity offers seeks to ensure eternal life after death.69

This context of fear, salvation, and its guarantee is also the context within which

Cohen situates original sin theologically. However, original sin also shifts the grounds

of the psychological account of salvation as an invention to compensate for the fear

that death means the absolute end of our existence.

Original sin invests the human condition a with moral valence in describing

human nature as necessarily sinful. Cohen offers that paradoxically it is precisely this

sinful irredeemable condition of life in this world that turns out to be the condition for

salvation. As Cohen explains:

The Christian doctrine of God is in its specific base a doctrine of salvation

[doctrine of redemption, Erlosungslehre]. For it the concept of the human

means the concept of sin. Salvation demands [postulates, forderi] sin and

guilt [fault, Schuld]; more specifically, it demands original sin, which

excludes freedom. (ErW 2S7).70

Fortleben verburgen; die Erlosung von der schweren Angst des Irdischen, vom Untergange im Tode"
(ErW 305).
69
There are alternative readings of Christian theology possible that do not focus on life after
death; for instance, for a critical reading of the Gospel of Mark and the kingdom of God, see Elisabeth
Schussler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins
(New York: Crossroad, 1994).
70
"Die christliche Gotteslehre ist in ihrem spezifischen Grande Erlosungslehre. Der Begriff des
Menschen bedeutet ihr den Begriff der Sunde. Die Erlosung fordert die Sttnde und die Schuld; und zwar
die Erbsiinde, welche die Freiheit ausschliesst" {ErW 287). The German Erlosung can mean "salvation"
as well as "redemption"; it seems to me that when Cohen mentions Erlosung in the Christian context, it
usually carries the connotation of salvation.

45
Cohen identifies salvation as the heart of the Christian doctrine of God. Because this

salvation as effected solely through God's grace, the doctrine of salvation requires

sinful, guilty human creatures in need of deliverance. The certainty of salvation

implies and demands an equal certainty of sin and guilt in this life. Cohen holds that

the postulate of guilt goes so deep that it is opposed to freedom: if there were freedom

prior to sin, then human salvation would not be not utterly dependent on God's grace,

but could at some point have been accomplished by the individual on her own. The

doctrine of God and salvation requires that we abdicate belief in freedom as

effectively participating in human salvation.

The guilt introduced through original sin excludes freedom in the sense that this

guilt or fault cannot be tracked back to an act that one committed oneself. As original,

primordial Schuld this guilt is not discovered as an empirical, psychological condition

but constitutes a pre-empirical moral determination.71 Cohen points out that original

sin puts forth a "concept of the human," which means that the indictment of the human

as corrupt refers not to any individual person but to humanity in general.72 The

pervasiveness and super-individual omnipresence of this original guilt also imply a

strangely innocent guilt. We cannot escape our natural deprivation that renders us

fundamentally guilty, yet we also did not cause this situation ourselves. So original sin

delimits the human condition in a way that not only produces a reduced concept of

For an examination of the interrelation between sin and guilt and their symbolism, see the
chapters "Sin" (47-99) and "Guilt" (100-150) in Paul Ricoeur's The Symbolism of Evil (trans. Emerson
Buchanan [Boston: Beacon P, 1967]).
72
Holzhey ("Ethik als Lehre vom Menschen") demonstrates the central role of the concept of the
human and humanity in Cohen's ethics.

46
human agency, but does so by presenting human life emphatically as a tragic

condition:

Through the denial of freedom the awareness of guilt [Bewusstsein der

Schuld] is deepened to the ethical fundamental concept of the human. Guilt

becomes, comparable to the tragic motif, the inheritance, the fate of

humankind. And salvation [Erlosung] thus becomes the solution [Losung] of

the tragic conflict in the concept of the human. (ErW 288)n

The precondition of one's salvation is denying one's own capacity to act and account

for oneself; sinfulness is a condition prior to one's choosing or doing. However, as

Cohen explains, original sin is more than a doctrine or description of anthropological

tenets of Christianity. Cohen seems to mark a transition from original sin as natural

corruption to an ethical awareness of guilt. This deepening of consciousness to

conscience has practical consequences such as compelling an ethos of humility, since

we must acknowledge the intractability of our human condition as fundamentally

corrupt. At the same time, depravity and guilt render human life fated, insofar as

human life is inevitably bound to and attesting to the depraved natural condition.

Hence neither one's ethos nor one's actions matter for salvation. Still, this perspective

on original sin raises the stakes of this fated condition, insofar as this condition is tied

to and becomes in and of itself the basis for salvation.

"In der Leugnung der Freiheit vertieft sich daher das Bewusstsein der Schuld zu dem sittlichen
Grundbegriffe des Menschen. Sie wird, dem tragischen Motiv vergleichbar, das Erbteil, das Schicksal
der Menschheit. Und die Erlosung wird so zur Losung des tragischen Konflikts im Begriffe des
Menschen" (ErW 288).

47
 Guilt as the inevitable human condition finds its resolution only in salvation. This

resolution, however, raises serious ethical dilemmas. If being human is marked by sin

and guilt, then salvation from sin and guilt means precisely to be saved from being

human. As such, this promise of salvation vacates any imperative to address human

needs and human suffering in this world. Cohen calls this inescapable guilt of

Christian doctrine a "tragic conflict" and likens the drama of salvation to a tragedy,

but he does so to distinguish the Christian drama of original sinor rather, in his

words "mythical thinking"from ancient tragic drama:

In the drama the hero has to act as himself in happy situations as much as in

misfortunate ones, not just as the offspring of his ancestors; in religion,

however, the human remains always only the old Adam who has to surrender

his freedom, if he wants to gain his salvation. (ErW 288)74

In Ethics of Pure Will, Cohen praises ancient tragedy as the origin of the individual as

an agent, because in it the individual hero rises up against fate and the gods. While the

hero dies, the tragic death also marks a critical opening for a new beginning for the

community and prepares a new order and new laws.75 The hero's fate is inescapable

"Im Drama muss der Held im Guten, wie im Schlimmen, zugleich doch immer als er selbst
handeln, nicht lediglich als der Spross seiner Ahnen; in der Religion dagegen bleibt der Mensch stets
nur der alte Adam, der seine Freiheit daran geben muss, wenn er seine Erlosung erwerben will" (ErW
288).
75
For Cohen the decisive distinction is that through tragedy the individual emerges as a willing
being: "Although the hero is a creature of fate, he does not remain one. By making himself an other, he
produces the problem of the will. The will enters against fate (Der Held ist zwar ein Geschopf des
Schicksals; aber er bleibt dies nicht. Und indem er sich zu einem Andern macht, so erzeugt er das
Problem des Willens. Der Wille tritt gegen das Schicksal auf)" (ErW 110-111).75 The will appears on
the stage in the character of the hero who does not readily submit to fate, but raises up against it. For
Cohen, tragedy introduces the will only as a problem. The will eventually is not sustainable within the
tragic framework, because of the arrest of the will in its transformation in the heroic drama. What is
remarkable in Cohen's origin scene of ethics is that the will is not circumscribed as a problem of doing

48
for the individual hero, but it is a fate that is specific to the hero and his or her

ancestry, not a fate incurred by the human condition as such. For Cohen understanding

the uniqueness and historical, rather than general anthropological character of the

hero's fate makes progress possible. Consequently, Cohen suggests that the ethical

meaning of Greek tragedy lies in understanding the hero's agentic individuality as it

emerges in recalcitrant defiance of the pantheon. Whereas ancient tragedy singles out

the hero as an individual and agent, the mythic tragedy of original sin and depravity

refers each individual back to a generalized human "nature." The ancient tragic hero's

catharsis arrives as much through, as in spite of, the insolent yet fated acts of the hero.

In contrast, originally sinful individuals are entangled in sin qua human and qua

descendants of Adam, and the tragic conflict in original sin reaches its pinnacle in the

renunciation of freedom in order to receive salvation. Not only is guilt inevitable, but

it can be resolved only through the surrender of individual agency. The inevitable guilt

good and pursuing the right actions. Instead, the will and ethics arrive through a moment of resistance
against life as controlled by unknowable higher orders of fate. The will as well as the concept of the
individual dawns in the refusal to succumb to life as a playbill of unknowable yet fixed rationalities.
Benjamin takes up Cohen's analysis of ancient tragedy in "Fate and Character" and then more
extensively in The Origin of German Tragic Drama without indicating that his analysis stems from
Cohen's reading. In "Fate and Character," Benjamin argues: "[I]n tragedy pagan man becomes aware
that he is better than his gods, but the realization robs him of speech, it [speech] remains dull (dumpf).
... There is no mention of the 'moral world order' being restored; instead the moral human, still dumb,
not yet of age (unmiindig)as such he is called a herowants to raise himself in experiencing that
tormented world. The paradox of the birth of genius in moral speechlessness, moral infantility, is the
sublimity of tragedy" ("Fate" 203). In the representation of the tragic hero, fate stops being a coherent
worldview as the question of the justice and injustice of what is happening is thematized for a first time.
The hero's plight in the tragic drama becomes the occasion that calls into question justice as retribution
and as an exchange between guilt and punitive atonement. As Benjamin elaborates in The Origin of
German Tragic Drama, the death of the tragic hero fractures the old order, but the new ethical order
only emerges subsequently: "Der tragische Tod hat die Doppelbedeutung, das alte Recht der
Olympischen zu entkraften und als den Erstling einer neuen Menschheitsernte dem unbekannten Gott
den Helden hinzugeben" (Trauerspiel 285-286). Differently from the drama of original sin, the fate of
the tragic hero is not conditioned by general human nature, but by his individual character and heritage
(see Trauerspiel 284-289; Origin 106-110).

49
and its tragic manifestations are in the end only the stage for the resolution in which

salvation is guaranteed by the surrender of personal freedom. This construction of

earthly life as tragic deflects attention from the concrete, singular conflicts that in

ancient tragedy serve as the fateful principle that governs actions and events in the

hero's life.

The concept of original sin denies that humans are capable of ensuring their

salvation and afterlife, but at the same time it renders salvation and the afterlife as the

fundamental focus and concern for life in this world. Cohen denounces this fear for

proposing a psychological starting point for theology and ethics. Leaving Cohen's

problematic relationship to psychology in specific and materialism more generally

aside, I would suggest that the problem rather is that this framing of life compels an

evasion of the unmanageable threats of loss and death by rendering death as the

question of life after death. In Ethics of Pure Will, Cohen suggests that mythical

thinking driven by fear about the future narrows the perspective of what matters in life

onto the individual:

Mythology is propelled by the individual's fear; not so much by the fear

about his sin, but by the fear about his fate, at best due to his sin. Always,

however, it is the existence of the individual, whether it may have an end;

and what will become of the individual in the end despite everything, so that

the end is not actually an end. {ErW46)76

76
"Die Mythologie wird von der Angst des Individuums getrieben, nicht sowohl um seine Sunde,
sondern um sein Schicksal, bestenfalls infolge seiner Sunde. Immer aber bleibt es das Dasein des
Individuums, ob es ein Ende habe; und was an diesem Ende dennoch aus ihm wird, sodass das Ende
doch eigentlich kein Ende sei" (ErW 46).

50
Mythical thinking depends on fear. Without fear, mythical explanations that explain

life as sinful and hence fated would be neither relevant nor persuasive; one might

simply ignore them. Cohen emphasizes that the sinful and guilty state in itself is not

the primary occasion for the fear of the individual; rather, the main concern becomes

the future, the individual's fate, whether there is or is not a life after this. The core

experience is one's lack of control over the future and consequent fear. Sin, insofar as

it may have consequences in the future, is not entirely unrelated to fears about the

future, but it seems to be a secondary construct or expression of the underlying fear

about the individual's death. Life after death, which translates as considerations of life

in this world, becomes the primary horizon for the concerns about individual

existence.

With Cohen's suggestion that sin is a belated explanation that helps one cope with

fear about the future as well as about death, it becomes possible to see how the

acceptance of human nature as sinful and fated in this world allows for a peculiar

optimism about the future. Counter-intuitively, a belief in sin aids holding the fear of

death as the absolute end in check, because original sin and the ensuing finitude

become the condition for salvation by a saviorif not in this world, then in the next.

The theological concept of original sin now becomes the cause of suffering and the

Like Cohen, Benjamin considers fear and its proliferation as central to mythical thinking,
against which he sets apart the ethical dimension of theology. In "Critique of Violence," Benjamin
distinguishes between legal precepts and the divine commandment, insofar as the commandment guides
but does not compel compliance by threatening punishment. For an interpretation of the relationship
among the commandment, non-violence, and ethics in Benjamin, see Judith Butler's "Critique,
Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence'" (Political Theologies: Public
Religions in a Post-Secular World, ed. Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan [New York: Fordham
UP, 2006], 201-219).

51
determinant of one's future in this world. In turn, by denigrating the present earthly

world, this concept of original sin also implies that the fear about life's vicissitudes

and its end in this world is less important than eternal salvation and so the real fear is

displaced onto eternity. At the same time, present suffering always retains a promise

of atonement. This eternal perspective allows for a peculiar optimism and faith in the

immediate future that need not be substantiated by current experiences, because the

fulfillment is not only postponed, but actually guaranteed, beyond this world.7

The problem for ethics is that if the primary question about human existence

becomes the afterlife, then ethical concerns of how to live well and how to live well

with others are reduced to concerns with salvation, damnation, and the meaningfulness

of one's life. Considerations about others and for the circumstances and environment

in which one lives become secondary considerations, relevant only insofar as they

matter to the salvation of the individual. In other words, ethical questions become

secondary to and important only through theologically charged existential concerns.

Instead, Cohen argues for limiting any concerns with the concept of the human:

"Ethics should be about the concept of the human insofar as this concept is grounded

in the human's will and action; ethics should not be about the fate of the individual"

(ErW 47). 79 As long as we are bound by a concept of the human as marked by an

originally corrupt nature, we are to fear damnation, all while having a hope for

78
As I mention in the Introduction, Kantian ethics is built on this displacement by shifting from
Gliickseligkeit (blissfiilness) to Gliickswiirdigkeit (worthy of happiness), detracting from a structural
analysis of circumstances under which suffering affects what makes individual's worthy of happiness,
especially of a happiness whose fulfillment must be postulated beyond this world, leading to the
hypothesis for God that practical reason is compelled to make.
79
"Um den Begriff des Menschen, sofern er in seinem Willen und seiner Handlung gegriindet ist,
soil es sich in der Ethik handeln; nicht aber um das Schicksal des Individuums" (ErW 47).

52
salvation from being human after death. The only future that such a theological

imagination knows is one of salvation or damnation of the individual after death. Yet,

as Cohen insists, ethical agency depends on an open future within our lifetime and for

concerns for social justice and well-being that should take precedence over individual

salvation and individual praiseworthiness.

The lingering specter of original sin not only delimits human freedom as a

struggle with human nature, but the concept of original sin also bespeaks a limited role

that remains explicitly and exclusively for religion. Religion within the confines of

this approach becomes figured as a necessary implication of ethics, because ethics

cannot redeem us: it can only mitigate our corrupt condition and evil in this world.

Religion under these circumstances then becomes important because it promises a

redemption that ethics cannot offer since ethics is limited to averting the worst in our

lives in this imperfect world. In turn, however, if redemption is seen as the final rescue

from this world and imperfection and evil in this world, then redemptionand

religion by implicationbecomes a negation of this world and human nature in this

world.

Fated Time, Penitent Demise

The theological concept of original sin gives us a vision of this world as

irredeemably corrupt and implies that redemption means overcoming both human

nature and this life. In this section I would like to build on the insight from the

previous one, in which I elaborated on Cohen's work to show how original sin is

53
ethically problematic because it provides a framework that justifies suffering as caused

by our post-lapsarian imperfection that results from the introduction of evil into world

because of the Fall. Especially in Ethics of Pure Will, Cohen criticizes the resulting

framework of experience that he calls mythical for its perspective on life as doomed to

misfortune and suffering and its retributive logic. His main concern is that this

mythical perspective eclipses agency, since the fallen human condition becomes the

overriding decisive condition that renders causality out of freedom meaningless.

Moreover, Cohen rejects the ensuing focus of mythical thinking on individual fears

and desires for guarantees that mitigate the prospect that our death might be the

absolute end of our existence. While Cohen objects to the psychological foundation

that original sin inscribes into theology and philosophy, I have argued that the problem

is not the psychological question as such, but the existential focus on individual

salvation as well as the theological commitments to original sin and salvation as a

release from this world that stoke the very fear to which they purport to offer answers.

It seems clear to me that Benjamin takes up the conceptual framework of myth

and fate from Cohen. Without always marking those appropriations, I will begin this

section by briefly examining the central passage on myth and its fateful logic of doom

in Cohen's Ethics of Pure Will. I will then turn to Benjamin's early studies, in

particular the essay "Fate and Character," to show how he shifts perspective away

from Cohen's focus on the absence of agency. Rather than examining the role (or lack

thereof) of agency, Benjamin's critique centers on the "inauthentic" temporality of life

54
that the concept of original sin stokes. This temporality is inauthentic because it

frames the time of life as conditioned and haunted by a primordial fault or debt that

manifests itself recurrently in every subsequent situation and experience. Through my

reading of Benjamin, I will argue that this temporality inhibits ethics because it

produces an "arrested" time that refuses to allow the present and past to pass away.

Moreover, this constitutive indebtedness dehistoricizes the framework through which

we are to interpret situations and experiences as ethically meaningful.

In Ethics of Pure Will, Cohen defines and criticizes myth for abdicating agency

and thus inhibiting ethical life because myth offers a perspective under which life

appears as entirely fated. Mythical thinking apprehends events and experiences as

caused and explainable by guilt and evil. In so doing, it simultaneously inscribes

causal connections between events while at the same time it displaces the origin of the

very causality it invokes. In a pivotal passage, Cohen explains what he takes to be the

At this point I am somewhat simplifying the differences between Cohen and Benjamin. I will
return to Cohen's understanding of ethical agency and its dependence on messianic temporality in
Chapter 3. Cohen does indeed consider the understanding of temporality as a crucial difference between
myth and theology. The problem of mythical thinking for him is that it is focused on the past, whereas
messianism introduces a futurity that poses the ethical task of social justice, but that also enables ethical
agency because this future is open and allows for continuous new beginnings. Benjamin differs in this
from Cohen, since he rejects the opposition between past and future orientations in favor of
distinguishing between the ahistorical time of myth and the historical time of messianism. Ethical and
rational agency are not the primary concern for Benjamin; instead, the questions of history, experience,
and their transience become central to his understanding of messianism. Benjamin disagrees with
Cohen on the role of the past, insisting that attention to the past does not mean that futurity has been
eclipsed. Rather, only if there is a past and the past can pass away can for Benjamin there be a future.
Unlike in Cohen, the messianic futurity in Benjamin is always "weak" and fleeting, but nonetheless
commanding. I will turn to Benjamin's appropriation of messianism at length in Chapter 4. For
accounts of Cohen's messianism, see especially Pierfrancesco Fiorato's Geschichtliche Ewigkeit:
Ursprung und Zeitlichkeit in der Philosophie Hermann Cohens (Wurzburg: Konigshausen u. Neumann,
1993) and Andrea Poma's essays "Messianism and History" {The Critical Philosophy of Hermann
Cohen, trans. John Denton [Albany: SU of New York P, 1997], 235-261) and "Suffering and Non-
Eschatological Messianism in Hermann Cohen" {Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism, ed. Reinier Munk
[Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005], 413-428).

55
mythical logic of fate and doom. The wording in German is peculiar and difficult to

render adequately into English. The original text reads:

Den Grundbegriff, der den eigentlichen Kern des Schicksals bildet, haben

wir im Begrijfe der Schuldzu erkennen. ... Das Bose ist die Schuld. Und die

Schuld ist das Verhdngnis. Der Mythos nimmt an dieser Verbindung keinen

Anstoss. (ErW 363)

Literally this passage translates as "We have to recognize in Schuld [guilt, fault, debt]

the fundamental concept of fate.... The evil is Schuld. And Schuld is the doom (ist das

Verhdngnis). Myth does not take offense with this connection." Apart from the

multivalent meanings of guilt, fault, and debt that the German Schuld implies, the

passage is difficult to translate because Cohen does not elaborate on the predications

he offers. Moreover, while the collective subject ("we") is to recognize Schuld as the

core principle of fate, "myth" finally takes over as the subject that fails to assess the

fateful logic critically. In his prose Cohen seems to mirror the absenting of subjectivity

that he characterizes as part of mythical thinking itself. As Cohen briefly mentions in

the lines that follow, this Schuld, which is natural and inherited, is also the Verhdngnis

that makes one's life fated, i.e., incurs the lightning strikes of fate. So myth works as a

kind of logic that inscribes causal connections between events and experiences and

predetermines the conclusion that we have to draw, namely, that our constitutive guilt

manifests itself fatefully in all missteps that we take and all misfortune that we suffer.

Life under the aegis of fate renders freedom primarily into the capacity to misstep,

where the misstep tempts fate. Fate, rather than individual or collective decisions and

56
actions, propels life. Our fate becomes discemable only insofar as bad things happen,

which then are interpreted as manifestations of the evil in our lives. This narrowing or

hollowing out of freedom means that any misstep is perceived as the implicit

consequence of our fallen nature. So under the auspices of original guilt freedom is

nothing but the freedom to fail, so that the concrete situationally incurred guilt will

reveal this more original guilt.

Benjamin's reflections, particularly in his early work, on the mythical view of fate

follow similar lines as Cohen's, insofar as they both present myth as a kind of thinking

and perspective whose metaphysical commitments are inimical to religion and ethics.

During the time when he was studying Cohen's work, especially Ethics of Pure Will,

Benjamin wrote the brief essay "Fate and Character," which is a preparatory study that

he subsequently worked into the "Critique of Violence" and The Origin of German

Tragic Drama.

In "Fate and Character," Benjamin argues against both fateunderstood as the

predetermination of life and history by intangible powersand characterunderstood

as the inner truth or being of a person, which thoroughly determines one's thoughts

and actions. He contends that both of these concepts do not belong to the spheres of

religion and ethics, but rather to myth. For him the concept of life as fated is

81
As Max Pensky has observed in Melancholy Dialectics: Walter Benjamin and the Play of
Mourning (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1993), the term Trauerspiel should be translated as
"mourning play" or "sorrow play" rather than as "tragic drama," because Benjamin sets the baroque
Trauerspiel precisely apart from tragic drama as a historically specific reworking of tragedy into
melancholia and unending mourning. Unlike there is in the ancient tragedy, there is no catharsis internal
to the mourning play or to its history in the baroque, because the mourning play is profoundly Christian
in its world view and imagines the unredeemed state of life in this world as universal, not individual to
the hero or his family.

57
exemplified in the interpretation of misfortune as punishment: "Thus, to mention a

typical case, fate-imposed misfortune {schicksalhaftes Ungliick) is seen as the

response of God or the gods to a religious offense" ("Fate" 203).82 "Fate-imposed

misfortune" and unhappiness result from sinning against the gods. Under the auspices

of fate, there are no misfortunes, only punishments for transgressions. But, Benjamin

continues, when misfortunes are interpreted as punishment, suffering atones for the

transgression. So fate imposes a rationale on misfortune and suffering and so causes

misfortune and suffering, on the one hand, to be justified retroactively and, on the

other hand, invested with theological importance.

This framework of fate undergirds the more specific effects of original sin as

framing life fatefully as the unfolding of events driven by this originary, corrupt

human condition. Benjamin clarifies this doomed situation of life as the heart of fate in

The Origin of German Tragic Drama. He argues that fate is not directly concerned

with specific sins and even less with concrete wrongdoing, but is instead linked with

an ongoing state of guilt. The theoretical commitments framing human nature are

relevant for Benjamin because of the ensuing closed, fateful temporality:

The core of the notion of fate is ... the conviction that guilt (Schuld) (which

in this context always means creaturely guiltin Christian terms: original

sin, not moral transgression on the part of the agent) however fleeting its

manifestation, unleashes causality as the instrument of the irresistibly

"So wird, um den typischen Fall zu nennen, das schicksalhafte Ungliick als die Antwort Gottes
oder der Getter auf religiose Verschuldung angesehen" ("Schicksal" 173).

58
 unfolding fatality. Fate is the entelechy of events within the field of guilt.

(Origin 129, translation slightly adapted)83

Fate under the auspices of original sin becomes the inevitability of the pre-existing,

natural guilt, proving itself in misfortunes over and over again. These misfortunes as

well as this guilt are neither accidental events nor freely caused. There is no particular

transgression that causes a specific reaction; neither the guilt nor the ensuing events

could have been avoided. Instead, guilt, Benjamin explains, is the condition within

which fate-imposed misfortune unfolds and realizes itself. Everything that happens

can thus retroactively be understood as an effect and tied to a causecreaturely guilt

(kreatiirliche Schuld)that was nonetheless beyond one's control. As a natural

condition, this guilt is inevitable, impossible to escape, and always already operative.

At the same time, this guilt is intangible and merely looms until one's sufferings

begin. Once suffering begins, guilt becomes the causal explanation for every event and

experience.

Original sin compels a fated outlook on life, since all misfortune figures as a

response to our deficient and depraved human condition. I suggested earlier in this

chapter that the fated interpretation of misfortunes is ethically problematic because

this interpretation averts attention from the concrete circumstances of suffering. At

this point, I would like to address a different ethical problem that the concept of

original sin poses, since it frames life as such and in particular its finitude as responses

83
"Kern des Schicksalsgedankens ist ... die Uberzeugung, dafi Schuld, als welche in diesem
Zusammenhang stets kreatiirliche Schuldchristlich: die Erbsiinde, nicht sittliche Verfehlung des
Handelnden ist, durch eine wie auch immer fluchtige Manifestierung Kausalitat als Instrument der
unaufhaltsam sich entrollenden Fatalitat auslost. Schicksal ist die Entelechie des Geschehens im Felde
der Schuld" (Trauerspiel 308).

59
to the originary debt that our natural existence incurs. Transience and demise hence

register as penance, which is problematic for ethics, since within this view all

suffering bound to bodily demise appears as dues to be rendered and even attains a

spiritual value. As Benjamin suggests in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, under

the aegis of fate, death turns into the final payment for life: "Fate coasts towards death.

Death is not punishment but atonement, an expression of how the verschuldetes

[guilty, indebted] life is in the bondage of the law of natural life {ein Ausdruck der

Verfallenheit des verschuldeten Lebens an das Gesetz des naturlichen)" {Origin 131,

translation adapted).84 The difference that Benjamin introduces here between

punishment and atonement seems at first quite clear, yet at a second look, this

difference turns out more complicated to grasp and Benjamin does not help us with

further clarifications. It seems to me that punishment sanctions a transgression and

puts the emphasis on the norms or laws that have been breached. Punishments are

bound by a logic of retributive exchange, as suffering the punishment is also payback

for a debt of sorts that the transgressor incurs against the law or order after breaching

it. Conversely, atonement introduces a different, namely, explicitly religious and

theological register and so adds a different level of meaning to the punishment.

Atonement implies that suffering the punishment purifies the transgressor. So the

terminology of atonement shifts the focus from the order that was breached to the

guilty subject and the suffering of the punishment becomes a salutary sacrifice for the

incurred guilt. Death as atonement figures life as guilty, and more specifically, guilty

84
"Schicksal rollt dem Tode zu. Er ist nicht Strafe sondera Siihne, ein Ausdruck der Verfallenheit
des verschuldeten Lebens an das Gesetz des natiirlichen" (Trauerspiel 310).

60
insofar as it "fell for the law of natural life," as Benjamin's formulation puts it. As

Benjamin's readings of allegory, melancholy, and the morbidity of the baroque show

in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, the law of natural life that he is concerned

with is that natural life means to live by dying away. In other words, transience is the

law of natural life. However, when transience becomes the sign of natural guiltas

human mortality did after the Fallthen death has to atone for this guilt. In my

estimation, Benjamin criticizes this interpretation of life and death as fated to which

the concept of original sin gives rise. This interpretation of death as atonement sets up

a fated perspective on life, because not only is natural life itself now prejudged as

inescapably guilty and indebted, but transience becomes over-determined as

penance. Consequently, suffering and misfortune and, more generally, the

In The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin calls into question the ways in which the
Christian doctrine of original sin merges with the Greek conception of time and existence based on the
sentence of Anaximander, which casts all becoming and perishing in time as a matter of indebtedness
and atonement. The sentence of Anaximander, in other words, inscribes into being and history not a
moral but rather a pre-moral debt of existence. This pre-moral indebtedness then becomes the condition
of possibility for moral fault and guilt, but in return all decay and perishing in time is payment for this
debt. On this link see also Werner Hamacher's essay "Guilt History: Benjamin's Sketch 'Capitalism as
Religion'" {Diacritics 323-4 [2002], 81-106). Hamacher examines Benjamin's messianism as a
critical alternative to this temporality of penance and concludes that time is moral insofar as there is a
deferral of judgment. Hamacher's own argument is that time becomes truly historical and ethical "as
delay, impediment, and ultimately the prevention of consequences, successions, and descendancies in
the moral world; it is the liberation of ethical singularity" (104-105). I agree with Hamacher that
Benjamin offers a critique of the economy of debt and guilt through introducing messianism as an
interruptive temporality. But it is not clear whether for Hamacher eventually ethical singularity is
possible only when successions and consequences are eradicated and judgment is fully undone. It seems
indisputable that ethics depends on cycles of debt and guilt being undone and on judgments that do not
reiterate cycles of guilt and punishment. At the same time, it seems to me that deferral of judgment
would need situational specification and historical and contextual grounding. The suspension of
judgment can equally create a limbo of being neither guilty nor innocent. In my estimation, there is a
sense of judgment in Benjamin that decides and by so doing releases the past, as for instance, in his
commentary implies when he discusses the decision with which the tragedy concludes. Benjamin
argues that tragedy concludes with a redemptive, even if only tentative, decision: "Whereas tragedy
ends with a decisionhowever uncertain it may bethere resides in the essence of the mourning play,
and especially in the death-scene, an appeal of the kind which martyrs utter" (Origin 137; Trauerspiel
315).

61
experience of demise are recast as sacrifice and verkldrt, glorified and transfigured,

into our ontological fate.

In this focus on the meaning of death in this life, Benjamin's criticism differs

from Cohen's criticism of the link between original sin and salvation. Cohen interprets

original sin as a psychological phenomenon, a myth invented in a complicated attempt

to assuage our fear of death and to guarantee the afterlife. Cohen's criticism then is

aimed primarily at the Christological transformation of death through resurrection,

which turns death into a release from this world and the new beginning on which we

must focus and to which we can look forward. Benjamin's commentary does not reject

the leap ahead to resurrection and eternity, but directs our attention to how death and

the path to death in this world are transfigured into atoning sacrifices, so that we are to

experience the demise of this life as penance.

The problem of this temporality that Benjamin calls fated does not reside solely in

this theology of sacrifice and salvation; rather, the temporality of life turns equally

fated when events and experiences are threaded together by more than causal

relationships. In "Calderon's El Mayor Monstruo, Los Celos and Hebbel's Herodes

und Mariamne," a preliminary study for his Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels,

Walter Benjamin, '"El mayor monstruo, los celos' von Calderon und 'Herodes und Mariamne'
von Hebbel: Bemerkungen zum Problem des historischen Dramas" (Gesammelte Schriften: Band 2-1,
ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977], 246-276);
"Calderon's El Mayor Monstruo, Los Celos and Hebbel's Herodes und Mariamne: Comments on the
Problem of Historical Drama" (trans. Rodney Livingstone, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume
1:1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP,
1996],363-386).

62
Benjamin explains that "fate resides in the realm of teleology, not causality" (381).87

Both causality and teleology join two temporally distinct events that occur one after

another in a logical relationship. While a causal relation establishes that the first state

or event caused certain effects to materialize, a teleological relation discovers a

purpose and aim in the earlier state, which is then realized in the later state. Within the

teleological relation, then, the earlier state or event is understood as tending

constitutively toward the later one and as finding its fulfillment in the later one. As

Benjamin clarifies earlier in this study, "not the inescapable nexus of cause and effect

as such is fateful {nicht der unentrinnbare Kausalzusammenhang an sich ist ein

schicksalhafter)? but instead the "decisive motif [lies] in the assumption of the eternal

meaning of such determining (entscheidendes Motiv in der Annahme eines ewigen

Sinnes solcher Determiniertheit)" ("Calderon" 266). When cause and effect appear

as teleologically determined, the temporal relation between the two events ends up

over-determined in the sense that too much meaning is attributed to why something

happens. Benjamin even seems to suggest that inescapable effects are not yet fateful.

So if we fall to the ground or indeed because we stumble at all, this cause-effect

relation is not fateful, even though our being subject to gravity is (for the most part)

inescapable for us. Rather a fated logic takes hold only when the meaning exceeds the

causal relation by over-determining it, so that the causal relation is removed from

87
"Schicksal nicht im kausalen, sondern im teleologischen Bereich beschlossen ist" ("Calderon"
272).
88
The translations here are my own; the English translation in the Selected Writings strikes me as
problematic, especially since it renders "Sinn" into "validity" and changes the distinction between
teleology and causality by displacing the element of (moralized) meaningfulness that the teleological
logic of fate produces as inescapable.

63
being a contingently effected conjunctionso when stumbling and falling end up

being perceived as signs of a deeper reality, such as arrogance and the deserved

consequent downfall. To recognize cause-effect relations is not yet to acknowledge

fate. But insofar as the meaning of this causality is taken to be durably fixed and

preordained, the causal relation turns into a fateful one.

In terms of the unspoken teleology mobilized by original sin, the fated logic

reaches beyond finding individual character traits that manifest themselves causally in

our lives. Original sin generalizes the eternal meaning that Benjamin references here

for teleology, beyond the individual to human nature as such. So everything that

happens to anyone of us is a consequence and response to this condition and a matter

of earthly depravity and eternal salvation. With the ascription of this meaning, what

could otherwise be conceived as a causal relation is moved from a mechanical, natural

relation to the supernatural realm of meaning and of human relations. Guilt becomes

fate and fate becomes guilt. In other words, guilt as original sin becomes our fate,

when original sin is the situation and background through which we make sense of our

experiences, so that we find our deficient condition as the efficient cause of everything

that we experience. This hermetic temporality of original sin is noxious to ethics

because it retroactively reduces every cause of misfortune and suffering to original sin

and projects this cause in advance into every following event.

As I have just argued, this interpretation of transience and death as atonement is

problematic because it fixes and glorifies the meaning of transience theologically.

However, this arrest of the ways in which transience can come to be understood is not

64
exclusively problematic because of the theology of sacrifice and atonement. In "Fate

and Character," Benjamin does not name original sin explicitly, but he alludes to

original sin through the conceptual Schuldzusammenhang, "guilt context," to which he

objects. Benjamin's criticism helps to uncover how this guilt context introduces a

fated temporality even without directly referring to theological or moral roots in sin.

Benjamin rejects this guilt context because of its omnipresence that establishes an

uneigentliche (inauthentic, improper) conception of time, which has a past and future

only in "curious variations":

The guilt context {Schuldzusammenhang) is temporal in a totally inauthentic

{uneigentlich) way, very different in its kind and measure from the time of

redemption, or music, or truth. ... [T]his time [of the guilt context] can at

every moment be made simultaneous with another (not present). It is not an

autonomous time, but is parasitically dependent on the time of a higher, less

natural life. It has no present, for fateful moments only exist in bad novels,

and it knows past and future only in curious variations. ("Fate" 204)89

What makes this temporality "inauthentic" is the ubiquity of guilt and indebtedness

that can always be made as simultaneous with any other moment in time. This passage

clarifies what we have already seen in Benjamin's discussion of fate, that any moment,

any experience, any misfortune can always be traced back in terms of a debt or guilt to

89
"Der Schuldzusammenhang ist ganz uneigentlich zeitlich, nach Art und MaB ganz verschieden
von der Zeit der Erlosung oder der Musik oder der Wahrheit. ... Diese Zeit [kann] jederzeit gleichzeitig
mit einer andern (nicht gegenwartig) gemacht werden ... Sie ist eine unselbstandige Zeit, die auf die
Zeit eines hohern, weniger naturhaften Lebens parasitar angewiesen ist. Sie hat keine Gegenwart, denn
schicksalhafte Augenblicke gibt es nur in schlechten Romanen, und auch Vergangenheit und Zukunft
kennt sie nur in eigentumlichen Abwandlungen" ("Schicksal" 176).

65
some other event. However, this passage introduces this fatedness as "parasitic." This

ubiquity of guilt also has the converse effect that the existence of this guilt context is

too elusive and meaningless on its own. This guilt context is dependent on grafting

onto other events. Fateful moments cannot be apprehended as such except in relation

to another moment. Fateful moments are recognizable only retroactively. Hence the

fateful moment has no presence, only a belated simultaneity in which the moment is

already past. As Benjamin points out, only in bad novels are fateful moments

recognizable as premonitions in the very moment that the characters first experience

them. So the fateful temporality of the constitutive guilt context is parasitic, because it

over-determines the meaning of any given moment as the fulfillment of a Schuld, debt

with respect to another.

We return here to the concept of "natural life," as Benjamin aligns the parasitic

temporality with "natural life"as its guilt contextwhich grafts onto what he calls a

"less natural life" in order to manifest its fated hold on life. The framing of the natural

life provides an interpretative rationale to account for experiences and especially

misfortunes. But this condition itself cannot be independently experienced. In terms of

the "guilt context," natural life is transience as a debt, a debt that cannot be

experienced on its own, but that accompanies all our experiences. I would suggest that

Benjamin criticizes an ontology of nature that excludes history from nature by

circumscribing an ontological debt that refuses to pass away. There is no past and no

future that could affect this condition of debt, and as a natural condition this condition

becomes ahistorical and fixed in its meaning.

66
 Unlike the time of the guilt context, the time of redemption describes a

temporality that is not eternal, but instead enables genuine transience. For Benjamin,

messianic time interrupts and disorients our own time and is redemptive precisely

because it allows experiences to pass away and so makes past, present, and future

genuinely possible.90 While Benjamin invokes a "higher, less natural life," I do not see

him seeking to elaborate a "purer" version of life from which all nature would be

expunged. Rather, Benjamin interprets life and nature as materially transient and

historical in the sense that material demise inscribes history on the face of nature, as

the process of passing away leaves marks that bear witness to the particular

circumstances of this demise.91 In turn, as Benjamin circumscribes it, authenticity

qualifies a temporality that does not compel resoluteness in the face of transience and

death, but allows us to inhabit the rhythm of life as transient and indeed as bound to

demise, but without ontological or theological transfigurations.92

Benjamin's understanding of the time of redemption becomes clearer in his later commentaries,
in which he describes the messianic as interrupting the experience of time as a continuum and the
momentary experience with history in Eingedenken (remembrance). I will discuss Benjamin's
messianism in more detail in Chapter 4.
91
In this way Benjamin understands nature as allegorical rather than symbolic in The Origin of
German Tragic Drama because, unlike a symbol, allegory has no fixed meaning. Every new concept
that interpretations invoke as explanations are themselves new allegories and compel further
interpretation. See the section "Allegorie und TrauerspieP' ("Allegory and TrauerspieF) in,
respectively, Trauerspiel (336-358) and Origin (159-182). In his Antrittsvorlesung entitled "The Idee
der Naturgeschichte" (1932), Adorno offered a very stringent and philosophically rich elucidation of
Benjamin's theoretical argument about natural history that lies at the heart of The Origin of German
Tragic Drama ("The Idee der Naturgeschichte," Philosophische Friihschriften [Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998], 345-365; "The Idea of Natural History," trans. Robert
Hullot-Kentor, Telos 57 [1985], 97-110). See also Bainard Cowan's "Walter Benjamin's Theory of
Allegory" {New German Critique 22 [1981], 109-122, Hanssen's Walter Benjamin's Other History,
and Pensky's Melancholy Dialectics.
92
The proximity of Benjamin's vocabulary to Heidegger's philosophical vocabulary here is
striking, yet the conceptual distance between the two of them is considerable, almost in opposition. An
examination of Benjamin's relationship to Heidegger is beyond the scope of this dissertation, but it
seems to me that Benjamin's argument here also implies a criticism of Heidegger's concept of

67
 This timelessness that finitude as the Schuld of existence produces is not directly

theological nor even directly moral in the sense that there is no reference to god(s) or

salvation and no prescriptions or guidance for ethical life. But the timelessness of

constitutive indebtedness is only seemingly severed from its theological origins, while

this concept retains metaphysical register in claiming existential relevance and

disavowing explicitly normative claims. Benjamin himself does not make explicit any

implications for ethics; rather, these implications play out through the concepts and

categories we mobilize to frame the possibility and necessity of ethical

responsiveness. If we already care or think it important to care about ethics, because

we are ontologically, constitutively always already indebted, then ethical life will be

motivated by a perhaps ironic, but still inescapable response to a debt we could not but

incur. Responsiveness, responsibilities, and obligations then are always framed as

important because of a pre- or proto-ethical ontological debt.93 By drawing on the

concept of the messianic, Benjamin's work offers a different perspective from

anchoring an ethical opening in the concept of constitutive indebtedness. The ethical

opening in Benjamin lies in insisting on demise as the messianic rhythm of nature and

happiness as the only condition under which passing away can fully succeed. I will

turn to Benjamin's appropriation of the messianic more extensively in chapter four; in

authenticity in resoluteness. On temporality and history in Benjamin and Heidegger, see Howard
Caygill's "Benjamin, Heidegger and the Destruction of Tradition" {Walter Benjamin's Philosophy:
Destruction and Experience, ed. Andrew E. Benjamin and Peter Osborne [London: Routledge, 1993],
130); Stefan Knoche's BenjaminHeidegger: Uber Gewalt: Die Politisierung der Kunst (Vienna:
Turia u. Kant, 2000); Willem van Reijen's Der Schwarzwald und Paris: Heidegger und Benjamin
(Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1998).
93
For an account that explicitly argues for the ethical importance of such a "transcendental" guilt,
see Sami Philstrom's "Transcendental Guilt: On an Emotional Condition of Moral Experience"
(Journal of Religious Ethics 35.1 [2007], 87-111).

68
this chapter I would like to briefly consider the kind of moralism that the concept of

original sin animates by rendering moral categories into a pre-moral fated condition.

Mythical Moralism

Concluding this chapter, which has focused on the implications and otherwise less

obvious ways in which original sin as a theological concept survives, I would like to

suggest that this concept gives rise to a theologically infused moralism. Nietzsche is

one of the most influential analysts of the systematic connection between religion and

moralism.94 Since Freud's critique is in many ways indebted to Nietzsche's

philosophical arguments and polemics, I would here like to distinguish the moralism

of original sin from the Nietzschean critique of moralism fueled by the Judeo-

Christian theological traditions. While Benjamin studied and to some extent engaged

with Nietzsche, it is not clear to what extent, if at all, Cohen studied Nietzsche,

although they were contemporaries.95 I am turning here briefly to Nietzsche not to

read Cohen and Benjamin as commentators on Nietzsche, but to situate my own

interpretation of the peculiar "mythical" moralism that I see the spectral life of original

sin giving rise to.

For examples of philosophical attempts to establish a taxonomy of moralisms, see Craig

Taylor's "Moralism and Morally Accountable Beings" (Journal of Applied Philosophy 22.2 [2005],
153-160) and Julia Driver's "Moralism" (Journal of Applied Philosophy 22.2 [2005], 137-151).
Taylor, for instance, defines moralism as "excessive or unreasonable indulgence in moral reflection
and/or judgment" (153).
95
Benjamin's "Verzeichnis der gelesenen Schriften" (Gesammelte Schriften: Band 7-1, ed. Rolf
Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989], 437-476) is
missing the first 461 items that Benjamin read, but does list Nietzsche's letters. On Benjamin's
appropriation of Nietzschean ideas in his very early writings, see also Deuber-Mankowsky's Derfriihe
Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen.

69
 In contrast with Nietzsche's affective economy of reproach and ressentiment, I

would like to suggest that original sin gives rise to a moralism that intensifies guilt

without ressentiment. When Cohen and Benjamin expose the kind of thinking that

they call "mythical," they criticize reasoning that draws on original sin to frame the

human condition and life itself as fallen and fated. Unlike Nietzsche's criticism of

moralism, Cohen's and Benjamin's critiques of original sin that I have examined in

this chapter imply a depraved and beleaguered subject that is not endowed with new

superiority. Instead this subject's natural depravity provides a prism of a fearful,

moralized way of encountering the world and making sense of experiences, because

every instance in our lives manifests our need for salvation from this world.

In Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche suggests that

moralism arises from experiences of weakness and powerlessness, and it then

transmutes weakness into reproachfulness.96 This moralism is stoked by the Christian

valorization of humility and self-laceration, as religious institutions and their

practitioners exploit their own inferiority out of resentment. In Genealogy of Morals,

Nietzsche argues against taking such categories as good, evil, and guilt as pre-existing

and unchangeable in their meaning and applicability: "Fortunately I learned early to

separate my theological prejudice from my moral prejudice and ceased to look for the

For accounts drawing on Nietzsche to elaborate the political implications of moralism, see
Wendy Brown's Politics out of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001); Jane Bennett and Michael
J. Shapiro's introduction to The Politics of Moralizing (ed. Jane Bennett and Michael J. Shapiro [New
York: Routledge, 2002], 1-10); Jane Bennett's "The Moraline Drift" (The Politics of Moralizing, ed.
Jane Bennett and Michael J. Shapiro [New York: Routledge, 2002], 11-26); Alan Kennan's
"Generating a Virtuous Circle: Democratic Identity, Moralism, and the Language of Political
Responsibility" (The Politics of Moralizing, ed. Jane Bennett and Michael J. Shapiro [New York:
Routledge, 2002], 27-62).

70
origin of evil behind the world. ... [U]nder what conditions did man devise these value

judgments good and evil?" {Genealogy 17).97 Against seeking to ground good and evil

in something beyond the empirical world and concrete histories, Nietzsche proposes

an inquiry into good and evil as categories of human making elaborated under specific

circumstances. Good and evil are properly to be taken as value judgments, not as

ontological descriptions. He gives an account that would see the fusion of ontology

and morality as part of the ruse of the "men of ressentiment." Out of their

powerlessness and against the strong, these "men of ressentimenf manage to moralize

their own ontological condition of weakness and make it the definition of virtue:

"[T]hanks to the counterfeit and self-deception of impotence, [weakness] clad itself in

the ostentatious garb of the virtue of quiet, calm resignation, just as if the weakness of

the weakthat is to say, their essence, their doing {Wirken), their sole ineluctable,

irremovable realitywere a voluntary achievement, willed, chosen, a deed, a

meritorious act" {Genealogy 46).9 Weakness becomes a virtue, but only reactively, by

reproaching the strong as evil for asserting their strength. The deceptive coup of the

weak lies in redescribing a necessitynamely, their naturally weaker constitutionas

a free action and choice. Thus, weakness and its practice become valued as an

accomplishment and a moral act. As weakness becomes humility, weakness as a

"Glucklicherweise lernte ich bei Zeiten das theologische Vorurtheil von dem moralischen
abscheiden und suchte nicht mehr den Ursprung des Bosen hinter der Welt. ... [U]nter welchen
Bedingungen erfand sich der Mensch jene Werturtheile gut und bose?" {Genealogie 249-250).
98
"Dank jener Falschmiinzerei und Selbstverlogenheit der Ohnmacht [hat sich Schwachheit] in
den Prunk der entsagenden stillen abwartenden Tugend gekleidet, gleich als ob die Schwache des
Schwachendas heisst doch sein Wesen, sein Wirken, seine ganze einzige unvermeidliche,
unablosbare Wirklichkeiteine frewillige Leistung, etwas Gewolltes, Gewahltes, eine That, ein
Verdienst sei" {Genealogie 280).

71
condition is endowed with immediate moral worth. This moralization on the

ontological level is the power and revenge of the weak on the strong. Ontology silently

becomes morality, and the self-effacing meekness of humility turns out to be self-

righteously self-assertive.

Nietzsche suggests that the weak (we, moral subjects) act intentionally, or at least

to some extent cunningly intentionally in the Falschmunzerei, counterfeiting of values;

this forgery also is as a way to deceive themselves about their constitution.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche shows some admiration for the (albeit reactive) cunning of the

weak that involves some assertive strength in its retribution against the strong.

Nietzsche's moralism takes the form of a cowardly uprising of the weak subject who

takes full charge in accusing and reproaching the strong. In terms of the theological

resources that animate this moralism, Nietzsche exposes the hypocrisy underlying the

morality of humility that the Judeo-Christian traditions advertise. The theological

denunciations of power and domination give license to resentful assertions of moral

superiority. The theological rhetoric of humility therefore turns out just another, more

insipid conduit for the desire for power.

Instead of stoking resentment and hypocritical reproachfulness, original sin stokes

the over-determination of all our experiences in relation to a constitutively guilty,

indebted, corrupt condition. This kind of inescapable framework is moralistic, because

no event or situation remains without immediate moral meaning. As Cohen and

Benjamin demonstrate, original sin renders guilt into the fate that is no longer

contingent or changeable, but only a matter of manifesting itself, of being discovered

72
in every situation as the precondition as well as outcome. Wrongdoing manifests an

underlying natural condition of guilt rather than the specifics of any given action or

situation. In return, this natural condition requires ongoing atonement, while at the

same time full atonement remains always impossible, so that both guilt and atonement

become infinite in time.

Original sin turns guilt into nature and thereby removes this guilt from any

tangible origin within time and history. This fallen nature becomes a given that is

unchangeable in history and from which one can only be saved by being rescued from

the uncertainties of history itself. The elusiveness of eternal salvation thus

paradoxically joins an investment in "doing the right thing here and now" with a

fatalistic detachment from this world and this life, this life that is to be overcome for

the sake of the eternal.

Paradoxically, original sin produces at the same time both too much and too little

responsibility. There is too much responsibility, because the naturalized guilt appears

monolithically and all suffering and misfortunes are interpreted as signs of this natural

guilt. There is too little responsibility, in the sense that the framework of original sin

naturalizes guilt and fault as the cause of suffering and misfortune and thus diverts

attention from concrete historically conditioned causes of suffering, i.e., individual

actions and specific injustices. In other words, original sin leads to an "arrested" kind

of responsibility because the guilt that is central to this concept is omnipresent and

discernable in all circumstances while it is countered or avoided in none.

73
 Instead of interpreting suffering as what humans inflict because of our corrupt

nature and as what we deserve to suffer to atone for our innate fallenness, proper

ethical reflection asks what contingent causes bring about suffering. Against analyzing

suffering by assuming that the other must somehow deserve to suffer, Cohen insists

that the ethical importance of considering suffering lies in analyzing suffering as

social wrong: "Suffering only reaches ethical precision as social suffering. Whoever

explains poverty as the suffering of humankind creates ethics" (RR 135)." What is

interesting here is that the most important ethical question is not which individuals

inflicted suffering, but how social conditions inflict harm. Drawing on the Biblical

prophets, Cohen explains that social suffering in their texts is primarily an economic

concept: "Poverty becomes the main representation of human misfortune

(menschlichen Ungliicks)" (RR 134).100 The individual's encounter with suffering thus

ought to prompt an inquiry into social justice. Cohen's perspective on suffering

implies that ethical responses become possible when we refuse to presume that

suffering has metaphysical reasons, meaning we must ask instead what is

fundamentally wrong in our society such that institutions, labor conditions, and laws

create conditions under which people suffer from poverty, violence, and exclusion.101

"Ethische Pragnanz erlangt das Leiden nur als soziales. Wer die Armut als das Leiden der
Menschheit erklart, der schafft Ethik" (RV156).
100
"Die Armut wird der hauptsachliche Vertreter des menschlichen Ungliicks" (RV 155).
101
In "Das soziale Ideal bei Platon und den Propheten" (Judische Schriften 1, 306-330), Cohen
argues that for the prophets "Gott ist nicht der Vater der Helden, und nicht diese werden als die
Gottgeliebten bezeichnet, sondern Gott iiebt den Fremdling'. ... Der Messianismus fordert und
beschwingt diese Entwicklung [den Fremden als Mitburger anzuerkennen], die zum Kosmopolitismus
fuhrt. Hier soil nun aber die andere Reihe entrollt werden, welche zum Sozialismus fuhrt. Wie Gott
neben dem Fremdling fast immer auch die Waise und die Witwe liebt, so sind diese es mit ihm, welche
die soziale Bedruckung tragen, von der die Gerechtigkeit Gottes sie befreien soil" ("Das soziale Ideal
bei Platon und den Propheten," Ethische und religiose Grundfragen, Vol. 1 of Judische Schriften

74
These social questions frame ethics as a project of social transformation, while

insisting on a consideration of the meta-ethical problem of normativity and the role of

individual agency. As we turn away from metaphysical quandaries such as how to

attain salvation in the next world in order to overcome suffering in this one, we

become free to directly turn our attention to the social conditions and our relationships

with others in this world. This approach relaxes the moralism of eternal good and evil,

sin and salvation; rather, it focuses on distinguishing right and wrong courses of

action, and instead of salvation it foregrounds the question of justice as social justice.

Where Nietzsche gives us an account of a petty, presumptive, and reproachful

moralism through which the wounded ego is recuperated and subsequently

continuously inflated, Cohen and Benjamin allow for an account of a rather fearful yet

inflexible moralism of an ego uncontrolled, exposed, and besieged in an irrecuperably

corrupt world. This exposed egowhose salvation is nonetheless the central

concernis eclipsed by original sin, insofar as there seems to be no agency for the

subject and thus no spiteful resistance or revenge, as in Nietzsche's account. The

[Berlin: Schwetschke u. Sohn, 1924], 313-314). The English translation reads: "God is not the father of
Israel's heroes, and it is not they who are called God's beloved. God loves the stranger. ... Messianism
demands and gives impetus to this development [to recognize the stranger as a member of one's own
people], which leads to cosmopolitanism. Here, however, we wish to examine another line of
development, a line that leads to socialism. Prophetism depicts God almost always as loving not only
the stranger but also the orphan and the widow; they are therefore seen as victims of social oppression
from which they will be liberated through God's justice" ("The Social Ideal as Seen by Plato and by the
Prophets," Reason and Hope: Selectionsfromthe Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen, trans. Eva Jospe
[Cincinnati Hebrew Union College P, 1993], 71). Cohen rereads Plato through the social prophets and
takes the orphan, widow, and foreigner as figures to orient the normative perspective of ethics as one
that privileges social justice. On Cohen and social ethics as a reinterpretation of Kantian ethics, see
Kluback's The Idea of Humanity: Hermann Cohen's Legacy to Philosophy and Theology and Poma's
The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen. Without attention to the theological side of Cohen's
argument and with a focus on the interpretation of the categorical imperative in Ethics of Pure Will, see
Harry van der Linden's "Cohens sozialistische Rekonstruktion der Ethik Kants" (Ethischer Sozialismus:
Zur politischen Philosophic des Neukantianismus, ed. Helmut Holzhey [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1994], 146-165).

75
ensuing "arrested" responsibility is not primarily a tendency to reproach out of

powerlessness in the sense of an inability to implement one's political objectives. This

"mythical moralism" arises out of powerlessness in the face of uncertainty and does

not even necessarily turn a reproachful eye onto others or even on the sinful self.

Precisely because this sinfulness is an inevitable condition, we are on the one hand

expected to show humility in acknowledging our corrupt condition while on the other

hand we are to be wary of evil in this world. In the next chapter, I will examine how

such a Manichean theology of evil in the world stokes investments in the status quo

and impedes critiques of the rhetoric of "evil." Moreover, I will consider how these

Manichean underpinnings of the imperatives to fight evil are complemented by

remnants of Christian eschatology that allow for the urgency of those fights to be

perpetuated, while the scenarios of chaos and destruction never fully materialize. As

with original sin, the ethical impact of this theology of evil lies not in concrete

normative precepts that it derives from divine sources. Rather, this theology of evil or

fragments thereof continue to inflect our outlook on the world and our moral

orientation in this world, even when the theological references are no longer direct or

explicit.

76
 Chapter Two:

Fated Orders, Manichean Evil, and Eschatological Urgencies

Theological concepts lend us interpretative frameworks that orient our perspectives on

the world around us and our lives in it. Even after they cease to be embedded in

religious practices that permeate everyday life, these concepts can continue to inform

our individual and collective perspectives as sediments in our ethical commitments.102

Throughout his works, Cohen attempts to separate the concept of myth from that of

theology, but also acknowledges that religion and myth do have a relationship, as both

religion and myth address the same questions and longings of humans: "There is

indeed a difference between religion and myth, although religion emerged from myth

and always seeks to mix with myth again" (ErW 402). I03 Cohen suggests that rooting

out the mythical from religion is difficult, and concepts and ideas denounced as

mythical continue to live on. Despite Cohen's narrative of progress that tells us that

religion and ethics overcame myth, he admits that myth, nonetheless, remains alluring

to religion and intrudes upon it. The connection between the two can prove useful,

however, in advancing Cohen's and Benjamin's critiques. As I explained earlier,

Adomo and Horkheimer cite neither Benjamin nor Cohen in Dialectic of Enlightenment:
Philosophical Fragments (Dialektik der Aufklarung, Gesammelte Schriften, Band 5: Dialektik der
Aujklarung und Schriften, 1940-1950, by Max Horkheimer, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerrf Frankfurt am
Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1987], 67-103; Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments,
trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr [Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2002]), but their
understanding of myth has strong resonances with Cohen's and Benjamin's use of myth as a critical
category and provides a helpful gloss on the problematic rationality Cohen and Benjamin attribute to
myth as an epistemic framework: "False clarity is only another name for myth. Myth was always
obscure and luminous at once" (xviii).
103
"Es gibt in der Tat einen Unterschied zwischen Religion und Mythos, obzwar die Religion aus
dem Mythos entsprungen ist, und mit dem Mythos sich immer wieder zu vermischen trachtet" {ErW
402).

77
Cohen as well as Benjamin uses this persistence of myth and the indictment of

mythical thinking in order to criticize particular Christian theological concepts and

commitments as unethical without having to accuse Christian theology explicitly.104

In particular, Cohen and Benjamin criticize theologically informed frameworks of

experience as mythical for turning events into fateful occurrences occasioned by our

guilt and debt. This mythical kind of thinking intensifies and naturalizes stark moral

distinctions leading to their inflexible and unrelenting application. Building on the

discussion of original sin and human nature in the previous chapter, in this chapter I

turn to the related concept of evil and especially the attendant perspective on history

that presents our life and our communities as perpetually under threat. Instead of

concentrating on the metaphysical question of the origin of evil, I will examine how

evil functions as a concept that carries a concrete practical imperative to discover and

reveal evil in the world in order to oppose this evil and fight for the good. This

investment in seeing history as a fight of good against evil echoes Manichean

theology, which conceives of history as a whole as a cosmic struggle between good

There are passages and issues where Cohen is very explicit in criticizing Christian positions,
such as on the church's influence on the state. This seems to be in part a confessional matter, since he
criticizes in particular the Catholic church for its theocratic aspirations. But he applauds Luther and
against Luther's own anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, Cohen affirms the compatibility of Judaism and
Lutheran Protestantism. However, when Cohen argues against what he perceives as doctrines central to
Christian theology, he indicts their "mythical" commitments. For instance, Cohen condemns the idea
that God could be personal as mythical and the idea that God could be more than one as polytheism (see
RV 48-57; RR 4149). Christian doctrine steadfastly affirms the idea of one God only and of
Christianity as monotheistic, but since this one God is trinitarian, the refutation of polytheism offered
by Christian theologians by pointing to God as one substance in three persons is theologically complex
and clearly unpersuasive to Cohen as well as many other Jewish and Islamic interpreters of
monotheism. On the conjunction of polytheism with eschatological and apocalyptic forms of
philosophy of history, see Jacob Taubes's "Zur Konjunktur des Polytheismus" (Mythos und Moderne:
Begriff und Bild einer Rekonstruktion, ed. Karl-Heinz Bohrer [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983],
457470) and Odo Marquard's "Lob des Polytheismus: Uber Monomythie und Polymythie" in his
Zukunft braucht Herkunft: Philosophische Essays ([Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2003], 46-71).

78
and evil. This quasi-Manichean view of evil and history subtends what Cohen and

Benjamin reference as mythical thinking. Over the course of this chapter, I will argue

that this mythical perspective and its reference to evil bolster the status quo of existing

legal and social orders as these orders appear as infinitely and urgently threatened.

In this chapter, I will first turn to Cohen in Ethics of Pure Will to introduce the

Manichean echoes in the appropriation of evil as diabolic force and figure. Cohen

criticizes this view of evil as mythical and shows how this mythical perspective

displaces and personifies evil as a threat that comes from the outside of the existing

order and threatens to overthrow it. This personification of evil only seemingly

identifies the threatening agent, while at the same time actually removing the systemic

and historical conditions for this threat from further inquiry.

Cohen's own discussion of the concept of evil and its threat to existing order is

brief; he does not specify which "orders" under myth are fateful, because from the

perspective of mythical thinking all assaults on any existing orders and any perceived

transgressions against them register as "evil." In the remaining sections of this chapter,

I will therefore turn to Benjamin's "Critique of Violence" and The Origin of German

Not all references to evil necessarily mobilize a metaphysical and theologically informed
register; for instance, in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin
Books, 1994), Hannah Arendt elaborates a rigorously non-metaphysical understanding of evil in her
analysis of the banality of evil. Insofar as invocations of evil seek recourse to the term "evil"rather
than using a vocabulary of condemnations such as "pernicious," "heinous," "atrocious"to mobilize
the spectacular and abyssal nature of evil, such references implicitly draw on and echo theological and
metaphysical dimension of evil as diabolic. See also Richard Bernstein's analysis of Arendt's account
in his chapter "Arendt: Radical Evil and the Banality of Evil" in Radical Evil: A Philosophical
Interrogation ([Cambridge: Polity P, 2002], 205-224). Within this essay Bernstein criticizes the
rhetoric of evil and is even more doubtful on the usefulness of the category in his The Abuse of Evil:
The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11 (Cambridge: Polity P, 2005). For an account that
argues for the continued importance of retaining evil as an ethical category, see Adam Morton's On Evil
(New York: Routledge, 2004).

79
Tragic Drama, in which Benjamin explicitly applies Cohen's critique to legal and

political orders themselves. Taking up Cohen's and Benjamin's insights, I will

elaborate how we can understand mythical thinking as a frame of mind that fosters

uncritical support for existing orders, in particular legal orders. Through my reading of

Benjamin, I argue for understanding mythical thinking as an epistemic horizon that

encourages us to equivocate among law, order, and justice. This societal investment in

law and order as a public good thrives on a fear of anarchy based in the Manichean

equation of anarchy and chaos, personified in the figure of the devil. These theological

commitments in turn encourage vilifying transgressors as evil, but also ready us to

expect and be watchful for such transgressions and to defend the legal order against

those assaults.

In the final two sections of this chapter I will expand on how the theological

concept of chaos and challenges to the current orders as evil bolster these orders

precisely in response to these threats. In particular, I will consider the perpetuity of

urgency that this logic of legitimacy qua persistent threats draws on. To consider this

perpetuation of urgency, I examine Benjamin's analysis of sovereignty in conjunction

with the philosophy of history he lays out in his discussion of the German Trauerspiel.

I will argue that Benjamin's work on the baroque offers us a conception of history that

I will call a "skeletal eschatology." Skeletal eschatology no longer frames history as

progressing toward the future and final salvation of this world, but nevertheless holds

fast to a basic framework of history as spanning the time between a fall from a more

perfect state and that of a final end toward which history tends. Considering the

80
framework of skeletal eschatology allows us to elaborate how it is possible that

urgency can be perpetually invoked for political purposes without this urgency losing

its persuasiveness even when the catastrophe never fully materializes.

To conclude this chapter, I will examine how Benjamin's distinction between the

sovereign as the hero and the common people as spectators to his worldly deeds

exposes a crucial paradox of both an urgent appeal for action and a willing defeatism.

The anticipation of a final end-of-the-world catastrophe and its continuous deferral

stokes both a heightened sense of responsibility within the populace and the ready

displacement of this responsibility for decision and action onto those in power. The

sovereign is expected to act and, as the representative of his subjects, must be

supported by them in his actions, but as a broader representative of humanity and thus

subject to creaturely guilt, he is also doomed to fail. As I will argue, the conjunction of

a fragmented eschatology and the concept of original sin dehistoricizes these failures

and inspires apathy rather than active opposition.

This hollowed-out eschatological perspective on history and its rhetoric of threat

does not always focus on interpreting the impending catastrophe as the doings of a

diabolic evil power. Nevertheless, I will demonstrate in this chapter that an

examination of this fragmented eschatology complements the analysis of the

theological echoes subtending invocations of evil. Both the theology of diabolic evil

and the concept of skeletal eschatology overlap in giving rise to a rhetoric of threat

that thrives on demonizing disruptions of the status quo. The concept of skeletal

eschatology allows us to detail and complicate the understanding of history that the

81
Manichean view establishes as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. The

perpetuated urgency to protect existing orders in light of even a deferred catastrophic

end does not mitigate but instead sustains the smoldering fears of assaults against the

existing order, even when these assaults do not materialize or do not materialize as

severely as anticipated.

Diabolic Evil and Its Threats

Although Cohen embraces sin, as individual misstep, as a theological concept in

Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, in both Ethics of Pure Will and

Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism he rejects evil as a theological

concept, regarding it instead as mythical. Cohen opposes evil as a theological concept

because inherent in the concept is the worldview of a struggle of good against evil.

According to Cohen, such a worldview is inimical to ethical progress because it

affirms that evil is an ineradicable reality in the world and denies the perfectibility of

this world. Although his point is an important one, in this section I am not so much

concerned with Cohen's emphasis on ethical progress, but will concentrate instead on

another aspect of his argument, the affective effects of the theological echoes in moral

discourse and its invocations of evil. I will first discuss the theological background of

the concept of evil as a historical force in this world and then consider how this

stylization of evil figures evil as an external threat to the existing legal and social

order. Finally, I will address Cohen's analysis that the focus on evil as disruption of

82
the existing order tends to seek and find a personified agent to blame as the unified

cause of the evil.

In Ethics of Pure Will and Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism,

Cohen suggests that evil as a power in the world is not a genuine theological concept,

but stems from mythological metaphysics. Cohen rejects the Manichean belief in the

struggle of good against an evil divine power: "Manicheanism is an unethical

principle. The messianic God developed in the explicit opposition against the dual god

of Parsiism. Evil as such does not exist. It is only a concept that is derived from

freedom" (ErW 452). 106 Cohen himself does not distinguish between Parsiism (also

known as Zoroastrianism) and the later Gnostic religion of Manicheanism, but for the

purposes of his argument he also does not need to, since early Parsiism explicitly

embraced a dualistic god of good and evil like Manicheanism and the two became

conflated in Persia in the early Christian era.107 The Manichean belief conceives of

this world as entirely marked by the struggle of good against evil and interprets all

history in view of this cosmic drama. Cohen objects to this theological concept of a

struggle between good and evil as unethical and thus impeding ethical progress, since

"Der Manichaismus ist ein widersittliches Prinzip. Der messianische Gott ist im ausdrucklichen
Gegensatze gegen den Doppelgott des Parsismus entstanden. Es gibt das Bose nicht. Es ist nur ein
Begriff, der aus der Freiheit hergeleitet wird" (ErW 452).
107
Cohen is likely to have known and drawn on Erik Stave's Uber den Einfluss des Parsismus auf
das Judentum (Haarlem, Netherlands: De Erven F. Bohn, 1898). On Zoroastrianism, see Mary Boyce's
Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge, 1979). Boyce opens this work
by reflecting on the possibly unparalleled direct and indirect influence of Zoroastrianism on religious
practices and doctrines throughout the world. In her article "On the Antiquity of Zoroastrian
Apocalyptic" (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 47:1 [1984], 57-75), Boyce
explains that "In his Gathas Zoroaster looks back to 'eternity past' and the beginning of time, and
forward to the Last Judgment and 'eternity to come', and sees all that takes place in between as part of
the cosmic struggle between good and evil, leading to the final overthrow of the latter, and the
accomplishment thereby of God's purposes" (57).

83
this figuration of evil displaces ethical agency as well as wrongdoing onto cosmic

forces.

When Cohen rejects as mythical the interest in evil and demonic power, as he did

with original sin, his indictment of myth also targets theological commitments, in

particular Christian ones, that instead of belonging to a distant past continue to live on

in the modern world. Both original sin and the devil as divine force of evil are

linked in Christian iconography in the figure of the serpent who, as the devil's helper

(or in some stories, the devil himself), tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. In

Christian scripture, the devil returns later in the New Testament, most prominently in

the passage where the devil tempts Jesus in the desert.109 The New Testament is

populated with demons and exhortations to resist diabolic temptations.110 Cohen

condemns all such theological figurations of evil as mythical: "A power of evil exists

only in myth. The rule of myth {Herrschaft des Mythos) is reflected in the theology

and metaphysics of a diabolic divine power" {ErW 452). 1U Cohen holds that even

In the Christian theological tradition, Augustine was a key opponent against Manicheanism, but
was also strongly influenced by Manicheanism in his early years. He gives an account of his association
with Manicheanism and his break with it in his Confessions (trans. Henry Chadwick [Oxford: Oxford
UP, 2009]). The extent to which he actually broke with or continued to rely on Manichean ideas is the
subject to a long debate. For an excellent account of Augustine's Manicheanism, see Elizabeth Clark's
"Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels: Augustine's Manichean Past" in her Ascetic Piety and Women's
Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity ([Lewiston, ME: The Edwin Mellen P, 1986], 291-349). For
an examination of the debate over the continuity rather than a radical discontinuity between Augustine's
early Manicheanism and his later anti-Manichean arguments, see Carol Harrison's Rethinking
Augustine's Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006).
109
The story of the temptation of Christ appears in each of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew 4:1-11,
Mark 1:12-13, and Luke 4:1-13.
110
Other appearances of the devil or demons in the New Testament scriptures include the
following. In Jude 1:9 the archangel Michael fights with the devil over the body of Moses. Mark 5:1-20
tells of Jesus meeting a man who is possessed by numerous demons. Satan himself supposedly enters
into Judas Iscariot before his betrayal of Jesus (Luke 22:3).
111
"Eine Macht des Bosen gibt es nur im Mythos. Es ist die Herrschaft des Mythos, die sich in der
Theologie und Metaphysik einer diabolischen gottlichen Macht niederschlagt" {ErW 452).

84
when theology does not directly endorse the Manichean doctrine of two gods, the

problem of seeing this life in this world as subject to competing powers of good and

evil is not solved as long as evil is considered a diabolic historical power or

metaphysical reality.

Officially Pope John III anathematized Manicheanism at the Council of Braga in

A.D. 561, drawing clear doctrinal lines between Christianity and Manicheanism to

fend off the influence of the latter on Christian belief. In particular, the Council

proclaimed as anathema the belief that the devil as the power of evil is an equally

original and divine power as God himself. That said, Council did affirm the existence

and independence of diabolic power. The devil is not ipsum (out of himself)

principium atque substantiam mali (the principle and substance of evil), but originated

as prius bonum angelum a Deo factum (first a good angel created by God). So despite

the rejection of the Manichean equi-primordiality of good and evil, Christian doctrine

still remains within the scope of Cohen's criticism because of the Christian embrace of

evil as metaphysical power. Cohen objects to this idea of an evil power at work in the

world that is overcome only beyond this world, at the end of time, since this evil

presence negates the fundamental perfectibility of this world and sees redemption not

as an ethical task partially up to us, but as subject to a divine battle and its other-

worldly resolution.

112
The seventh canon of the synod declares: "Si quis dicit, diabolum non fuisse prius bonum
angelum a Deo factum, nee Dei opificium fuisse naturam euus, sed dicit eum ex chao et tenebris
emerisse nee aliquem sui habere auctorem, sed ipsum esse principium atque substantiam mali, sicut
Manichaeus et Priscillianus dixerunt, anathema sit." The Council anathematizes the belief that devil is a
being of independent origin, rather than a fallen angel, hence created by God. For the entire text of the
Council's canons, see Heinrich Denzinger's Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de
rebusfideiet morum (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1991).

85
 The allure of the Manichean worldview of a battle between good and evil lies in

the seeming moral clarity that it offers in identifying diabolic evil. Cohen suggests that

evil, as a disruptive and destructive force, gains its rhetorical power from its

spectacular and dramatic character:

The stirrings of mythical consciousness are of a more elementary kind than

that they could die away in contemplative deliberations; these stirrings are

always shocks {Erschutterungen). Therefore it is the more capturing force of

evil that incites the original interest. The good is considered as natural; it

results from the orders (Fiigungeri) and constellations {Gesellungen) as far as

they are already installed and ordered. Evil is an intrusion into these orders in

which however the indestructible, the law, nature present themselves

otherwise without exception. {ErW 362)113

Cohen suggests the mythical mindset identifies any disruption and sudden upheaval of

the status quo with the invasion of an evil force into the existing order. What is or was

good becomes recognizable only against the unmistakable identification of evil. After

the disruption, the old order, no matter how it may have been experienced at the time,

is taken to have been natural, good, and indestructible, hence not transient and in its

substance not subject to demise or history. Only through its disruption by the threat by

evil does the old order become marked as good. Seeing evil as a disruption that

113
"[D]ie Erregungen des mythischen Bewusstseins sind elementarerer Art, als dass sie in
beschaulichen Erwagungen ausklingen konnten; sie sind immer Erschutterungen. Daher ist es die
ergreifendere Macht des Bosen, welches das urspriingliche Interesse erregt. Das Gute gilt als natiirlich;
es ergibt sich aus den Fugungen und Gesellungen, soweit sie bereits errichtet und geordnet sind. Das
Bose ist ein Einbruch in diese Ordnungen, in denen sich doch das Unzerstorbare, das Gesetz, die Natur
sonst ausnahmslos darstellt" (ErW 362).

86
"breaks into" the existing order externalizes evil and maps the good versus evil

distinction onto an "us" versus "them" binary. The mythical mindset readily ascribes

the responsibility for the disruptions to external evil forces that cannot be a part of this

order which they attack. Underlying this mythic or quasi-Manichean view is an

ontology that defines order in the form of law, nature, and indestructible substance in

opposition to chaos, anarchy, destruction, and transience. Moreover, these ontological

commitments are invested with moral value, so that order is identified with the good,

while the chaos and anarchyand, by extension, anything that disrupts the perceived

orderly status quoare evil.114 As a consequence, this perspective is unable to provide

resources for considering criteria for moral evaluation other than opposing order

versus change and conflating radical change with chaos and evil.

As Cohen suggests, these disruptions of the status quo cause "stirrings" in the

mythical consciousness. These "stirrings" or emotional responses are so intense that

they inhibit thoughtful interrogations and are unaffected by such reflections. Instead,

the evil that is seen as present in the disruption inspires convulsions of affect in

response to this intrusion into the status quo. And it is easy to see evil everywhere.

Cohen suggests that as a unambiguous interpretative framework, the power of evil is

For an account on the cosmological figuration of anarchy and chaos as evil working through
material from various traditions, see Paul Ricoeur's "Part II: The 'Myths' of the Beginning and of the
End" in Symbolism ofEvil (161-346).
115
In Cohen's and Benjamin's account, mythical thinking is inimical to critical thinking, not
because mythical thinking employs moral categories, but because it preempts reflections and
deliberations by beginning with an absolute and non-negotiable designation of something as evil.
Within the framework of mythical thinking, criticisms ofor doubts aboutthe designation of
something or someone as evil then appear to condone or even collaborate with evil. If everything is
immediately understood as either good or evil, there is no moment and no space to open a situation to
evaluation and judgment, to analysis and debate. Conversely, if what constitutes good and evil is
immediately clear, then any delay in recognizing and judging that which should be readily knowable as
either good or evil translates into aiding the evil, the enemy, the threat that must be opposed.

87
the "more capturing force" than good because of evil's uncontrollable and all-

encompassing power. Consequently, references to evil and its imminent threat not

only legitimate but also motivate response in a way that a reference to potential good

cannot. The emotional investment in these stark binaries stoked by pointing to diabolic

evil do not leave much time and space for examining whether the old order itself was

truly good. Instead, as the previous status quo becomes retroactively glorified in the

moment of disruption, the mythical invocation of evil evades any consideration of

whether the old order was or might be itself evil and whether the disruption could be

for good.

The underlying imaginary of a cosmic battle between good and evil inspires the

desire and the imperative to side with good against evil in this perennial struggle. As

Cohen elaborates, mythical thinking's focus on evil is even further intensified through

the personification of that evil. Seeing evil as a diabolic force in a cosmic battle of

good against evil gives rise to the expectation that the evil must be the action of

someone with plans and motives. Cohen explains:

Myth does not stop with thinking of circumstances and things; it personifies

the things and circumstances. For myth the cause everywhere turns into the

Urperson (prototypical person), and from the Urperson the person emerges.

... Even where it might seem that it is only circumstances and relations that

are designated as the cause of evil, these things and circumstances are

88
 nonetheless being thought as persons. That way myth presupposes the

concept of fate. Cr^362-363) 116

In this passage Cohen argues that fate, within the worldview of mythical thinking,

means not so much that one is subject to a fixed destiny that governs life but rather

that personsagents with plans and intentionsare responsible for evil everywhere,

even where circumstances, such as unjust institutions, might play a bigger role. Cohen

recasts the problem of "fate" as a matter of interpreting situations and responding to

others as well as to circumstances and subsequent effects. Specifically, "fate" in

Cohen's interpretation no longer signifies a crude understanding of myths that fill the

earth and skies with gods and demons who pull the strings of marionette-like

individuals. Instead, fate as a framework is in use when circumstances become

Urpersonen in our thinking, when circumstances take on a pars pro toto function so

that a person or the image of a person as a mythical figurehead that comes to stand for

a set of complex interactions among circumstances, situations, institutions, groups,

and individuals. Cohen sees this personification of events as fated because such a

framework lacks the resources to distinguish between intentional agency and

circumstantial causation and to consider the confluence between the two. Mythical

agency instead immediately personifies the cause of the potential or actual disruption

of the order.

116
"Der Mythos bleibt nicht bei dem Denken von Umstanden und Dingen stehen; er personifiziert
die Dinge und die Umstande. Die Ursache wird ihm uberall zur Urperson; und aus der Urperson erst
entsteht ihm die Person. ... Auch wo es scheinen konnte, als ob es nur Umstande waren und
Verhaltnisse, welche als der Grund des Bosen bezeichnet wurden, da werden nichtsdestoweniger diese
Dinge und Umstande als Personen gedacht. So geht der Mythos aus von dem Begriffe des Schicksals"
{ErW 362-363).

89
 Personifying circumstances affords us with false clarity and certainty about the

situation to which we must react, but we attain this clarity and certainty only by

reducing complex factors to a figure which can then be grafted onto a person who

becomes symbolic of evil.117 This person then can be opposed and attacked in the

same way that a physical, locatable enemy can be killed or captured. Mythical

thinking organizes the world by finding reason in the sense of ascribing an intention to

every situation, by finding agentic forces behind everything that happens. Because

mythical thinking thwarts the effort to consider how circumstances might be distinct

from actions or even more so from the persons involved, mythical thinking precludes a

critical analysis of circumstances and structures as well as the role of individuals in

them, hence fortifying rather than calling into question the most dominant ways of

ordering life.

Cohen does not expand on what kind of "order" is disrupted, so I will turn to

Benjamin in the next section to elaborate further how this criticism of such a

Manichean, mythical perspective on evil provides a critical perspective on one

particular order, that of law. In light of Benjamin's focus on law in particular, I read

Cohen's critique of the mythical belief in evil as critique of deploying evil as a

category to designate and demonize disruptions, because such designation tends to

inhibit our ability to question the laws and institutions under which we live, which

sustain us as individuals and organize and govern our communal life. Under the

auspices of a perspective informed by remnants of a Manichean theology of evil, the

117
On this effect of the rhetoric of evil, see also especially the chapter on "Moral Certainty and
Passionate Commitment" (53-67) in Bernstein's The Abuse of Evil.

90
measures put in place to uphold, ensure, and enforce order recede into a realm of what

cannot and need not be questioned. This thinking produces readily accessible answers

to the question of what ought to be done without any need for thought, since what

always ought to be done is to oppose evil and this evil always can be located in

concrete individuals. Taken as an external threat and disruption of the status quo by

clearly identifiable agents, the category of evil serves as a way to establish certainty in

the midst of uncertainty by designating what is unquestionably evil. Paradoxically

then, Cohen's argument suggests, by implication, that the threat of evil breaking into

orders lends stability to institutions, aiding their preservation and intensification in

their current state rather than opening them up to fundamental change. The threat of

evil ends up lending legitimacy to the order of the threatened status quo through

recourse to a moralized ontology according to which the retroactive designation of evil

directly supports the status quo as good.

Fateful Transgressions and Mythical Investments in Law as Order

As already noted, in his mentions of mythical thinking, Cohen does not further

specify what "order" means or which "orders" he is exactly referring to that are

disrupted by intrusions that the mythical mindset views as evil. Since within mythical

thinking the potential for disorder leads to the discovery of law within the disrupted

orders, order in Cohen seems not merely to be an abstract epistemic framework, but to

refer to the order of political and social realities. To examine this aspect further, I

would like to turn to Benjamin, who joins Cohen in considering identifying order with

91
what is "good" as inimical to critical inquiry and ethical life. Cohen suggests only

briefly that myth renders life and the orders themselves fateful, because these orders

incite the transgressions that then appear as evil disruptions. To think more

specifically about Cohen's ambiguous critique of fated life under these mythical

orders, I will take up Benjamin's critique of law as mythical in his essay "Critique of

Violence."118

Cohen and Benjamin hold very different positions on the role of law in ethics.

Cohen limits his critique to natural law and argues for a critical foundation of law in

reason and the rule of law, whereas Benjamin criticizes Cohen's uncritical embrace of

the rule of law and problematizes the systematic foundation of law in reason. In so

doing, Benjamin extends Cohen's critique of mythical thinking and its ordering of the

world to Cohen's own philosophy of law.119 Drawing on Benjamin's arguments, I will

in the next few pages argue that transgressions and missteps defined as evils not only

threaten a legal order but endow that order with its legitimacy. Through Benjamin's

distinction between mythical and divine violence, I will suggest that the mythical

foundations of law are unethical, insofar as mythical thinking equates legal order with

For a thorough commentary elucidating Benjamin's arguments in this text, see Axel Honneth's
'"Zur Kritik Gewalt'" in the Benjamin-Handbuch: LebenWerkWirkung (ed. Burkhardt Lindner
[Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2006], 193-210).
119
There is also a different understanding of law that one can arrive at in Cohen's philosophy, if
one reads more strongly the understanding of law and lawfulness he derives from Judaism back into his
Kantian framework. For very productive examples of such an approach, see Robert Gibbs'
"Jurisprudence Is the Organon of Ethics: Kant and Cohen on Ethics, Law, and Religion" {Hermann
Cohen's Critical Idealism, ed. Reinier Munk [Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005], 193-230) and
Leora Batnitzky's "Hermann Cohen and Leo Strauss" {Hermann Cohen's Ethics, ed. Robert Gibbs
[Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006], 187-212).

92
justice and perpetuates guilt.120 As I will argue through recourse to Benjamin, when

these theological, mythical underpinnings of law are in play, we can no longer

critically take into account how transgressions and their punishment establish and

bolster the legal order itself, thereby providing the occasion for reasserting the legal

order and its might. Benjamin's argument works as a theological critique, on the one

hand, insofar it criticizes the mythical presuppositions of law and myth that, as I am

arguing, function as a theological register that frames life as a cycle of irredeemable

guilt and atonement. On the other hand, Benjamin's argument is theological in itself,

insofar as it launches its criticism through reference to a divine sphere of justice and

establishes the idea of a divine violence, a violence that unhinges the identification of

order with legitimacy and interrupts the perpetuation of judgments that condemn to

guilt.

As Cohen maintains, under the auspices of the mythical worldview, the

transgressions against and disruptions of the existing order are neither incidental nor

avoidable, but are crucial to how these orders work. The orders that are sustained and

erected through mythical thinking produce the fateful disruptions and transgressions

against them they then stringently oppose. Apostasy becomes the fateful natural law of

order itself:

And the miracle is increased as it is not only a stepping outside of these

orders as which evil presents itself, but these orders themselves are what

120
For an account of Benjamin's ethical anarchism derived from this distinction between
theological and mythical orders, see Michael Lowy's "Revolution against 'Progress': Walter
Benjamin's Romantic Anarchism" (New Left Review 125 [1985], 42-59) and Jacobson's Metaphysics of
the Profane.

93
 seem to initiate and bring about this stepping outside, this lapse [apostasy,

fall, Abfall]. (ErW 362)m

The fall from order, the disruption that is taken as a manifestation of evil, is not

necessarily a voluntary or even intentional act against these orders, nor is the

disruption one exclusively originating from outside and beyond the order. Instead, it

seems that the orders themselves produce the transgression, the misstep, that shakes

and interrupts the existing order. Cohen does not explain further this insight about the

fateful transgressions against orders, and his claim remains ambiguous since it is

uncertain whether the orders cause the misstep or whether it only seems that way and

whether he is speaking from the perspective of mythical thinking or from a more

critical perspective.

In "Critique of Violence," Benjamin cites the above passage in Cohen's Ethics of

Pure Will about the order initiating the transgression and uses it to explicitly consider

law's mythical origins.1 In particular, he considers how law relies on what becomes

recognizable as a transgression of the law in order to legitimate violence and

punishment as legal and necessary:

Posited and circumscribed frontiers remain, at least in primeval times,

unwritten laws. A man can unsuspectingly infringe upon them and thus der

Suhne verfalien (given over to atonement). ... But however unluckily it may

befall its unsuspecting victim, its occurrence is, in the understanding of the

121
"Und das Wunder steigert sich dadurch, dass es nicht nur ein Heraustreten aus diesen
Ordnungen ist, als welches das Bose sich darstellt; sondern dass es diese Ordnungen selbst sind, welche
dieses Heraustreten, diesen Abfall zu veranlassen und herbeizufiihren scheinen" {ErW 362).
122
On Benjamin's taking up this passage for his critique of law, see also Hanssen's "Mythical
Origins of the Law" in Walter Benjamin's Other History (127-136).

94
 law, not chance, but fate showing itself once again in its deliberate

ambiguity. ("Critique of Violence" 249, translation adapted)123

One does not need to know the laws or break them intentionally to become a guilty

subject before the law and become a subject whose guilt requires Stihne, atonement.

Neither lack of intention nor lack of knowledge is relevant to the law; transgressions

against the law will be sought out and punished. Benjamin suggests that for the one

who transgresses without knowledge or intention, the punishment comes out of the

blue and appears mere mischance. However, from the perspective of the law this

punishment is not a chance occurrence, and, so Benjamin, this absence of chance in

law reveals an ambiguity that fatefully organizes the legal order. Benjamin gives an

indication of what this ambiguity means in the paragraph preceding this statement,

where he explains that law is haunted byand in fact relies onthe persistent violent

reassertion of its own founding. The function of violence, Benjamin argues, produces

a crucial and (it seems for him) indispensable ambiguity inherent to law and its

continuance:

[T]he function of violence in lawmaking is twofold, in the sense that

lawmaking pursues as its end, with violence as the means, what is to be

established as law (Recht), but at the moment of instatement does not dismiss

violence; rather, at this very moment, lawmaking specifically establishes

violence only now in a strict sense and immediately as lawmaking, by

123
"Gesetzte und umschriebene Grenzen bleiben, wenigstens in Urzeiten, ungeschriebene Gesetze.
Der Mensch kann sie ahnungslos uberschreiten und so der Stihne verfallen. ... Aber so unglucklich sie
den Ahnungslosen treffen mag, ihr Eintritt ist im Sinne des Rechts nicht Zufall, sondern Schicksal, das
sich hier nochmals in seiner planvollen Zweideutigkeit darstellt" ("Zur Kritik der Gewalt" 198-199).

95
 establishing as law not an end unalloyed by violence but one necessarily and

intimately bound to it, under the title of power {Macht). ("Critique of

Violence" 248, translation adapted)124

Violence is not only the initial means by which to law is established, but violence

turns out to inhere in law itself as the end and goal of law. As the law serves to

discriminate legal from illegal violence, legal violence is sanctioned as a legitimate

expression of power. In order to make and enforce this distinction, law relies on

preserving and enforcing itself, and violence as legitimate power hence remains

attached to other ends that law might serve. The ambiguity of the violence that law

commands then means that law's violence is always both violence as an end (for law's

self-preservation) and violence as a means (to enforce the concrete policies and laws

of the ruling power).125 As Benjamin explains, this ambiguity of violence is not

abdicated once law and order are established or reestablished. Instead, this ambiguity

breaks through anew in every transgression against which the limits of the law are

clarified and renewed and law's order re-established. The transgression eventually

helps rather than hinders the task of guarding law and order against the ultimate

interruption or suspension of law. In other words, Benjamin explains the fateful

"Die Funktion der Gewalt in der Rechtsetzung ist namlich zwiefach in dem Sinne, dafi die
Rechtsetzung zwar dasjenige, was as Recht eingesetzt wird, als ihren Zweck mit der Gewalt als Mittel
erstrebt, im Augenblick der Einsetzung des Bezweckten als Recht aber die Gewalt nicht abdankt,
sondern sie nun erst im strengen Sinne und zwar unmittelbar zur rechtsetzenden macht, indem sie nicht
einen von Gewalt freien und unabhangigen, sondern notwendig an sie gebundenen Zweck als Recht
unter dem Namen der Macht einsetzt" ("Zur Kritik der Gewalt" 197-198).
125
On the mutual implication of these two forms of legal violence, their ambiguity, and their
reiteration, see Jacques Derrida's "Force de loi: Le fondement mystique de l'authorite/Force of Law:
The Mystical Foundation of Authority" (trans. Mary Quaintance, Cardozo Law Review 11 [1990], 919
1045). For critical essays examining the connections and differences between Derrida and Benjamin,
see the Anselm Haverkampedited volume Gewalt und Gerechtigkeit: DerridaBenjamin (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).

96
ambiguity in the transgression: the transgression reasserts the order rather than

opening the legal order up to inquiry and the potential for change. The legal order's

efficacy relies on its being made visible and being ascertained as order; the

transgression provides an occasion for this (re)assertion.

This ambiguity and self-stabilizing instability makes this framework of law as

order and its implicit temporality fateful, because the possibility of finding oneself

having transgressed is always looming and the ensuing punishment is not a release

from this guilt, but its affirmation. Law operates through a fateful temporality that

"freezes" guilt in time by rendering transgressions as exemplary cautionary tales.

Benjamin suggests that the exemplary case of this fated founding mechanism in law as

order can be seen in the figure of Niobe.126 Niobe, according to the Greek myth,

challenged fate by boasting about her fertility, thus spiting the goddess Leto, who had

only borne twins, while the mortal Niobe had fourteen children. Niobe's children were

all murdered by Leto's children, but Niobe's own punishment was to be sentenced to

live on, forever guilty, turned into stone: "[0]nly more guilty than before through the

death of the children, both as an eternally mute bearer of guilt and as a boundary stone

of the frontier between men and gods" ("Critique of Violence" 248, translation slightly

adapted).127 Reading the Niobe legend as an exemplar of how law is established,

On the problem of how to interpret Korach as Benjamin's example of divine violence, see
further discussion below. For criticism of using Korach as an example, see Derrida's "Force de loi: Le
fondement mystique de l'authorite/Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority"; Jonathan
Boyarin's "Walter Benjamin: Justice, Right and the Critique of Violence" {Cardozo Law Review 13.4
[1991], 1191-1194); Samuel Weber's "Deconstruction before the Name: Some Preliminary Remarks on
Deconstruction and Violence" {Cardozo Law Review 13.4 [1991], 1181-1190).
127
Niobe's life is spared but she is left behind as guilty marker of that boundary between humans
and gods: "[D]urch das Ende der Kinder nur verschuldeter als vordem als ewigen stummen Trager der

97
Benjamin argues that to be instituted, the legal order in this case relies not only on

transgressions, but also on the institution of Niobe as a visibly liminal figure. As a

physical boundary stone, a Markstein der Grenze, Niobe marks in very real terms the

boundary between legal and illegal on which law relies.128 As a petrified exemplar, her

body stakes out the border by which the space of human life and its claims become

delimited and ordered in the first place. But this marker also arrests time. Niobe, the

transgressor against the gods and thus the threat to the order separating human from

divine, is turned into an eternal, mute bearer of guilt, an ewigen stummen Trdger der

Schuld. In the conjunction of Niobe's exemplarity and her muteness, her guilt attains a

kind of self-evidence and transparency, manifesting the mythical character of the

violence that establishes and asserts the legal order.

The temporality of the exemplarity of the punishment in Niobe's case is mythical:

the punishment does not close the case, but over time the eternal nature of the

punishment intensifies the guilt, not of the particular transgressor, but of the

transgression itself. This mythical temporality refuses to allow the specific action to

recede into the past; the act and the guilt become structural and so becomes temporally

infinite. The transgressive action is generalized into a symbolic "boundary mark"

beyond its specific historical occurrence. As a generalized "boundary mark" the

punished transgressor functions as an exemplar and a reminder to others, in order to

deter other transgressions and to mark the importance of defending the order under

Schuld wie auch als Markstein der Grenze zwischen Menschen und Gottern" ("Zur Kritik der Gewalt"
197).
128
For an examination of the figure of Niobe as a critique of legal violence, see Butler's "Critique,
Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence'."

98
threat. The punishment that grounds legal order is not a momentary manifestation of

violence; instead, the punishment legitimates and fuels the cycle of legal violence that

perpetuates the liminality that the figure of the transgressor, the generalized Niobe,

comes to inhabit.

The problem with the perspective on law and order that Benjamin and Cohen

criticize as mythical is that it considers existing orders not only as natural, but also as

good, whereas threats to the existing legal orders become looming manifestations of

evil. Law as an unquestioned and an unquestionable order that seizes on subjects only

at the points of transgressions, according to Benjamin's analysis, has more in common

with fatedness than with ethics. The mythical perspective on law cements and supports

order by way of condemnation and the inculcation of guilt. Condemning guilt becomes

more important for the legal order than a critical scrutiny of the actions to evaluate the

actions as well as the criteria by which those actions are judged. Such a critique would

then also call into question the law and laws themselves. The mythical view of law

eclipses possible distinctions that need to be made between law and justice, as well as

distinctions and between anarchy and evil. The law that condemns the individual to

guilt corresponds to an equally fatefulbecause sudden, non-negotiable, and

uncriticalaffirmation of the order as just and good. Insofar as (evil) transgressions

become uncontested occasions for reasserting the (good) legal order, the moralistic

On legal violence producing guilty subjects and Benjamin's critique of legal violence through
recourse to the commandment, as well as for a distinction between mythical and divine violence, see
Butler's "Critique, Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence'."

99
attachments to order remove from critical reflection both the criteria for evaluating the

transgressions as well as the breached legal order itself.

The mythical perspective theologically legitimizes retributive violence and

presents an understanding of justice as the deserved punishment and penance for

committed offenses that were seen to be threats to the existing (and hence assumed

natural, good, and legitimate) order. This perspective on legal order that conceives of

threats against it as evil joins with the quasi-Manichean view of this world as a

struggle between good and evil that I discussed in the first section of this chapter. As a

way to criticize the mythical workings of legal violence, Benjamin introduces the

concept of divine violence, which destroys guilt rather than perpetuating the guilt and

thereby making an example of the guilty. In light of my argument here, I will focus on

how the theological intervention of divine violence introduces a deferral of judgment

and a refusal to prejudge the threat to the existing order as evil. This interruption

brings the existing law and order into suspense and neither founds a new order nor

does it demonize its challengers and intensify threats.

Benjamin's mention of the revolutionary general strike (239) works quite well as

an example of an instance where humans manifest divine violence in a form of

violence that unhinges the existing order without setting up a new order.130 However,

For a detailed reading of Benjamin's politics through striking and the unhinging of the
normative, punitive force of law, see Werner Hamacher's "Afformative, Strike: Benjamin's 'Critique of
Violence'" (trans. Dana Hollander, Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience, ed.
Andrew E. Benjamin and Peter Osborne [London: Routledge, 1993], 108-136). In Metaphysics of the
Profane, Jacobson follows mostly this account on Benjamin's "Critique of Violence" and then in his
chapter "Judgment, Violence, and Redemption" (193-232) resituates this account through an
examination of redemptive justice and anarchy in Scholem's work. More broadly on Benjamin's

100
his explicitly theological example that he uses to illuminate divine violence is more

resistant to seamless interpretation. This counter-example to the myth of Niobe is the

biblical narrative of Korach, where God himself wields the divine violence. The

biblical story recounts of the Levite Korach, who leads an uprising against Moses

(Numbers 16:1-34). Korach combines the two parties who are dissatisfied with Moses

on different grounds into one rebellion. The first group challenges the decision to limit

the priesthood to Aaron and his sons. The second groupwhich the text introduces

with some repetitions later showing that two narratives were woven together over

timesimilarly questions the legitimacy of Moses' leadership, since he had to that

point failed to bring them to the Promised Land. When Korach and his followers

gather the whole community against Moses and Aaron, God instructs Moses and

Aaron to stand back so that God can annihilate the entire camp. However, Moses and

Aaron implore God not to punish the whole community. Instead, Moses tells the

Israelites that if God causes the earth to swallow up Korach and his followers, then

this would prove that Moses was indeed sent by God. As Moses finishes speaking, the

earth opens and swallows the rebels.

Benjamin's argument does not attend to the details of the story of Korach and

only briefly puts it forth as an exemplary case of divine violence. Just before offering

this example, he lays out the characteristics of divine violence that make it different

from the mythical violence evident in the story of Niobe: "If mythic violence is

lawmaking, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter

understanding of politics, see Uwe Steiner and Colin Sample's "The True Politician: Walter Benjamin's
Concept of the Political" {New German Critique 83 [2001], 43-88).

101
boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution,

divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is

bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood" ("Critique of Violence" 249-250). 131

Niobe's punishment is mythic, because it manifests the omnipotence of the gods and

their almost capriciousness when challenged, imposing on Niobe punishment forever

for acting as if she were superior in some way and thus making in her a warning to

others against doing the same. In contrast, the story of the earth opening and

swallowing Korach marks something other than a manifestation of God's presence and

might to punish and threaten a human being.132 While on the surface the two stories

deal with acts of rebellion against designated powers, it is striking in the ways

131
"1st die mythische Gewalt rechtssetzend, so die gottliche rechtsvernichtend, setzt jene Grenzen,
so vernichtet diese grenzenlos, ist die mythische verschuldend und siihnend zugleich, so die gottliche
entsilhnend, ist jene drohend, so diese schlagend, jene blutig, so diese auf unblutige Weise letal" ("Zur
Kritikder Gewalt" 199)
One of the difficulties haunting Benjamin's distinction is that he claims mythical violence is
"blutig (bloodly)," while divine violence is "auf unblutige Weise letal (lethal without spilling blood)"
("Zur Kritik der Gewalt" 199; "Critique of Violence" 250). Benjamin explains that in his example,
"God's judgment strikes privileged Levites, strikes them without warning, without threat, and does not
stop short of annihilation" ("Critique of Violence" 250). The annihilation is different from mythical
violence, according to Benjamin, because Korach shows that "annihilating it [divine violence] also
expiates, and a profound connection between the lack of bloodshed and the expiatory character of this
violence is unmistakable" ("Critique of Violence" 250). Benjamin subsequently holds that the relevance
of this distinction lies in understanding blood as the symbol of life and seeing natural life as what the
law seizes on with its mythical logic of guilt, seeking out and condemning to guilt. However, even if
law exerts violence insofar as it perpetuates an ontologically and naturally guilty existence, this critique
does not yet explain the presumably positive side of the lethal but non-bloody divine violence. See also
Butler's "Critique, Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence'" on the status of the
soul in Benjamin. Butler suggests that if Benjamin believes in protecting the soul of the living and if he
is not Platonist, then this protection of the soul would support by implication the protection of bodily
life as well. Hence, it would seem that Benjamin's lethal violence can only be metaphorically lethal.
However, even within this interpretation, the example of Korach remains a problem, since Korach and
his men are indeed physically killed when they are swallowed up by the earth.
132
Both mythic and divine violence "is not a means but a manifestation" and "Mythic violence in
its archetypical form is a mere manifestation of the gods. Not a means to their ends, scarcely a
manifestation of their will, but primarily a manifestation of their existence" ("Critique of Violence"
248). Benjamin then continues to explain that this manifestation of the gods' existence "proves closely
related, indeed identical, to lawmaking violence" ("Critique of Violence" 248).

102
Korach's situation is not parallel to Niobe's. In the Niobe myth the gods are the

aggrieved party and as punishment render Niobe into the "boundary stone" to mark the

distinction between humans and gods. In Korach's case, the aggrieved party is Moses

and his brother Aaron, and God tempers his punishment, seeming to act only because

Moses asks for a demonstrable sign from God that he is indeed the chosen one. So

unlike the mythical foundation of law through the creation of a perpetually guilty

subject, God's act of violence renders immediate and terminal judgment against

Korach. But this judgment functions as a sign rather than as a condemnation. The

opening of the earth pronounces God's approval of Moses' leadership and of the

Aaronite priesthood. Through this manifestation God does not punish Korach to exact

atonement, but to make a point. Equally, this judgment neither founds new law nor

does it inculcate guilt that will be passed on through the generations. In fact, the

Korachites later become the temple musicians, as we know from the psalms that are

attributed to them.133

Nonetheless, Benjamin's example of Korach remains problematic for a number of

reasons, most notably because the divine violence actually affirms the existing order,

reinscribing in no uncertain terms the primacy of the Mosaic law and Moses'

leadership. The difference that I would like to mark for the argument of this section is

that divine violence does not render the transgression into an occasion to intensify the

133
Another way in which this destruction could be considered unblutig is that it is non-bloody in
the sense that neither Moses nor his supporters themselves inflict any violence on Korach and his
supporters. Moses even appeals to God to spare the community, if not exactly the perpetrators. So there
is a stance of non-violence while still refusing to give in to Korach's challenge in Moses' deferring to
God the decision and its enforcement regarding his own being aggrieved. Admittedly, this
interpretation, however, does not resolve the problems raised by Korach's annihilation.

103
order. In fact, despite the annihilation of Korach and the other rebels, both the account

leading up to the divine judgment and the subsequent stories in which a plague is

halted by Aaron's walking through the camp using the censers of the rebel priests and

in which all the sons of Levi, which included the family of Korach, are confirmed as

priests through the miracle of the flowering rods narrate the occurrence rather matter-

of-factly. The tradition reads Korach's challenge as an attempt to usurp power, yet the

incident never figures as a manifestation of some cosmic struggle between forces of

good and evil or even Korach and his men as agents of evil, despite their challenge the

established order of Mosaic law.134

Benjamin references this story as an example of divine, law-destroying violence;

however, it is not fully clear which legal order is destroyed by Korach's annihilation.

What is clear is that Moses' choice of a sign confirming his authority and God's swift

divine judgment seem to function as non-mythical responses to transgression by

suspending any denunciation or vilification of the transgression. The judgment does

not reach into the future with ongoing punishment passed along to subsequent

generations resulting in eternal guilt. Likewise, Moses may have been marked as the

leader in that one instance, but perhaps under different circumstances the judgment

may have been different and Korach might lived on and died a natural death. That

constellation of Moses' deferred judgment and God's decision that has no

consequences beyond that one instance breaks with mythical fatedness. As I argued

134
Udi Greenberg positions the metaphor of blood and Benjamin's invocation of Korach in the
context of Halachik law and more broadly within the debates over Jewish orthodoxy of Benjamin's own
time ("Orthodox Violence: 'Critique of Violence' and Walter Benjamin's Jewish Political Theology,"
History ofEuropean Ideas 34 [2008], 324-333).

104
earlier in this section, a mythical perspective on law gives way to a fateful cycle where

the legal order, or rather the institutions and individuals responsible for its

enforcement, usurp and reappropriate the transgressions against it to secure the order's

persistence. We might conclude from this fateful appropriation of transgressions that

we encounter the insipid but necessary and immutable ontological structure of all

order and law in this cycle of producing transgressors, demonizing and seizing them,

and asserting the legal order's legitimacy and might. However, I would like to offer a

different conclusion than simply settling with the ontologically mythical insipidness of

law. Instead of directly ontologizing this analysis of how law works, I would like to

suggest that we read Cohen and Benjamin as offering a way for us to understand how

the epistemology of mythical thinking contributes to this fated ontology of law and

order.135 It seems to me that Benjamin's and Cohen's analyses suggest that we are

already caught in the realm of mythical thinking as soon as we claim that law and

order necessarily and always immunize themselves by demonizing the threats against

them. To make such a claim, we already commit to excluding historical change and

contingency from any consideration of what law and order come to mean and what

ontologies might undergird them. Through the assumption that law and order are

With such a reading, I would like to avoid what seems to me Giorgio Agamben's ontological
move in his analysis of Benjamin's critique of what is rotten in law ("etwas Morsches im Recht") in
State of Exception, (trans. Kevin Attell [Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005]) and Homo Sacer: Sovereign
Power and Bare Life (trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen [Stanford, A: Stanford UP, 1998]). On this problem
of ontologizing analyzed through the difference between Benjamin's and Agamben's account of
gesture, see Benjamin Morgan's "Undoing Legal Violence: Walter Benjamin's and Giorgio Agamben's
Aesthetics of Pure Means" {Journal of Law and Society 34.1 [2007], 46-64). For a brief critical
commentary on Agamen's use of relation and potentiality, see Alexander Garcia Duttmann's "Never
Before, Always Already: Notes on Agamben and the Category of Relation" (Angelaki: Journal of
Theoretical Humanities 6.3 [2001], 3-6). In my estimation the problem in Agamben is that the
historical accounts end up being abstracted into structural, ontological figures that delimit the
conceptual reality of law and politics as such (such as, for instance, "the camp").

105
ontologically unchangeable and insipidly fateful, this conceptual analysis of law

becomes ontologized as an impermeable reality, and this ontology in return becomes

fate.

Instead of suggesting that we accept the dire unchangeable ontological reality of

law, I am arguing that Cohen and Benjamin's critiques offer us an analysis of

historically contingent conditions under which we settle more readily for the increased

violence with which legal orders are reasserted and are defended at their fraying

edges. The remnants of theological concepts such as original sin and diabolic evil

count among those conditions under which passionate attachments to law and order

and immediate moral clarity thrive. From within the perspective of such attachments

to moral clarity, we end up accepting transgressions and threats to the existing order

more readily as imminent and inevitable. Thinking differently about law and order

does not yet change the ways in which law inflicts and intensifies violence. Even so,

an ontological defeatism about law's inherent violence seems problematic, because

such defeatism blinds us to the volatility of life at the edges of law, even if this

defeatism refuses to vilify those who end up in conflict with legal orders.

Perpetual Urgency as "Skeletal Eschatology"

In the previous sections, I have examined how "evil" as a category works to

gather, focus, and externalize threat and thereby endows existing orders with enough

value to be unwaveringly defended. The theological understanding of evil provides a

larger framework that situate individual conflicts as part of a perennial struggle of

106
good against evil. In this section, I will turn to Benjamin's Origin of German Tragic

Drama to consider more in detail the conception of history in which this expectation

of a perennial struggle and the looming threat converge. In particular, I will examine

his interpretation of the German baroque mourning play's understanding of history as

framed by remnants of Christian eschatology.136 I will suggest that these theological

underpinnings go hand in hand with a theology of diabolic or cosmic evil, even

whenor, rather, precisely whenthere is no longer faith in a final salvation and the

final victory of the good divine power at the end of time. Drawing on Benjamin's

examination of these theological underpinnings in baroque mourning plays, I will

argue that even when the concept of divine salvation has waned, the perpetuation of

urgency against which the status quo needs to be defended is stoked by these remnants

of eschatology.

After problematizing Giorgio Agamben's reading of Benjamin's claims about

eschatology in the baroque mourning plays, I will lay out the paradoxical form of the

surviving eschatology and suggest we consider it as what I call a "skeletal

eschatology." Skeletal eschatology as a perspective on history joins, on the one hand,

a longing for a glorified golden past and, on the other hand, a fear of the future as the

catastrophic end of history. Both aspects reinforce each other to produce the present

and "life as we know it" as perpetually under threat, while at the same time prompting

conservative reactions to preserve and recuperate what is left of the lost past in the

136
On Benjamin's theological-political argument in The Origin of German Tragic Drama as an
argument for the theatrical staging of politics and eschatology, see Lutz P. Koepnick's "The Spectacle,
the Trauerspiel,' and the Politics of Resolution: Benjamin Reading the Baroque Reading Weimar"
(Critical Inquiry 22.2 [1996], 268-291).

107
present. Finally, I will argue that hope is not a remedy to this ongoing fear of

catastrophe, but is rather an affect to which this catastrophic eschatology gives rise to

alongside fear. Skeletal eschatology manages to stoke both fear and hope for a better

and funnels both into fostering investments in protecting the status quo.

In The Origin of the German Tragic Drama, Benjamin explains how the

philosophy of history that underlies the baroque drama owes itself to the debates of the

Counter-Reformation.137 Benjamin's interpretation juxtaposes what seem to be

conflicting explanations about this transformation of eschatology, and it is not clear in

what ways he attributes a remnant of eschatology to the baroque era or (conversely)

claims its utter absence. Giorgio Agamben, who edited Benjamin's works translated

into Italian, insists in his book State of Exception that the Benjamin's German editors

of the Gesammelte Schriften must have changed a letter in Benjamin's text. Agamben

argues the they added a crucial "k" in a passage where Agamben claims that Benjamin

originally wrote that the baroque knows "eine Eschatologie," an eschatology {State of

Exception 56). The editors, insists Agamben, subsequently changed "eine

Eschatologie" to "eine Eschatologie," no eschatology. Agamben concludes that

Benjamin actually claimed that the baroque does indeed still embrace the idea of

eschatology. This observation allows Agamben to make the claim that Benjamin

actually asserts an eschatology of catastrophe as key to the baroque drama, which

drives the baroque drama's staging of the political problematic of emergency rule.

137
On The Origin of German Tragic Drama as a baroque study and for a brief systematic
elucidation of the main theoretical arguments structuring the book, see Bettine. Menke's '"Ursprung des
deutschen Trauerspiels'" in the Benjamin-Handbuch: LebenWerkWirkung (ed. Burkhardt Lindner
[Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2006], 210-229).

108
 However, Agamben's claim runs into the unfortunate problem that this

interpretation does not explain how we are to understand a passage a few pages further

in the text, which Agamben's reading bypasses silently. In that passage Benjamin

describes the theological situation of the baroque era as marked by the "Ausfall aller

Eschatologie," the disappearance (loss, failure) of all eschatology. This Ausfall

provides a formulation that does not lend itself to an interpretation based entirely on

one letter that could be easily overlooked or changed by editors. Instead, Benjamin

explicitly states that "[Consequent upon the total disappearance of eschatology (der

Ausfall aller Eschatologie), is the attempt to find, in a reversion to a bare state of

creation, consolation for the renunciation of a state of grace" (Origin 81). The German

text here reads: "Und deren eine [theologische Situation], wie der Ausfall aller

Eschatologie sie mit sich bringt, ist der Versuch, Trost im Verzicht auf einen

Gnadenstand im Ruckfall auf den bloBen Schopfungsstand zu finden" (Trauerspiel

259-260). Benjamin seems to be very clear in this passage that by the time of baroque

era there is no more eschatology or at the very least no more functioning eschatology;

instead, the baroque offers up as consolation for this loss the image of "the" original,

pre-lapsarian state. Benjamin's claim about eschatology is thus more precise than

some general disappearance of an old doctrinal concept. The baroque era does away

with the eschatological belief in a redemptive state of grace as the conclusion and

perfection of history. But this loss of faith in a salutary conclusion of history does not

mean that history now has become endless. Just before the passage that Agamben cites

as mis-edited, Benjamin explains that the disappearance (Ausfall) of eschatology does

109
not mean that the baroque no longer imagines history as finite. Rather, the baroque era

subscribes to a concept of the end of history that is "haunted by the idea of

catastrophe" (Origin 66). In German the full sentence here reads: "Denn antithetisch

zum Geschichtsideal der Restauration steht vor ihm [dem Barock] die Idee der

Katastrophe" (Trauerspiel 246). Based on this belief in a catastrophic end of history

that delimits the baroque's perspective on the future and on history, Agamben explains

that we best understand this perspective as a "white eschatology" of a catastrophic

end, instead of a salvific new creation of the universe {State of Exception 57). In

focusing only on that one passage, Agamben omits the paradoxical statements in

Benjamin's text and consequently misses the crucial reversal by Benjamin of the

perspective within the Trauerspiel from pure fear of the final catastrophe to a nostalgia

for the past that nonetheless expects at the same time a catastrophic end of history.

Although I have taken it to task, Agamben's argument seems productive to me

insofar as it puts forth that although Benjamin claims that the baroque knows no more

eschatology, his analysis suggests more precisely that there is only no more positive

eschatology in the baroque. In other words, the baroque knows no eschatology that

envisions final salvation at the end of the world. But within the dusk of positive

eschatology, we can see the rudiments of a negative eschatology, which structures the

baroque drama's perspective on history and politics by focusing the energy of the

participants on staving off this catastrophic end. Going beyond Agamben's account,

however, I will consider two aspects that Agamben elides in Benjmain's analysis,

namely, the baroque's backward-looking hope for restoration of the "good old days"

110
and the implications of a deepened account of original sin that includes the inevitable

corruption of human nature through the disappearance of a state of grace and

subsequently salvation as the end of history. Both of these aspects complicate any

simple conclusion that the implicit moralism of instigating a sense of urgency owes

itself solely to fear-mongering and in itself produces apocalyptic sensibilities.

As Benjamin suggests, the transformations that the debates of the Reformation

and Counter-Reformation brought to the philosophy of history resulted in history's

secularization. History as secularized means that history is rendered immanent so that

the end of history is no longer conceivable as final salvation and divine completion.

Instead, the end of history comes to mean the destruction of this world. This

transformed conceptualization of the end of time as destruction and final catastrophe

goes hand in hand with an insistence on repressing the thought of that final end and

fostering instead a readiness to embrace nostalgic Utopias.138 The hope that is found in

yearning for the lost past is not a sense of hopeful faith in a better future, but a longing

that finds consolation in the past and seeks to restore this past in the present. In the

baroque era this retrieval of the lost past is connected with the ideal of acme, an age of

restored peace.139 As Benjamin explains, the dream of restoring the golden past

removes all apocalyptic expectations from the baroque sense of history. With the loss

138
In the essay "Der Fortschritt in seiner Enthullung als Verhangnis" (35-45) in Die Legitimitdt
der Neuzeit: Erneuerte Ausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966), Hans Blumenberg argues that
the secularization of eschatology does not simply absorb the idea of salvation into the idea of progress,
but leads to ambivalent worldly eschatologies.
139
On the complexity of the nostalgia, hopefulness, and despair that Benjamin examines in the
baroque plays through melancholia in connection to the theological developments, see Pensky's
Melancholy Dialectics: Walter Benjamin and the Play of Mourning and Rainer Nagele's "Tropes of
Theology" in his Theater, Theory, Speculation: Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of Modernity
([Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1991], 176-206).

Ill
of a view of history as that which leads eventually to eternal salvation, the baroque

finds consolation in idealizing the supposedly peaceful past and hoping for the

restoration of this past by the "sword of the church," ensuring the continued military,

worldly might of the ecclesiastical powers (see Trauerspiel 259). Consequently, as

hope in the present becomes desire for the restoration of the past, the past becomes

valorized retrospectively as what must guide our efforts and actions in the present.

When we engage in this kind of nostalgic framing of history, we deny ourselves

the possibility of imagining radically different futuresnot because we are attached to

a pragmatic realism, but rather because we are attached to nostalgic visions of the past

as that which bore the potential for a peace and harmony that is now supposedly lost in

the present. This reactionary vision builds upon the loss of the past as an ideal for the

present. Where our political commitments and actions are guided by a longing for a

lost and glorified past, such as when other leaders saw us through a particularly dark

time to victory or prosperity, we orient our political positions and involvement on the

basis of an underlying perspective that shores up the status quo as the only prospect

for either the continuation or the restoration of the "good times," thereby making

actions by current political leaders unavailable for critical evaluation. By focusing on

implementing any changes with the goal to conserve what is, we avoid inquiring into

what radical and disruptive changes might be necessary and how the changing

conditions of the world could afford us the opportunity to rethink profoundly what is

needed for a better future. When we yearn for past glory and use this imagined past as

112
a measure for our actions in the present, we escape fromrather than seeking an

analytic encounter withwhat presents itself as unprecedented.

Benjamin's claim about the baroque focus on retrieving the state of creation

echoes Cohen's distinction between myth and messianism. Cohen emphasizes that this

lack of imagining the future independently from a glorified past sets myth and

messianism apart: "Myth has no image of the future {Zukunftsbild); it moves the peace

of humankind and nature into the past, into the golden age" (ErW 406).m Mythical

thinking, Cohen suggests, flees from imagining the future, preferring to conjure up an

ideal of a golden but lost age in the past. The antidote to this nostalgic focus on the

past lies for Cohen in hope that aspires to a better future.141

However, unlike for Cohen, for Benjamin the emphasis on the past is not per se

mythical, just as well as for him hope does not per se overcome the longing for a lost

past. Benjamin's critique of the Counter-Reformatory attempts to recover and

revitalize the immanentized eschatology complicates this binary of nostalgia versus

hope on which Cohen seems to rely. Through Benjamin, we can see that nostalgic

thinking cannot be faulted simply on the basis that nostalgia omits the possibility for a

more affirmative perspective on the future. Instead, drawing on Benjamin's analysis,

we can refine the problematic of assessing the present only through the lens of

perpetually immediate and urgent threats because seeing the present both as

140
"Der Mythos hat kein Zukunftsbild; er verlegt den Frieden der Menschen und der Natur in die
Vergangenheit, in das goldene Weltalter" {ErW 406).
141
On Cohen's messianism and the ideal of the future as ethical progress, see Fiorato's
Geschichtliche Ewigkeit and his "Notes on Future and History in Hermann Cohen's Anti-Eschatological
Messianism" (trans. John Denton, Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism, ed. Reinier Munk [Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Springer, 2005], 133-160) as well as Poma's The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen
and Deuber-Mankowsky's Derfruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen.

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overshadowed by an impending catastrophe and by the continual delay of the world's

final destruction becomes connected with nostalgic attachments to a lost, (now) golden

past and hopes for recuperating this past. Hope for a better future is not necessarily an

antidote to the perpetuity of urgency, but this hope is the yearning that prevents the

fear from feeding into outright apocalyptic despair.

This conjunction of hope and fear becomes legible through the framework of

skeletal eschatology, which retains rendered immanent, versions of the cornerstone

events of Christian eschatology, namely, the Fall and the end of the world, but not

salvation in the after-life. In the process of secularizing these elements, their

theological chargesuch as heaven and hell, salvation and damnationis rendered

immanent and transitions into the form of this-worldly moral concerns. Secularization

need not necessarily mean that the moral charge of the theological concerns is

lessened simply because now salvation and damnation are temporal and historical,

rather than eternal, judgments. The rendering immanent can very well go hand in hand

with an intensification of the moral charge, because there is no longer a Judgment Day

on which one can rely for the act of final judgment. Instead of God, humans are now

charged with pronouncing moral judgment and producing moral clarity. Moreover, the

validation by other human beings becomes all the more important, since one's status

and legacy now fully depend on the judgment of others in this world if there is no God

who will eventually render justice.

As theology becomes immanentthe secularization of everyday life in the

baroque is for Benjamin a theological process in itselfhistory takes form in the

114
present as a drama of human failure and success that might vary slightly in its

manifestations but that eventually remains caught in the fundamental drama of human

depravity and the longing to recover a better future out of the lost potentials of the

past. As the concept of original sin is rendered immanent, it is severed from

soteriology, the doctrine of eternal salvation and damnation. Yet an immanent version

of original sin continues to live on as a secular concept that describes human nature as

fundamentally corrupt and depraved. The bleakness of history then becomes a

dissimulated version of the story of the Fall, inciting a longing for the lost paradisiacal

past.142 This longing for the restoration of the lost past in the present, however,

becomes coupled with a sense of overwhelming fear of the future as catastrophe-in-

the-making that leads to final destruction, rather than to final salvation:

The beyond {Jenseits) is emptied of everything which contains the slightest

breath of this world, and from it the baroque extracts a profusion of things ...

and at its high point, brings them in drastic form into the light of day, in

order to clear an ultimate heaven, enabling it, as a vacuum, one day to

destroy the world with catastrophic violence. (Origin 66)143

Faith in a perfect world that will follow once this world comes to an end no longer

holds. The finitude of this world now only means that one day this world will find its

142
This longing, as Benjamin elaborates, is not exuberant, but rather melancholic. For further
discussion of melancholia, the bleakness of history and the human condition in history, and the arrest of
history by the saturine temperament, see Pensky's "Trauerspiel and Melancholy Subjectivity" (60-107)
in Melancholy Dialectics and Beatrice Hanssen's "Portrait of Melancholy (Benjamin, Warburg,
Panofsky)" (Benjamin's Ghosts: Interventions in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory, ed.
Gerhard Richter [Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2002], 169-188).
143
"Das Jenseits wird entleert von alledem, worin auch nur der leisteste Atem von Welt webt und
eine Fillle von Dingen, ..., gewinnt der Barock ihm ab und fordert sie auf seinem Hohepunkt in
drastischer Gestalt zu Tag, um einen letzten Himmel zu raumen und als Vakuum ihn in den Stand zu
setzen, mit katastrophaler Gewalt dereinst die Erde in sich zu vernichten" (Trauerspiel 246).

115
end in destruction. But as Benjamin explains, this end remains uncertain, as this final

catastrophe is expected indeterminately"one day." The only certainty is the sense

that the catastrophe is certainly coming, but the catastrophic end remains uncertain

with respect to its time of arrival. History thus becomes the antechamber no longer of

eternal life, but of destruction, an end that may or may not be possible to delay

through human agency.

We might think that the expectation of utter destruction would result in

indifference toward life in this world. But Benjamin explains that the loss of faith in

an afterlife actually intensifies the attachments to this world, as all that remains for the

baroque individual to hang on to: "The religious man of the baroque era clings so

tightly to the world because of the feeling that he is being driven along to a cataract

with it" (Origin 66).144 Benjamin subsequently explains that this attachment to the

world not only stems from the feeling that this world is all that the baroque individual

has left but also because, for the baroque, the steadfast Dulden, the toleration and

suffering of this desolate history itself, becomes the epitome of virtue (see Origin 89;

Trauerspiel 267).

Benjamin's readings of the baroque mourning play offer on the surface

incompatible pieces of a shattered, lost faith in history as salvation story. However, as

I suggest, these elements and remnants of Christian eschatology have not vanished but

now exist in the form a "skeletal" eschatology that echoes in secularized conceptions

of history that combine a sense of the looming finitude of this world with a nostalgic

144
"Der religiose Mensch im Barock halt an der Welt so fest, weil er mit ihr sich einem Katarakt
entgegentreiben sieht" {Trauerspiel 246).

116
hope for staying, through human intervention, the harbingers of the end. This skeletal

eschatology turns the anticipated, impending end of history into the "white noise" of

catastrophe, but at the same time retains the skeleton of the old theologically charged

hope. This hope, however, is no longer associated with anticipating the end of time;

instead, the only hope available for a restoration of more peaceful times. In this

hopeful imaginary, memory of the past is transfigured into that of a better past,

regardless of the factual situation. The past becomes "remembered" as a more orderly,

more peaceful time, one less haunted by fear and uncertainty about the future.

"Skeletal" eschatology joins these seemingly conflicting tendencies of the future

as impending destruction and endlessly deferral of this destruction by envisioning a

future of restoring the lost past. While thus blunting the sense of impending

catastrophe, this skeletal eschatology also enhances a conviction of moral clarity about

the present, its urgency, and the need for action. The paradoxical perspective on

history fosters an uncritical perspective on politics in the present by the prismatic

perspective on the urgency of the present alternating between hope and fear, while

implying settled value judgments that frame the assessment of the present, namely, the

lost past as a good to be recuperated and the catastrophic end as an evil to be staved

off.

On the decidedly theological character of secularization, see also Blumenberg's

"Verweltlichung durch Eschatologie statt Verweltlichung der Eschatologie" (46-62) in Die Legitimitat
der Neuzeit.

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Eschatological Urgencies, Displaced Responsibility, and Expected Failures

In this section, which builds on the last, I will argue that Benjamin's analysis of

baroque mourning plays exposes a crucial paradox inherent in the appeal to the present

and to history as urgent in the face of history's impending catastrophic end. This

appeal to urgency joins a heightened sense of the need for action with a willing

defeatism that readies us both to long for action (but not necessarily our own) and to

be disposed to defer responsibility to others seen as acting on our behalf. Benjamin's

readings show how the sovereign in the dramatic staging of the mourning play is

perceived as the representative and agent of history, as a model and exemplar for all

his subjects.146 Drawing on Benjamin, I will suggest that viewing the sovereign as the

exemplary human agent allows the audience, the subjects, to relate to and identify with

the sovereign and his plight while at the same time the representative function of the

sovereign also reinforces the passivity of the spectators. Finally, I will argue that the

appeal to action and support compelled by catastrophic temporality goes hand in hand

with a defeatist invalidation of all attempts to act and make a difference and

indifference in response to the sovereign's eventual failure, because all human action

in history is viewed as bound by a human nature that is corrupt. A generalized,

On Benjamin's interpretation of sovereignty as a critical gloss on Schmitt's interpretation of

sovereignty as secularized divine omnipotence, see Samuel Weber's Benjamin's -abilities (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard UP, 2008); Susanne Heil's "Gefahrliche Beziehungen": Walter Benjamin und Carl
Schmitt. (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1996); Koepnick's "The Spectacle, the Trauerspiel,' and the Politics
of Resolution: Benjamin Reading the Baroque Reading Weimar"; Jan-Werner Mailer's "Myth, Law and
Order: Schmitt and Benjamin Read Reflections on Violence" {History of European Ideas 29 [2003],
459-473); Sigrid Weigel's "Der Martyrer und der Souveran: Szenarien eines modernen Trauerspiels,
gelesen mit Walter Benjamin und Carl Schmitt" (Theologie und Politik: Walter Benjamin und ein
Paradigma der Moderne, ed. Bernd Witte and Mauro Ponzi [Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2005], 94-106).

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naturalized spectacle of historical necessity dehistoricizes situations and inflates

spectators' sense of moral worth for having already anticipated the sovereign's failure.

In The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin explains how the

theologically charged idea of impending catastrophe frames the baroque understanding

of history and inflects its politics in response to this sense of history. The baroque

era's understanding of history becomes "haunted by the idea of catastrophe. And it is

in response to this antithesis [to the idea of a final state of grace] that the theory of the

state of emergency is devised" (Origin 66).' 7 In light of this particular transformation

in the philosophy of history that belongs to the baroque, Benjamin suggests that the

theory of sovereignty becomes central to thinking political order and political life.

Benjamin gives an account that locates the decisiveness not in the decision over who

will be sovereign, but in the decisiveness of the sovereign, the prince whose sovereign

power is not in question under absolutism. The baroque expectation of absolute rule

and intervention, according to Benjamin, derives not so much from seeing the

sovereign as God rendered immanent, but owes itself to the changed sense of

history.148 This understanding of history as fending off the catastrophic end leads to a

hyper-politicization of the present as the decisive moment that determines the

possibility of the future of the world "as we know it."

"Denn antithetisch zum Geschichtsideal der Restauration steht vor ihm [dem Barock] die Idee
der Katastrophe. Und auf diese Antithetik ist die Theorie den Ausnahmezustands gemunzt"
(Trauerspiel 246).
148
Blumenberg does not reference Benjamin in his "Politische Theologie I und II" (99-113) in
Die Legitimitdt der Neuzeit, but offers a similar account and critique of Schmitt's understanding of
political theology as relying on a conceptually too simplistic understanding of secularization.

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 The urgency of the impending catastrophe thus delineates the sovereign's main

task, to forestall catastrophe by taking decisive action. The present becomes a site for

action and even urgently demands the sovereign to act and realize his task by averting

over and over again the looming catastrophe that nevertheless always remains a future

possibility: "[T]he baroque concept [of sovereignty] emerges from a discussion of the

state of emergency, and makes it the most important function of the prince to avert

this" (Origin 65). 149 In particular, the primary task of the sovereign is to save the

current political order from the permanent threat of "war, revolt, and other

catastrophes" (Origin 65), and he fends off the state of emergency by continuously

imposing and upholding the political order against the threat. The present is constantly

politicized through introducing and emphasizing the destruction and evil that loom on

the horizon, threatening to annihilate the current order.150 Politicization of this kind,

emphasizing decisive and immediate action, narrows the possibilities for rethinking

and transforming the status quo. When human action is considered as simultaneously

doomed and urgent, there is not much point in questioning and debating which course

of action to take and which to avoid. Under the circumstances of catastrophic urgency,

the appeal to this urgency and its impending perdition takes the place of ethical

arguments and contestations. In other words, the hyper-politicization of the present

"[D]er barocke [Souveranitatsbegriff] entwickelt sich aus einer Diskussion des

Ausnahmezustandes und macht zur wichtigsten Funktion des Fursten, den auszuschlielten" (Trauerspiel
245).
150
Adi Ophir argues for a critique of state power by suggesting a mutual implication of what he
calls the providential and catastrophic state formation. In the light of catastrophic situations or threats,
the state provides the perception of order, security, and stability. Ophir suggests that both formations go
hand in hand to intensify state power. See Ophir's "The Two-State Solution: Providence and
Catastrophe" {Theoretical Inquiries in Law 8.1 [2007], 117-160).

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moment, heightened by the imperative to act now, implies that both the political and

ethical considerations of what ought to be done responsibly are limited to doing

whatever it takesright nowto avert the impending catastrophe.151

Without any longer the unified purpose of eternal salvation, eschatology has

become immanent as the end that will manifest itself in and on the stage of this world

through the destruction of the world itself. If history is framed through this semi-

secularized eschatology in which the eschatonthe end as the afterlife beyond this

worlddisappears, the present, including actions in the present, attain their

importance in relation to catastrophic threats, whether perceived or actual. The moral

imperative that every present moment delivers under the auspices of this

eschatological perspective is to act rather than to pause and to engage in critical

reflection. At the same time, this contraction of the future into the immediate future of

the impending catastrophe supplies the necessary criterion for orienting action; the

sovereign must do whatever it takes to prevent the catastrophe.

As Benjamin points out, the baroque person understands history as embodied in

the sovereign's plight: "The sovereign represents history. He holds the course of

history in his hand like a sceptre" (Origin 65).152 History is mapped onto the body of

the sovereign; at the same time, the plight of the sovereign embodies history itself.

151
The question that this problematic of the affective coordinates of persuasiveness raises is in my
opinion not so much how to make our political and moral discourses more rational so that the "best"
argument may win, but how to analyze thoroughly how affect conditions the political space and what
precisely transforms these coordinates of persuasiveness over time. Therefore I am also not convinced
that the main question for critical theory is to supply and argumentatively secure its own normative
foundations.
152
"Der Souveran reprasentiert die Geschichte. Er halt das historische Geschehen in der Hand wie
eine Szepter. Diese Auffassung ist alles andere als ein Privileg der Theatraliker. Staatsrechtliche
Gedanken liegen ihr zugrunde" (Trauerspiel 245).

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Within the limits imposed by this embodiment, history then becomes entirely the

drama of the sovereign's struggle to avert the catastrophe. Since the sovereign

represents human history, he acts on behalf of humanity, but he is also an exemplar of

human historical action. His actions are generalized beyond their individual historical

specificity: the sovereign's plight comes to stand in for history in general. As

Benjamin suggests, the theatrical staging of this history acts also as a means to instruct

the spectators. As the sovereign becomes exemplary, so does his task. That taskto

defend the political orderimplicitly also carries an appeal to everyone to make the

sacrifices necessary in the name of upholding that order.

Benjamin further suggests that while the theatrical performances serve as a

vehicle to urge general support for the sovereign outside the play itself, the play's

moral instruction equally disengages the spectators from joining in political action

themselves: "Fear and pity (Mitleid) are not seen as participation in the integral whole

of the action, but as participation in the fate of the most outstanding figures. Fear is

aroused by the death of the villain, pity by that of the pious hero ... The Trauerspiel

should fortify the virtue of its audience. And if there was a particular virtue which was

indispensable in its heroes, and edifying for its public, then this was the old virtue of

apatheid" (Origin 61). 153 The spectator is both included and excluded from political

action through this moral pedagogy that the mourning play conducts. The spectators

are expected to learn a lesson from the downfall of the villain and to empathize with

153
"Furcht und Mitleid denkt sie [die barocke Interpretation der aristotelischen Poetik] nicht als
Anteil am integralen ganzen der Aktion, sondern als den am am Schicksal der markantesten Figuren.
Furcht weckt das Ende des Bosewichts, Mitleid dasjenige des frommen Helden. ... Die Tugend seiner
Beschauer hat das Trauerspiel zu ertuchtigen. Und gab e seine, welche seinen helden obligat und
seinem Publikum erbaulich war, so ist es die alte apatheid" {Trauerspiel 241-242).

122
the saintly hero, but they do so from the sidelines. Benjamin points out that apatheia,

the freedom from emotional disturbance, becomes the overarching virtue to the

baroque. At the same time, the dramatic presentation of the sovereign-hero's struggles

instructs those watching in how to struggle virtuously in the face of the unfolding

catastrophe.154 This theatrical moral instruction of the baroque mourning plays reveals

how the both the concept and the theatrical presentation of history feed into a kind of

"involved apathy" which is seen as a virtue for the spectators. Apatheia in the face of

the hopelessness of history becomes a virtue, but the sovereign is also the sole

exemplary hero of history, so the spectator remains at a distance from the sovereign,

while both identifying with and ceding responsibility to him. So this "involved

apathy" as a new virtue is a kind of political action by proxy that feeds both a sense of

being concerned and of being in touch with the pressing need for action, while at the

very same time readily yielding responsibility to those in power who are "actors on the

world stage."

As the baroque plays display, the perpetuation of the present as constantly

overshadowed by danger summons us to espouse and defend the existing order, but

also induces inaction in the face of the ongoing inconclusiveness and perpetual

suspense of the catastrophic end. In the face of the threat's urgency, decisions and

actions are always immediately necessary and time is always just about to run out.

This perspective of an agency in history limited to leaders' actions and subjects'

On the Trauerspiel as a staging of the baroque's political affect and inculcation of how to relate
to authority, see also Koepnick's "The Spectacle, the 'Trauerspiel,' and the Politics of Resolution:
Benjamin Reading the Baroque Reading Weimar" (especially 288-290).

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support of those actions rallies us to defend existing orders and moralizes these

appeals, because our support of the existing political order becomes a matter of

whether we join to foster or to fend off catastrophic consequences. The hopelessness

that such an eschatology of a final catastrophe inspires also makes us more susceptible

to cede all responsibility to act to others in positions of political power. In other words,

the discourse of perpetual urgency both rallies support and inspires apathy in the face

of the immediate catastrophe that foreshadows the final catastrophic destruction of the

world.

At the same time, the continuous deferral of the end of the world frames the

present as caught between the impending near-future catastrophe and the delayed final

catastrophe, which encourages citizens in an ongoing way to readily displace the

responsibility to decide and act in the face of the looming threats onto the sovereign.

In the remainder of this section, I would like to address this apparent paradox, that of

how the urgent appeal to act can be squared with a willing defeatism that manifests

itself in tolerating the sovereign's failures in staving off the threats while still never

calling into question the interpretation of the present as requiring urgent intervention

by strong leaders. Drawing on Benjamin's readings of the mourning plays, I will argue

that this defeatism is stoked by the interlacing of history as bound by a fragmented

eschatology and the human condition as bound by original sin.155

In The Origin of German Tragic Drama Benjamin examines how these plays take

their cues from historical events, but staged as generalized, naturalized spectacles of

155
On the interlacing of original sin and eschatological ideas more generally, see Paul Ricoeur's
"The 'Adamic' Myth and the 'Eschatological' Vision of History" (232-278) in The Symbolism ofEvil.

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historical necessity propelled by the unchanging condition of human nature as fallen

and hence irretrievably corrupted and imperfect. This remnant of the doctrine of

original sin that lives on in and beyond baroque society fosters defeatism that is thinly

masked by the activism of the populace in acknowledging the historical urgency and

by supporting their ruler's actions. While the sovereign must act and the subjects must

support him as both the representative and model of humankind, his failure, even more

so than his successes, exemplifies his humanity and allows his subjects to identify

with him. Hence the sovereign's failures tends to be tolerated rather than fueling

opposition and inspiring calls for radical action and systemic change.

As Benjamin lays out, the mourning play develops this double role of the

sovereign as both a sovereign agent and an imperfect creature by interlacing in the

figure of the sovereign both the drama of the tyrant and the drama of the martyr.156

The sovereign, as ruler and leader, is the representative of human agency in history,

but at the same time, as a representative of humanity, he is a fallible creature and thus

bound by and an example of the fallenness of human nature. In light of human nature

as fallen, corrupt, and imperfect, politics as well as history is from the beginning a

fated undertaking, as is sovereignty. The sovereign with his concomitant Macht

(power) and Ohnmacht (powerlessness) is caught up in the struggle to ensure the

political order's stability:

[I]n the sense of the martyr-drama it is not the moral transgression but the

state of the human as creature which is the reason for the catastrophe (Grund

156
On this interlacing of the two figures, see also Weigel's "Der Martyrer und der Souveran:
Szenarien eines modernen Trauerspiels, gelesen mit Walter Benjamin und Carl Schmitt."

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 des Untergauges). This typical catastrophe (downfall, Untergang), which is

so different from the extraordinary one of the tragic hero, is what the

dramatists had in mind when ... they described a work as a TrauerspieF

{Origin 89, translation slightly adapted).157

The mourning play stages an impossible situation; doom and downfall come upon the

hero both from internal and external sources, but it is the hero's fallen nature, rather

than specific decisions or the individual character of the hero, that conjures up the

catastrophe. What remains after the loss of paradise, for both sovereign and subject, is

only the permanent fallenness of human nature. As historyembodied in the

sovereign's plightbecomes a drama and spectacle of doom, history becomes

moralized; this doom is seen as caused by and manifesting the fallenness of human

nature. Any action at any moment in time is seen as decisive due to the urgency of

staving off the looming catastrophe that is the result of this fallennessbut at the

same time no action can reach beyond the fated trajectory to which humankind is

condemned qua its fallen, imperfect nature. Not history as such, but the imperfect

character of human nature undergirds human fate. This imperfection undoes any

decision and renders the agentin the case of the mourning play, the sovereigna

martyr to his human fate. Under the auspices of skeletal eschatology, then, history,

life, and agency come together in inevitable martyrdom.

"[I]m Sinn der Martyrerdramatik ist [es] nicht sittliche Vergehung, sondern der Stand des
kreatiirlichen Menschen selber der Grand des Unterganges. Diesen typischen Untergang, der so
verschieden von dem auBerordentlichen des tragischen Helden ist, haben die Dichter im Auge gehabt,
wenn sie ... ein Werk als 'Trauerspiel' bezeichnet haben" (Trauerspiel 268).

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 The hero-martyr's suffering, Benjamin suggests, is not exactly tragic, but is

instead traurig (sad, mournful); it is saturated with a pathos that is foreign to ancient

tragedy. Unlike in ancient tragedy, where it is the hero's individual character that is

the reason for his or her downfall, in the mourning play it is the generalized corrupt

human condition that causes the hero's eventual downfall. The martyr is not a martyr

for a cause, but instead a martyr due to the guilt of humanity. The sovereign's failure

does not expiate the guilt of his corrupt human nature, but the sovereign's failure

embodies the drama that, beyond the play, is also the drama of humanity and the

drama of history. The sovereign's downfall thus is not in any way salvific, but is

exemplary of the downfall of all of us in our own fate and destiny. The sovereign's

death is not a punishment that he receives for his personal failures, but a consequence

of and atonement for being human. Original sin binds life to a fated temporality. Life

in this world is unrelentingly guilty, and death is the ultimate penance: "Fate coasts

towards death. Death is not punishment but atonement, an expression of the subjection

of guilty life to the law of natural life" {Origin 131).158. Hence the sovereign's failure

and his ultimate death do not constitute a moment of supreme responsibility for his

actions, whatever those may be, but his failure and death render him a martyr, because

the reason for his failure in history, namely, his human nature was beyond his power

to overcome.

This martyrdom in turn offers a perspective on history that moralizes life and

action in this world, albeit ambiguously, because human nature and its fallenness are

158
"Schicksal rollt dem Tode zu. Er ist nicht Strafe sondern Siihne, ein Ausdruck der Verfallenheit
des verschuldeten Lebens an das Gesetz des nattirlichen" (Trauerspiel 310).

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within this view not traceable to specific moral transgressions. This outlook on history

is mythical in the sense that Cohen and Benjamin give the term because it drains away

any potential for enabling critical evaluation and intervention. At the same time,

paradoxically, this perspective on history charges every moment with urgency and yet

frames every action as yet another instance of original sin. The sovereign embodies

the human condition of weakness and hence is inevitably prone to failure. Within the

perspective of skeletal eschatology, this failure tends to be dehistoricized by being

read as an allegory of human finitude, weakness, and corruption; rather than being

analyzed, questioned, and criticized as the individual short-comings of a particular

sovereign, the failure and downfall of the sovereign merely reveal his generalizable

humanity.

* * *

Drawing on Cohen's and Benjamin's critiques of mythical thinking and its

remnants in Christian theology, I have examined a conjunction of the theological

concepts of original creaturely sin, of evil as a force in a cosmic struggle between

good and evil, and of a skeletal eschatology. Even when they are not invoked

explicitly, these concepts can live on in how we think of human nature, history, and

the legal orders that structure our living together. As I have argued, Cohen and

Benjamin criticize these particular concepts because they restrict possibilities for

critique and arrest responsibility.

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 Understanding human nature as bound by an omnipresent guilt, as mythical

thinking does, means that all our actions and even history itself remain mired in this

guilt. If history no longer holds the promise of restoring a paradisiacal state

universally, then, if there is any hope at all, it is only for individual salvation from

original sin.159 Any large-scale eschatological hope remains stored up only ex negativo

through the memory of its loss. This eschatology takes a skeletal form, at once

yearning for the restoration of paradise and mourning of the loss of it. But if the loss

of paradise is irreversible, and history is now nothing more than a disastrous

reiteration of this loss, then the only hope that remains is the possibility of keeping at

bay the catastrophe that one day may seal the end of the world. As eschatological hope

collapses into the individual body in the form of its creaturely sin and guilt, the future

becomes the present in which the current order is defended against this world's

infinitely looming, but also infinitely indefinite, destruction. This perspective

implicitly shores up the status quo precisely through producing a perpetual horizon of

urgency. The theological concepts that I have examined serve as frameworks

according to which history and our lives are bound both internally by our corrupt

The doctrine of universal reconciliation at the end of times, called apocatastasis, was defended
by Clement of Alexandria and Origen of Alexandria during the third century A.D. However, the
teaching of apocatastasis was subsequently condemned at the Synod of Constantinople (543 A.D.), and
Origenism was formally anathematized at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553 A.D.). The opposition to
the teaching of apocatastasis arose particularly because the doctrine was seen as compromising God's
omnipotence. To presume universal reconciliation would mean to prematurely decide the outcome of
Judgment Day instead of leaving this decision to God. In "Convolute N" of his Arcades Project,
Benjamin invokes apocatastasis as an element of his reformulated historical materialism. He proposes
that all phenomena must be split open and weighed to recover their positive part and that then the
remaining part would need to be submitted to another iteration of this process of rescue through
judgment: "And so on, ad infinitum, until the entire past is brought into the present in a historical
apocatastasis (Und so weiter in infinitum, bis die ganze Vergangenheit in einer historischen
Apokatastasis in die Gegenwart eingebracht isi)" [Nla, 3] {Arcades 459; Passagen-Werk 573).

129
human condition and externally by the ongoing assault of evil. If there is salvation, it

is in the form of release from this life and this world. As I have suggested in my

readings of Cohen and Benjamin, these theological concepts tends to intensify fear and

guilt. As a consequence, ethical considerations focus on how to prevent anything

worse from happening and so center on bolstering the status quo ("better the devil you

know than the one you don't"). The sense of guilt and doom that these concepts

implicitly or explicitly stoke hinders critical attention to the concrete social conditions

under which we live and also displace responsibility from this-worldly affairs onto

matters of salvation and damnation.

To consider theological resources that might invigorate thinking responsibility

outside of the nexus of fate and guilt, I will turn in the next chapters to Cohen's and

Benjamin's appropriations of the concept of the messianic. The concept of the

messianic introduces a non-eschatological opening toward the future that insists on

redemption without requiring with it the end of history. With this concept of the

messianic in Cohen and Benjamin, I will attempt to elaborate the role of responsibility

and experience in history when individuals are freed from being actors in an eternal

drama of guilt, evil, and pending damnation or salvation. In both Cohen and Benjamin,

albeit differently, as I will show, redemption serves as theological concept that enables

and demands of us that we conceive history and our life in it as transient and yet

unfinished, so that failure and demise become occasions for critical reflection and for

setting out anew to remake the conditions under which we live. To experience failure

and feelings of guilt may be part of what it means to be human, but such failure and

130
guilt then pose the central question for ethics: how to think in a responsible way about

the consequences of actions, about fault and guilt, without turning guilt into the fate of

the ethical agent.

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 Chapter Three:

Cohen's Ambivalent Responsibilities:

Expiation, Accountability, and Ethical Futurity

Over and against the theological concept of original sin and its making guilt ever-

present in our lives, Cohen conceptualizes time, rather than guilt, as the primary

category by which we make sense of events and orient our actions. Cohen asks us to

conceive of the future as an ethical task and as a continuous new beginning for

actions. To elaborate this ethical futurity, Cohen draws on the idea of the messianic

age. For Cohen, the messianic age is not an other-worldly future, but is the future of

social justice in this world: "Messianism, however, means the dominion of the good

on earth" (RR 21). 160 On this basis, Cohen derives an ethical imperative to labor for

social justice and to direct our actions toward working for this just future. As distinct

from Benjamin, for whom the messianic appears as splinters disrupting the continuum

of history and endows us with a "weak power," Cohen treats the messianic as an ideal

that we ought to take up and struggle for in order to re-imagine and transform history.

In this chapter, I consider Cohen's appeal to the messianic in the context of his re-

working of Kantian ethics. Cohen follows Kant in the claim that in ethics we must

160
"Der Messianismus aber bedeutet schlechterdings die Herrschaft des Guten auf Erden" (RV
24). In Chapters 11 and 12 of the Laws of Kings, Maimonides argues that the messianic age is not an
age of miracles and wonders and is not the after-world, but instead "In that time there will be neither
hunger nor war, neither jealousy nor competition, but goodness will spread over everything. And all the
delights will be as common as dust" ("Maimonides on the Messiah," The Messiah Texts, by Raphael
Patai [Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1979], 326). On the role of Maimonidean ideas for Cohen's
reformulation of ethical progress and futurity, see Martin Kavka's "Nonbeing as Not-Yet-Being:
Meontology in Maimonides and Hermann Cohen" and Arthur Hyman's "Maimonidean Elements in
Hermann Cohen's Philosophy of Religion" (Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism, ed. Reinier Munk
[Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005], 357-370).

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introduce the concept of God in order to ground and secure the reality of the

possibility of Sittlichkeit (ethical life). Interestingly, however, Cohen does not explain

his decision to mobilize some theological resources rather than others. I argue that his

theological concepts contain a moment of contingency in their cultural and historical

specificity that Cohen does not resolve into philosophical necessity. In my view, the

contingent status of his choices is a strength of his argument. The consequent

philosophical unfoundedness reflects the way in which our encounters with particular

religious and theological traditions are always contingent encounters. Religious

traditions, moreover, rarely arrive as a clearly delimited totality of commitments,

practices, and narratives, but come to us already only as fragments, figures, tropes,

interpretationsand as lived commitments. This contingent character of finding

oneself addressed (or not) by religious and theological traditions does not detract from

the seriousness of reflections on them. I argue that Cohen's messianic time is a

concept derived from Jewish tradition, particularly the biblical prophets, and, further,

that we can take up his ideas to orient ethical action today.

To take up the messianic as such an orienting idea does not commit us to a

religious ethics in the sense of then deducing moral guidelines from religious doctrine.

Rather, by introducing the theological concept of the messianic, we can conceptualize

ethics on a different basis by framing history as an ethical task insofar as we

understand history as in need of redemption and the messianic age as a socially just

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future for which we must labor today.161 On the basis of this reading, I appropriate

Cohen's concept of the messianic in order to reformulate accountability and its limits

against a mythical moralism that binds us to our guilt rather than opening perspectives

for responsible action. Accordingly, I take up the messianic as a conception of time by

which we can frame ethical agency and accountability as tasks and rather fleeting

capacities, rather than as an inflexible state of being that we have to aspire to. The

perspective of messianic time enables us to address guilt in non-mythical, non-

moralistic ways and thereby to produce an ethical future.

In Cohen's view, we leave the mythical remnants in theology and the concomitant

mindset behind when we become ethical agents who very concretely take

responsibility for our own Schuld (fault, guilt). For Cohen, there is no responsibility

without Schuld, but Schuld is individual, not collective, and it pertains only to the

actions that incur it. Guilt is thus not a general constituent of human existence. For

Cohen, responsibility as Selbstverantwortung (self-responsibility) is sanctioned,

Cohen's idea of a messianic futurity is similar to Jacques Derrida's retrieval of a "messianicity

without messianism" as a radically non-eschatological temporality; see especially Derrida's "Faith and
Knowledge: The Two Sources of'Religion' at the Limits of Reason Alone" (trans. Samuel Weber, Acts
of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar [New York: Routledge, 2002], 42-101). Cohen differs from Derrida,
because Derrida seeks to relieve this framework of temporality and history from its positive religious
content of messianism, with the result that this framework retains only the formal structure of a radical
futurity that endows the present with an ethical task. Instead, especially in Religion of Reason Out of the
Sources of Judaism, Cohen concretizes the idea of the messianic within the content and context of
biblical prophecy and in relation to such overtly theological terms as "sin" and "expiation." On
Derrida's reading of messianicity, see also Matthias Fritsch' The Promise of Memory: History and
Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida (Albany: State U of New York P, 2005); Owen Ware's
"Dialectic of the Past/Disjuncture of the Future: Derrida and Benjamin on the Concept of Messianism"
{Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 5.2 [2004], 99-114); Tarik Kochi's "Anticipation, Critique,
and the Problem of Intervention: Understanding the Messianic: Derrida through Ernst Bloch" {Law and
Critique 13.1 [2002], 29-50).

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externally by punishment and internally by acknowledging one's being guilty.162 In

the section on "Legal Expiation and Menschlichkeit" I problematize Cohen's

uncritical conflation of responsibility with an acknowledgment of both one's own guilt

and the law as the normative order that grounds responsibility, while at the same time

I affirm his insight that causing injury and being at fault are aspects of an ethical life.

There is no ethical life without the possibility of failure and fault. To be sure, I am not

advocating harm and injury. Rather, the point I wish to make is that being human

means that over the course of our lives we will make mistakes, and even inflict harm

and injury.163 The task in ethical theory, then, is to conceptualize our being at fault,

becoming guilty, and taking responsibility for wrongdoing in order to enable a future

for ethical life.

Cohen uses the concepts of accountability and individual responsibility almost

interchangeably: through becoming accountable, we become responsible as

individuals. Instead of adopting Cohen's thinking wholesale on this point, I consider

accountability to be only one aspect of responsibility. In my view, responsibility

means to find oneself called to respond well. In other words, we become responsible in

situations where we ask, "What would be best to do?" with some reference to a

On the disarticulation of legal fault and ethical guilt, see also the discussion in Deuber-
Mankowsky's Derfiiihe Walter Benjamin undHermann Cohen (143-155).
163
In Der friihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen, Deuber-Mankowsky marks Cohen's
embrace of imperfection as the distinctive characteristic of his concept of freedom: "Das Besondere und
Eigentumliche an Cohens Freiheitsbegriff besteht darin, daU er ihn auf die Anerkennung der
Unvollkommenheit und der Fehlbarkeit menschlichen Handelns grundet. Autonomie meint in diesem
Konzept nicht die Uberwindung menschlicher Schwachem sondern wird erzeugt in der Versohnung mit
ihr" (130).

135
normative notion of the best as what ought to be done. As I understand it,

accountability means responsibility in the sense of being held responsible for past

actions. Accountability in this sense is narrower than responsibility in general, which

refers to our having to respond and determine how to act best in general. If, as in

Cohen, accountability were equivalent to responsibility, responsibility would amount

to the idea that each individual should have a sense of her responsibilities in the

present, because in the future she will be held accountable for one's actions and

omissions. In this understanding, the potential of being at fault, of becoming guilty,

then becomes the central issue of what it means to act responsibly. Such a narrowing

of responsibility is counter-productive, because this concern focuses us on ourselves

and our possible guilt rather than directing our attention to the situations and

circumstances to which we are responding. Cohen seems concerned that responsibility

without any accountability would (at least implicitly, if not explicitly) impel us to

disregard the consequences of our actions. However, when we are concerned about

our guilt and being held to account, we have already accepted certain norms that

determine our guilt without being able to reflect critically on the norms and procedures

by which we are being held to account. Given these consequences of conflating

accountability and responsibility, I argue that we must distinguish them so as to be

able to focus on how to deal with accountability responsibly. Disarticulating

accountability and responsibility allows us to understand taking responsibility as part

164
Meta-ethical reflections on the way in which claims about "what is best" refer to normative
ideas of right and justice are beyond the scope of this dissertation. For a discussion of normativity in
neo-Kantianism, see Frederick C. Beiser's "Normativity in Neo-Kantianism: Its Rise and Fall"
(International Journal of Philosophical Studies 17.1 [2009]: 9-27).

136
of what it means to become responsible, but also allows us to consider what questions

beyond "Will I be at fault?" should guide how we determine what ought to be done.

In this chapter, I will argue that by bringing into view messianic time as an appeal

to forge an ethical, socially just future, we can rethink being held to account and

taking responsibility for mistakes we made. Considerations on individual guilt and

fault cannot replace a structural approach to social justice or even be positioned as the

decisive factor. However, insofar as historically specific suffering is caused not only

by social structures, but by also individual wrongdoing, we must reflect on the role of

individual accountability in ethical theory. If being human means that we incur guilt at

certain times in our lives, then fostering ideals of being ethical by not ever becoming

guilty would mean to advocate an inhumane ideal of ethical life. Rather than

stipulating a life without guilt or a life steeped in guilt, we must consider how to open

possibilities for a new future without making permanent the guilt we incur when we

do wrong. Cohen's messianism and his insistence on an ever-more socially just future

as a task mobilizes this theological concept of the messianic in a way that allows us to

resituate individual accountability within the horizon of a social perspective.165

Crucially, accountability then becomes the destruction, rather than the preservation, of

guilt.

165
Cohen's idealization of progress remains problematic. For incisive examinations of Cohen's
treatment of contingency and transience and Benjamin's critique of Cohen, see Deuber-Mankowsky's
Der friihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen and her "The Ties between Walter Benjamin and
Hermann Cohen: A Generally Neglected Chapter in the History of the Impact of Cohen's Philosophy."
On the problem of Cohen's idealization of progress as a theodicy of history, see Christoph Schulte's
"Theodizee bei Kant und Cohen" (Hermann Cohen's Philosophy of Religion: International Conference
in Jerusalem, 1996, ed. Stephane Moses and Hartwig Wiedebach [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1997],
205-230). In Chapter 4, I will turn to Benjamin in detail to offer critical perspective on progress as a
key concept in a philosophy of history and on his connected theory of experience.

137
 After first discussing Cohen's understanding of messianism as an ethical task, I

turn next to Cohen's theory of accountability as self-responsibility. I argue that taking

responsibility for one's fault implies a struggle to restrict guilt to identifiable fault and

to concrete actions of wrongdoing. Through addressing situations in which we have

become guilty, accountability becomes a practice through settling one's past that also

requires letting this past go or even putting an end to a past self. In the third section of

this chapter, I problematize Cohen's account of responsibility as assuming one's guilt

before the law, but I retain a key implication of his argument, namely, that we produce

our ethical selves when we take responsibility for our guilt. Cohen's approach is

limited by his decision to ground ethics and accountability in the law. To consider how

Cohen's attention to theology can allow us to refigure the juridical framework of

accountability, I will turn to Cohen's reading of the practice of teshuva (turning and

repentance; Cohen translates teshuva as "Umkehr, " return) in Religion of Reason out

of the Sources of Judaism. Attending to teshuva shifts the focus away from a legal

perspective on our fault and guilt to the practices that enable reconciliation with

others.166

In sum, this chapter examines prospects for rethinking accountability through

drawing on Cohen's idea of messianic futurity as well as his reading of finding

humaneness in teshuva. In opposition to mythical thinking, we must avoid fostering

166
For a comprehensive examination of teshuva in the context of atonement in Cohen's
philosophy, see Zank's The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen. On teshuva in
Cohen, see also Norman Solomon's "Cohen on Atonement, Purification, and Repentance" (Hermann
Cohen's Critical Idealism, ed. Reinier Munk [Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005], 395-412) and
Lawrence Kaplan's "Hermann Cohen and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on Repentance" (Hermann
Cohen's Ethics, ed. Robert Gibbs [Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006], 213-258).

138
hyper-responsibility and instead enhance our capacity to negotiate contingency. We

must acknowledge that it is impossible to foresee all consequences for our actions but

that we still must assume there are consequences. Our practices of accountability

become more responsible and humane when they enable us to address as well as move

beyond the past by making amends but also by refusing to find ourselves readily at

fault everywhere all the time. Understanding the messianic age as social justice allows

us to resituate the goal of accountability as separate from retribution and to focus on

how individual accountability can enable us to reorient our gaze from the past to the

future and from our own guilt to the alleviation of social wrongs.

Messianic Time and Ethical Futures

In Chapters 1 and 2, I argued that the theological concepts of original sin and

diabolic evil frame human nature as inescapably corrupt and this life and this world as

therefore needing to be overcome. Cohen argues persistently against the assumption

that ethics runs a greater danger of becoming moralistic and dogmatic whenever it

draws on theological resources. In my view, Cohen's work enables us to frame a

productive encounter between ethics and theology. Cohen directs us to ask how

theological concepts can invigorate ethics in a non-moralistic manner, and he asks us

to consider justice as a task in bringing about redemption. Specifically, I argue that

Cohen's way of thinking futurity through Jewish messianism allows us to formulate

the messianic as a theological concept of temporality distinct from, and opposed to,

139
the fated temporality of life entangled in an inescapable web of guilt and doom.

Cohen's idea of the messianic introduces a non-moralistic perspective on time and

history by articulating an ideal and a call to orient and guide our actions without

appealing to a norm that promises redemption or threatens eternal damnation after

death. Instead, Cohen envisions the messianic age as the beginning of social justice on

earth. For him, the messianic constitutes a perpetual task and the Blickpunkt (focus,

perspective, viewpoint) for our struggles in this world.

Contra what he sees as mythical elements surviving in the repertoire of our

theological concepts, Cohen's concept of messianic time neither fixes the future as a

telos of history nor narrows the perspective on the future to a nostalgic dream of a lost,

better past: "Everything in the myth remains history in the sense of the past; never and

nowhere does history appear as the idea of the future of mankind under the guidance

of God" (RR 250).169 For the ethics that Cohen seeks to elaborate, history must be

irreducible to an account of the past, but history must also be approached in a way that

opens a future for humankind. History as an ethical task charges us not with

memorializing the past, but with anticipating and actively shaping the future of

humankind. This future of humankind under God as a messianic task is concretely the

In Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, Cohen also argues that the discovery of
the other as "you" and as an individual is the particular contribution of religion, because ethics
primarily understands the other as a universal subject and as contractual partner. On the "you" and its
crucial contribution to Cohen's ethics through the religious concept of the other, see Zank's chapter
"No Self Without Other: Substance, Self-Consciousness, and Concrete Subjectivity in Cohen's Logic,
Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion" (207-389) in The Idea ofAtonement in the Philosophy of Hermann
Cohen and Gesine Palmer's "Judaism as a 'Method' with Hermann Cohen and Franz Rosenzweig"
{Hermann Cohen's Ethics, ed. Robert Gibbs [Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006], 37-63).
168
On the messianic as anticipation and perspective, see also Fiorato's Geschichtliche Ewigkeit.
169
"Alles bleibt Geschichte im Sinne der Vergangenheit, niemals und nirgends tritt die Geschichte
hervor als Idee der Zukunft des Menschengeschlechts unter der Leitung Gottes" (RV292).

140
two-fold task of accomplishing the unity of humankind and the universal realization of

Sittlichkeit (ethical life) as peace and prosperity on the basis of justice.

For Cohen the unique contribution of the biblical prophets is precisely this idea of

history as the history of messianic humankind, which is an idea of the future. In other

words, history as the history of humanity remains unrealized in past and present.

Cohen contrasts this messianic understanding of history with empirical history as

Weltgeschichte (world history). We cannot look to past or present instances in world

history to instruct us in what messianic humankind looks like: "Humankind did not

live in any past and did not come alive in the present; only the future can bring about

its bright and beautiful form (Lichtgestalt). This form is an idea, but not a shadowy

image of the beyond (Jenseits)" (RR 250). 17 By insisting that humanity has at no time

existed and is only an idea of the messianic future, Cohen implies that we ought not

conceive of history as progressing toward greater humanity. Rather, past and present

history are ethically relevant only insofar as we must recognize instances of injustice

as an indictment of human actions in history: "Every injustice in world history is an

accusation against humankind" (RR 268).1?I Even though the idea of messianic

humanity is an idea of a radical futurity, it seems to me that past and present here still

matter to the ethical project, if every injustice has to be taken into account. If we

"Die Menschheit hat in keiner Vergangenheit gelebt, und auch in keiner Gegenwart ist sie
lebendig geworden; nur die Zukunft kann ihre Lichtgestalt heraufbringen. Eine Idee ist diese Gestalt,
aber kein Schattenbild eines Jenseits" (RV292).
171
"Alles Unrecht in der Weltgeschichte bildet eine Anklage an die Menschheit" (RV 312).
Emphasizing this insistence could provide a corrective to Cohen's theodicy of past injustice in the name
of ethical instruction, so that we learn from the past and labor for a better future. Schulte's "Theodizee
bei Kant und Cohen" (especially 220-230) argues that eventually Cohen's account of suffering in
history cannot avoid a theodical impulse in the name of future progress.

141
understand the injustices in the past and present as an accusation of humankind as it

exists, the insight into these injustices heightens our sense for the importance of the

ethical project of social justice.172

With messianism, Cohen introduces the idea of history as an opening up of a

future that has yet to begin and for which we must labor. If we base our ethical

reflection and action on such a futurity of a new ethical history that remains

intractably incommensurable with the past and present, we must also refuse to write

the history of the past and present as a narrative of moral progress and

accomplishment.

For Cohen, time as both the future and the possibility of a better future is a crucial

precondition for ethical deliberation and action. Ethical action instigated by the

question "what ought to be done?" aspires to forge a future. Cohen emphasizes that

this future must be open to novelty and not determined by either present or past, since

The question that remains open here is whether Cohen's account invalidates the past. The past
is certainly not where Cohen, unlike Benjamin, begins his thinking and where the political impetus
comes from. In "Hanging over the Abyss: On the Relation between Knowledge and Experience in
Hermann Cohen and Walter Benjamin" (ed. Reinier Munk, Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism
[Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005], 161-190), Deuber-Mankowsky argues Cohen ends up
forsaking the past and the transitory when he enthusiastically concludes that "Alles Vergangliche, alles
Selbstische geht unter, wird hinfallig und verschwindet in dem Selbstbewusstsein der Ewigkeit (All that
is transient, all that is selfish perishes, becomes invalid, and disappears in the self-consciousness of
eternity" (Er JF 412-413). Deuber-Mankowsky indicates that "Rejecting the transitory means forgetting
the past" and suggests that Benjamin "extended this reading in his analysis of Cohen" ("Abyss" 188).
From what follows, it is not quite clear what this "extension" precisely entails, but it seems to me that
we could read with Deuber-Mankowskyespecially in her "Walter Benjamin's Theological-Political
Fragment as a Response to Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia"a radicalized notion of redemptive
undoing and transience in Benjamin. In Chapter 4,1 will turn in particular to Benjamin's understanding
of redemptive demise in his "Theologisch-politisches Fragment" (Gesammelte Schriften: Band 2-1, ed.
Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977], 203-204;
"Theological-Political Fragment," trans. Edmund Jephcott, Selected Writings, Volume 3: 1935-1938,
ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 2003], 305-
306) to discuss further this critique of Cohen.

142
a predetermined future would be a fated futurity that belongs to mythical thinking.173

It is not then so much a future as a repetition of the past. Under the auspices of the

messianic, however, "Time becomes future and only future. Past and present

submerge (versinkeri) in this time of the future" (RR 249).174 Messianic time reorients

our perspective on living and acting in history to seek to continuously overcome the

past and present to move into a new future. To accomplish this openness toward the

future, the past needs to be able to become past. Becoming past, in turn, requires a

future that is more than simply another event that will enter into the present and that

eventually will be stored in an ever-expanding repository of instances past. Such a

rethinking of time and history seeks to make room for the past to pass away rather

than to be an ever-recurrent present. In mythical thinking, the past always haunts the

present and is the onlyand always guiltyfuture of the present. In turning to

Cohen's idea of the messianic, we find a futurity that produces a far more mutable past

and a far more undetermined present that presents a task rather than a threat.

Ethics is transformed into a task that cannot be fully actualized in the present,

while at the same time it remains a task that constantly requires our labor for its

realization: "Eternity means the eternal task; the task of eternity" {ErW 411).175 In

turn, ethical progress is tied to the eternity of the ethical task: "Eternity, detached from

173
On Cohen's insistence on an open future and his rejection of a temporal horizon determined by
the past in any way, see Deuber-Mankowsky's critically important "Die Freiheit, die Sterblichkeit, und
der Wille zur Ewigkeit" (129-164) in Derfriihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen.
174
"Die Zeit wird zur Zukunft und nur Zukunft. Vergangenheit und Gegenwart versinken in dieser
Zeit der Zukunft" (RV29\).
175
"Die Ewigkeit bedeutet die ewige Aufgabe; die Aufgabe der Ewigkeit" {ErW 411). Cohen's
interpretation takes up Pirke Avot Chapter 2, Mishnah Avot 20:16: Rabbi Tarfon used to say, "It is not
incumbent upon us to complete the task, but neither are we free to desist from it altogether." See also
Pirke Avot: A Modern Commentary on Jewish Ethics, ed. and trans. Leonard Kravitz and Kerry M.
Olitzky (New York: Union for Reform Judaism P, 1993).

143
time and referring to pure will, means only the eternity of the process of ethical work.

... In it [the eternity of ethical work] we may also recognize the assurance that we are

here seeking for the reality of Sittlichkeit" (ErW 411). 176 Eternity is no longer

connected to the concept of "time" but is reconceived here through its connection to

the will.177 By linking eternity with ethical labor, eternity for Cohen becomes a

worldly concept that is future-oriented, but also knows no end. Likewise, the

messianic age is a future that cannot become present within time, but is always in the

process of arriving and of being brought about by our ethical labor." 0 The

"Die Ewigkeit, von der Zeit abgelost und auf den reinen Willen bezogen, bedeutet nur die
Ewigkeit des Fortgangs der sittlichen Arbeit. ... In ihr dtirfen wir auch die Sicherung erkennen, die wir
hier fur die Wirklichkeit der Sittlichkeit suchen" (ErW A\ 1).
177
The concept of the messianic is, in other words, the concept of a future that remains
constitutively futural and cannot be rendered fully actual and present. The possibility of an ought
depends on just this impossibility: "At no point in world history are we permitted to assume that the
realization of ethics has been completed. That would indeed be the end of the world, of the ethical
world" (ErW 408) ["An keinen Punkte der Weltgeschichte dtirfen wir einen Abschluss fur diese
Verwirklichung [der Sittlichkeit] annehmen. Das ware in der Tat das Ende der Welt, der sittlichen
Welt" (ErW 408)]. On Cohen's understanding of the eternity of progress as an ethical anticipation, see
also Andrea Poma's "The Existence of the Ideal in Hermann Cohen's Ethics" (Hermann Cohen's
Ethics, ed. Robert Gibbs [Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006], 65-84, especially 72-74).
178
It is beyond the scope of this study, but would be worth further inquiry to examine the relation
between Cohen's messianic futurity and Derrida's sense of a future to-come that is always only just
arriving but that cannot be made contemporary with the present and that constitutes the condition of
possibility and impossibility of the present and the reason why time is thus always already out of joint.
An important text to consider in this regard would be Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the
Work of Mourning and the New International (trans. Peggy Kamuf [New York: Routledge, 1994]). Yet
the role of the past as haunting the present and the structure of the "always already" in Derrida seems to
be a key difference between Derrida and Cohen. Moreover, the idea of a constitutive indebtedness of
the present would, within Cohen, appear as a mythical figure of thought rather than as an ethical
moment. Cohen objects to the construct of a constitutive indebtedness in the name of human freedom
and of his understanding of the correlation between God and human. On Cohen's theological
understanding of this correlation and its implications for his ethics, see Poma's chapter on "Man in
Correlation with God" (199-234) in The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen; Helmut Holzhey's
"Gott und Seele: Zum Verhaltnis von Metaphysikkritik und Religionsphilosophie bei Hermann Cohen"
(Hermann Cohen's Philosophy of Religion: International Conference in Jerusalem, 1996, ed. Stephane
Moses and Hartwig Wiedebach [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1997], 85-104; Reinier Munks' "On the Idea
of God in Cohen's Ethik" (Hermann Cohen's Ethics, ed. Robert Gibbs. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill,
2006], 105-114); Hans Ludwig Ollig's Religion und Freiheitsglaube: Zur Problematik von Hermann
Cohens spdter Religionsphilosophie (Konigstein im Taunus: Anton Hain, 1979).

144
impossibility of becoming fully present and the contingency of ethical progress

prevent a teleological closure of the ethical future.

I diverge from Cohen in suggesting that futurity itself is a contingent task and that

the very contingency of this future-as-task makes ethics more volatile than Cohen

seems to take into account. Cohen's argument is in some ways open to this reading, if

we do not resolve the possibility of the future into a philosophical necessity, as Cohen

seems to do. According to Cohen, we must philosophically affirm that God guarantees

the future. In other words, the theological perspective guarantees the future as radical

futurity because time is divinely given. If, however, we read Cohen against himself

and hold that neither we nor a divine gift can guarantee that there will always be a

future, then this openness of the future itself remains contingent. In Chapter 4 I will

elaborate this "volatile" futurity in connection with Benjamin's idea of our "weak

messianic power" in forging a momentary future when the past interrupts the present.

With Cohen's move to an ethically just future as an eternal task, his account of

history remains distinct from a strictly eschatological account of history. Crucially,

ensuring the possibility of the future with regard to ethical action casts history not

quite as infinite progress, but as the unfading task to work for progress. This future is

not the endpoint of history, but an ideal by which we ought to orient and judge history
1 7Q

and actions in history. Thus, Cohen's emphasis on the future does not render his

conception of history into an eschatological narrative in which all past suffering and

injustice would be justified in the name of a better future. Whereas eschatology sees
179
On the ideal and ideality in Cohen's ethics, see Poma's "The Existence of the Ideal in Hermann
Cohen's Ethics."

145
the ultimate future as the end of history, messianism thinks futurity as the beginning of

a truly universal humanity and social justice.180 As Cohen argues when considering the

messianic passages of the Hebrew prophets, the future is not the end and conclusion of

history. Rather, he frames the "end of the days (Ende der Tage)" as both the future and

a history that begins with that end of time: "The peace that the 'days of the messiah'

bring should not mean the end of the world and of humankind; rather, this peace

should mean the new beginning of a new time, a new world, a new humankind, a new

humankind in this world" (ErW 406).181 Openness toward a new time and new

humanity now becomes the new circumscription of human imperfection. At the same

time the beginning of this new time grounds the task and possibility of striving for a

more just world for the sake of humanity (Menschheit) and humaneness

(Menschlichkeif). Thus it is not a final end, but an orientation toward a perpetual new

beginning that grounds Cohen's understanding of ethical labor for the progress of

humanity toward social justice. At the same time that we struggle for greater

humanness and humaneness, we also reckon with, affirm, and embrace imperfection

as the condition of a more ethical future. Cohen's idea of the messianic thus frames an

orientation of history that opens toward a future and sustains contingency as the

possibility of failure. I would like to suggest that if our task to forge a more ethical

On this distinction between eschatology and Cohen's messianism, see also Robert Gibbs'
"Hermann Cohen's Messianism: The History of the Future" (Religion of Reason out of the Sources of
Judaism: Tradition and the Concept of Origin in Hermann Cohen's Later Work, ed. Helmut Holzhey,
Gabriel Gideon Hillel Motzkin, and Hartwig Wiedebad [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2000], 331-349) and
Fiorato's "Notes on Future and History in Hermann Cohen's Anti-Eschatological Messianism."
181
"Nicht das Ende der Welt und der Menschheit soil der Friede bedeuten, den die 'Tage des
Messias' bringen; sondern vielmehr den Anfang einer neuen Zeit, einer neuen Welt, einer neuen
Menschheit, einer neuen Menschheit auf Erden" (ErWA06). See also RR 289; RV337.

146
future requires us to pass through failure, then our task also asks that we examine

these failures as contingent and historically specific, rather than dehistoricizing them

as reiterations of our corrupt nature.

As this task to struggle for an ethical future repeats through time, it facilitates

progress as an open project and so undercuts any positivist account of a teleologically

determined future.182 While for Kant the regulative ideal of ethical progress is

perpetual peace, for Cohen peace, as the ideal future and goal of ethics, cannot be the

end of ethics:

Peace is an aesthetically beatifying {beseligendes) image; it is ethically

effective only in opposition to war; in the overcoming of this opposition.

Aesthetically one cannot ever get enough of this image of peace; ethically it

turns into standstill. Such a standstill is absolutely unacceptable for the pure

will; even at the cost of peace. The standstill must be sublated into progress.

{ErWAOl)

Peace can serve to guide our ethical efforts only in the endeavor to end war, but

outside this determinate opposition, peace as an ideal loses its force. Instead of

Nonetheless, by virtue of the ethical being placed in the temporal horizon of progress, Cohen's
understanding of the ethical ought carries a teleological sense, as Holzhey ("Cohen and the Marburg
School in Context," trans. Vilem Mudroch, Hermann Cohen's Critical Idealism, ed. Reinier Munk
[Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2005], 3-37) explains, "[I]n Cohen's mature systematic philosophy
the bridge between theoretical and practical reason is no longer built on the basis of the concept of
freedom, but on the footing supplied by the teleologically accentuated concept of the ought" (21). On
the Maimonidean origins of this teleological accentuation and its difference from a full teleological
account of history, see Kavka's "Nonbeing as Not-Yet-Being: Meontology in Maimonides and
Hermann Cohen" (especially 106-114).
183
"Der Friede ist ein asthetisch beseligendes Bild; ethisch dagegen wirkt er nur im Gegensatz
zum Kriege; in der Uberwindung dieses Gegensatzes. Asthetisch kann man sich an diesem Frieden
nicht satt sehen; ethisch dagegen wird er zum Stillstand. Den aber darf es fur den reinen Willen
schlechterdings nicht geben; auch um den Preis des Friedens nicht. Der Stillstand muss in den
Fortschritt aufgehoben werden" (ErW 407).

147
idealizing peace, we must struggle for progress. The relationship between war and

progress here is an interesting one. At first glance Cohen seems to oppose war and

suggests that we must seek to end it. War is clearly then not the means by which, for

Cohen, we accomplish progress. But war and conflict are also not exactly the opposite

of progress; instead, the opposite of progress is the image of world peace. So while

taking a stance against war, Cohen nevertheless makes room for the argument that

strife and conflict might be necessary in accomplishing ethical progressprogress

toward greater social justice.184

Cohen's idea of the messianic age as social justice infuses our ethical vision with

a certain restlessness, which compels us to begin from concrete opposition to

injustices instead of dreaming of a Utopian image of peace. For Cohen, unlike the

temporality of salvation which focuses us on the after-life, the temporality of ethics

embroils us continuously in action in the present. We are to give up the image of peace

as a telos and embrace an anti-utopian project of laboring on progress toward justice.

At the same time, Cohen has also transformed our very understanding of progress. If

we follow Cohen, then progress becomes another name for insisting intractably, "even

at the cost of peace," that justice remains an unceasing struggle in the face of

185
persisting injustices.

Cohen's stance in Deutschtum und Judentum remains problematic; possibly a better

understanding of why he rejected the image of peace can be derived from his involvement in the social
debates of his time, especially a number of anti-Semitism trials. For excellent discussions on this point,
see Helmut Holzhey's Ursprung und Einheit: Die Geschichte der Marburger Schule als
Auseinandersetzung urn die Logik des Denkens (Basel: Schwabe, 1986) and his Cohen und Natorp, as
well as Deuber-Mankowsky's Derfriihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen.
185
For Cohen, social justice is a matter of opposing and changing structures of injustice, which he
sees primarily in poverty caused by economic exploitation. Against economic injustice, Cohen argues

148
 Cohen's messianic futurity insists on progress but criticizes simplistic faith in

progress or in the successive unfolding of history. Messianic time is distinct from

either an eschatological or a teleological understanding of history. The main reason for

this difference of messianism from both eschatology and teleology is that messianic

time does not describe the temporality and course that inevitably binds empirical

history.186 Instead messianic time postulates redemption as social justice as an ethical

ideal and as an eternal task that ought to guide our efforts in transforming empirical

history. Social justice is not the end point of history, but the continuous new

beginning.

Cohen's idea of eternity as the perspective of messianic time further implies that

an individual cannot seek to secure a personal immortal nature and final salvation. The

messianic sees the future precisely as extending beyond the individual and so

dislodges the individual as the center and ground for the temporal horizon of action:

It is not the isolated self of the individual, but the self of the moral person,

whose highest expression we recognize in humanity. The isolated individual

must miss the eternity that is the goal of pure will. One would have to

attribute eternity to it in accordance with myth as eternity beyond the grave.

... The eternity which is recognized as guiding concept of ethical self-

for an ethical socialism derived out of his reading of Kant and the prophets. For a discussion of Cohen's
socialism, see van der Linden's "Cohens sozialistische Rekonstruktion der Ethik Kants" (especially
154-165) and Thomas Willey's "Neo-Kantian Socialism" in his Back to Kant: The Revival of
Kantianism in German Social and Historical Thought, 1860-1914 ([Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1978],
102-130). For a discussion of Cohen's socialism in relation to other forms of socialism at his time, see
Deuber-Mankowsky's Derfriihe Walter Benjamin undHermann Cohen (341-355).
186
For further discussion of the difference between Cohen's and Kant's philosophy of history, see
also William Kluback's "Hermann Cohen and Kant: A Philosophy of History from Jewish Sources"
(Idealistic Studies 17 [1987], 161-176).

149
 consciousness does not need this kind of eternity beyond the grave. (ErW

412) 187

Eternity as Cohen frames it through the messianic is not eternal life, a beatific vision

that lies beyond this world. Instead, eternity encompasses the worldly task of realizing

social justice and ethics, as ethical conduct no longer revolves around the ethical

quality of the isolated self. Cohen here rejects individual goodness, authenticity, and

character as tasks or criteria of ethical life. The future as an ethical task is not

reducible to self-formation and our own future as ethical persons. It is not the

individual but is humanity itself that is a messianic concept insofar as the messianic

humanity is not yet an actuality, but is instead constituted only within the horizon of

universal social justice.188

The ethical effort for social justice is a collective one that we accomplish in any

small step whatsoever whenever we engage in joint efforts that unite us beyond what

today we would call identity politics, or in Cohen's terminology, beyond the

particularism of blood and creed (see ErW 60, 80). Despite his insistence on a social

ethical perspective, for Cohen the distinctive ethical question is the question of

individual guilt and individual responsibility as accountability. Cohen argues that

foregrounding a perspective of social love cannot abolish the problem of Schuld:

"Es ist nicht das isolierte Selbst des Individuums, sondern das der moralischen Person, deren
hochsten Ausdruck wir in der Menschheit erkennen. Dem isolierten Individuum muss die Ewigkeit
fehlen, die das Ziel des reinen Willens bildet. Man musste sie ihm derm nach der Weise des Mythos
jenseits des Grabes zuerkennen. ... Die Ewigkeit, welche als Leitbegriff des sittlichen
Selbstbewusstseins erkannt ist, bedarf ihrer nicht" (ErW All).
188
For a brief systematic overview on Cohen's understanding of humanity as messianic, see
Wendell S. Dietrich's "The Function of the Idea of the Messianic Mankind in Hermann Cohen's Later
Thought" (Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48.2 [1980], 245-258).

150
"However, law and justice should certainly not be annulled through social love. If in

law the question of guilt {Schuldfrage) must be preserved, however, it is imputed to

the individual; then it is thereby established that guilt remains a problem also for

ethics" (RR 166).189 In Cohen's view, ethical theory must continue to take account of

individual responsibility and intentional action as well as individual fault in order to

equip us with the conceptual tools we need to reflect critically on the misfortune and

suffering of others and to avoid turning social structures and institutions into the

modern-day fate of our lives.190 The concept of a messianic futurity plays a crucial

role in this effort, insofar as this futurity is not aimed at directing our hopes toward

overcoming this life and this world, but toward forging constantly new beginnings and

struggling for bettering life in this world.

The Schuldfrage is for Cohen the central question of individual responsibility.

Individual responsibility and ethical self-formation are concerns that move us into a

distinctly ethical realm, rather than belonging to a theory of social transformation. But

it seems to me that Cohen's work also reminds us that individual responsibility should

"Indessen soil doch durch die soziale Liebe sicherlich nicht Recht und Gerechtigkeit
aufgehoben werden. Wenn nun aber im Recht die Schuldfrage aufrechterhalten werden muB, wie immer
sie gegen das Individuum gestellt wird, so ist damit bewiesen, daB sie auch fur die Ethik als Problem
bestehenbleibt"(fl7194).
190
For Cohen the ideal ethical collective is a liberal state, which functions according to the
principles of an ethical socialism. For him ethics must be bound by law, as its logics and the concept of
the individual agent are grounded by belonging to the state as a legal community. Cohen introduces the
necessity of thinking of the state as an ethical community by referring to the concept of Allheit
("allness") as necessary for ethics because of ethics' claim to universality. This Allheit in return can
only be only produced through the concept and reality of the state: "Nicht in der sinnlichen Einzelheit
und Besonderheit liegt die Einheit des Menschen, sondern in einer abstrakten Einheit, die dennoch die
gediegenste Wirklichkeit zur Erzeugung bringt: in der Eineit der staatlichen Allheit, in der Einheit der
staatlichen Sittlichkeit" {ErW 81). For a critical analysis of Cohen's anchoring progress in the ideal of
an ethical state, see Henning Gunther's Philosophic des Fortschritts: Hermann Cohens Rechtfertigung
der biirgerlichen Gesellschaft (Munich: Goldmann, 1972).

151
not be considered divorced from broader social ethical concerns.191 Although for

Cohen guilt and accountability become in Ethics of Pure Will the primary concerns of

individual responsibility, I will depart from him and instead consider accountability as

a specific aspect of responsibility. Within this shift in perspective, however, I see

Cohen's work on guilt and individual responsibility as an opportunity to reflect on

individual failure and wrongdoing as part of what it means to act and live as a human,

as an imperfect being.

In order to understand individual responsibility, we need to think about

individuals as agents capable of becoming guilty, while avoiding rendering good and

evil into metaphysical categories. Ethical reflection and agency become possible when

we no longer seek recourse to good and evil as metaphysical categories or find "fate"

at work in life, which then exonerates us from action. If we chalk up every injury we

inflict on others to unknowingness and unintentional mishaps, responsibility becomes

meaningless. Cohen argues that we can only continuously plead misfortune if we

abdicate our agency and see only fateful circumstances to be at fault. In this sense,

invoking social structures as unchangeable in their anonymous and inhumane nature

can operate along the same logic as "fate" in invoking a metaphysics of human nature

as corrupt. Social structures become "fateful" when they obscure the recognition that

they do not function without individuals who act under their auspices and when these

191
For more discussion on the positioning on individual responsibility in relation to Cohen's
broader framework of an ethical future as social justice, see Fiorato's "Notes on Future and History in
Hermann Cohen's Anti-Eschatological Messianism" (148-156).

152
structures are presented as impervious to change. The task instead is to think the

future as well as history as contingent and open, in order to enable us to imagine and

attempt new beginnings and change.

In sum, taking responsibility for our actions and their consequences is important.

When, however, we consider what it means to take responsibility, we must

contemplate how to limit guilt and move beyond it. Thinking through Cohen's

position thus poses the following question: How do we begin to think of guilt outside

of fate?

Tarrying with Fault and Guilt

One traditional way to address fault and guilt is to elaborate a taxonomy of the

conditions and criteria of accountability and culpability. Cohen's idea of messianism

as continuously re-orienting the future as an ethical task presents a different model.

For Cohen, the main question is how to tarry withand eventually break responsibly

withthe consequences of guilt and fault.

Uncertainty about what to do and how to respond to situations marks the point at

which thinking can turn either mythical or ethical. To turn toward ethics is to resist

thinking of ourselves as powerlessly given over to fate. Instead, we think of ourselves

(and others) as acting according to intentions and goals we have set for ourselves. For

Cohen, an adequate understanding of responsibility requires agency as rational,

In Cohen "fate" can variously refer to religion, metaphysics, and certain kinds of theories of
social determinism, which all can functions as epistemic frameworks according to what Cohen would
consider mythical thinking.

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contingently determined, and autonomous. The traditional concepts of rationality

and autonomy are usefully transformed when we formulate them concretely against a

moralistic understanding of human nature. Freed from the denigration of human

weakness and a constant emphasis on the imperfection of life in this world, rationality,

autonomy, and contingent determination form a useful vocabulary for ethics. Rather

than putting forth a version the oft-criticized concept of the disencumbered,

autonomous individual, Cohen's version of rationality and autonomy as transient tasks

and capacities offers us a more porous and fragmented version of ethical

individuality.194 Our task as ethical individuals is not to always be rationally in

control. Against such a restrictive understanding of ethical agency and rationality, I

examine in this section how Cohen's work enables us to redescribe the task of self-

determination and taking responsibility when we are at fault. Through Cohen, I will

consider how taking responsibility becomes an ongoing attempt at turning our gaze

from ourselves and our emotional turmoil to others with whom we interact.

Cohen frames the emergence of ethical theory and the inventory of its key

concepts over and against mythical thinking. In particular, Cohen presents as contrary

to mythical thinking the ideas of Selbstgesetzgebung (autonomy) and

Selbstverantwortung (individual responsibility, literally, self-responsibility). He

193
On the Maimonidean resonances of Cohen's emphasis on autonomy, see Bruckstein's
commentary throughout her translation of Cohen's Ethics ofMaimonides.
194
My own argument on Cohen's reformulation of accountability is influenced by Deuber-
Mankowsky's argument in Derfriihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen that Cohen offers a unique
understanding of autonomy as "Vollzug der Zeitlichkeit" (138). This hard-to-translate phrase takes on
the meaning of "practice of temporal existence" and builds the core of her section reading Cohen on the
ethical self. For a further account of Cohen's understanding of autonomy and responsibility that
contextualizes responsibility within Cohen's emphasis on the relation to others, see Zan'sk The Idea of
Atonement (260-301).

154
explains that only by taking up the rational mode of reflection that ethical theory as a

science offers can we break from being enchained in the naturalized and inherited

strictures of guilt engendered by myth:

Only science [Wissenschaft], ethics, tears the veil that hides the individual. In

the myth it is the power of the secret, the mystery, which joins together fate

and Schuld [fault, debt, guilt] in the lineage [Geschlecht]. Freedom Mart auf

[lifts, clears up, enlightens] the secret by bringing the individual into the light

of day. Now Schuld waA fate are detached from the lineage. The individual's

eigene Schuld becomes his own fate, because the individual is the author of

his deeds. Myth knows no author. (ErW 364-365) 195

Where mythical thinking sees a totality of events unified and driven by anonymous

forces of fate, ethical reflection seeks to recognize individual actions and their

consequences. But the arrival of ethics as an almost allegorical figure on the scene

does not seem any less dramatic than myth's powerful "secret" and "mystery." Unlike

in Kant's "What is Enlightenment?" in which he appeals to us to seek the Ausgang aus

der selbstverschuldeten Unmiindigkeit (exit from our self-imposed immaturity), in

Cohen not we but ethics appears as the crucial agent liberating us by bringing to light

the concept of the individual.196 Ethics tears the veil of myth, while freedom

"Die Wissenschaft erst, die Ethik zerreisst den Schleier, der das Individuum verdeckt. Im
Mythos ist es die Macht des Geheimnisses, des Mysteriums, welche Schicksal und Schuld im
Geschlechte zusammenfugt. Die Freiheit klart das Geheimnis auf, indem sie das Individuum an den Tag
bringt. Jetzt losen sich Schuld und Schicksal von dem Geschlechte ab. Die eigene Schuld des
Individuums wird sein eigenes Schicksal; denn das Individuum ist der Urheber seiner Taten. Der
Mythos kennt keinen Urheber" (ErW 365).
196
See Immanuel Kant's "Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklarung?" (Schriften zur
Anthropologic, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Padagogik, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel [Frankfurt am

155
enlightens not the individual, but possibly us collectively, as freedomlike ethics

brings into our sight the individual. As Cohen suggests that "freedom kldrt auf," he

seems to invoke a kind of enlightenment. The exit from Unmundigkeit (immaturity)

into freedom here implies refusing to see ourselves fated and always already guilty.

Instead, Cohen seems to suggest that we attain our freedom by considering ourselves

as individual agents who participate in actively determining our own actions and our

own plight in this world. Schuld then no longer is a debt and guilt that precedes our

doing, but denotes specifically the consequence of actions by which we have harmed

others.

However, if we now interpret this turn to rational agency as implying that we are

free in the sense that as every individual can control and thus master his or her own

fate, then we risk re-mythologizing this freedom, albeit with a slightly different

content than the myth of original guilt. Instead of appealing to original guilt to explain

everything that happens to us and others around us, within this view we ourselves are

responsible for everything that happens to us and others around us. Hyper-

responsibilitythe individual as responsible for everything that she and everyone

around her undergoesis in some sense another form of naturalized guilt and

attendant mythical thinking, insofar as such a theoretical move ontologizes the

individual as the sole bearer of responsibility. Hyper-responsibility and original guilt

are not so different from each other in that they recognize only monocausal

responsibility and reinstantiate the self as guilty at every turn.

Main: Surhkamp, 1964], 51-61; "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?", trans. Mary J.
Gregor, Practical Philosophy, ed. Mary J. Gregor [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996], 11-22).

156
 Clear as the risk of hyper-responsibility is, a more ambivalent reading of Cohen is

also available. Rather than rejecting Cohen as a theorist of inflated or hyper-

responsibility, we can read Cohen as pointing to an intractable quandary for ethics.

This quandary is that in order to attend ethically to Schuld, the Schuld at issue cannot

be so much Schuld in the sense of guilt, but must instead be in the sense of being at

fault. Feeling guilty without being at fault is indeed a misfortune. In other words, we

need to consider how we can transform the affective structure of Schuld from an all-

encompassing feeling to a focus on concrete instances of failure. Guilt is mythical

insofar as it thrives on its omnipresence and its seemingly unchangeable, or natural,

character. For ethical life to succeed, Schuld needs to be individualized and, more

importantly, limited to concrete instances of being at fault.

Even if our goal is to consider only individual actions and concrete instances of

wrongdoing, the problem that remains is the grip of guilt as an emotion. We cannot

simply will ourselves out of feeling guilty and out of our sense of obligation. Cohen

does not address the emotional power and complexity of guilt. Indeed, he excludes

such psychological questions from ethical theory, because his reflections on ethics are

framed as an endeavor to give the principles of ethical life rational grounding. Cohen

argues explicitly against conflating psychology and ethics because of the consequent

tendency to naturalize the normative.197 As a Kantian, he argues vehemently against

grounding ethics in emotions and sentiments:

197
"Die Gefahr des wissenschaftlichen Dogmatismus liegt in dem philosophischen, angeblich
metaphysischen Vorurteil, dass das Fundament der Moral als ein Naturgesetz zu denken sei, als ein
Gesetz in unseren Gliedern. Und nun teilen sich von dieser Einheit aus die Wege und Richtungen. Die
Einen sagen, wir taten Alles nur aus Mitleid; die Anderen dagegen, nur aus Rache. In alle Winde

157
 Just as pure thinking, as pure thinking of pure knowledge {Erkenntnis), was

separated from sensation, likewise pure will, as the will of ethics {der Wille

der Ethik), and as the will of morality {der Wille der Sittlichkeit) had to be

separated from sensation, from all sensuality {Sinnlichkeit). {ErW 112)198

In analogy to the purity of thinking in Cohen's Logic of Pure Cognition (Logik der

reinen Erkenntnis), the purity of the will is a methodological claim that implies that

the will as ethical must be determined by knowledge of what ought to be that can be

rationally queried. Against basing ethical insight in intuition and moral sentiments,

Cohen argues that principles of universal justice must be accessible to reason and

methodologically grounded exclusively in reason.199 Cohen introduces the idea of

logical (not moral) purity to secure the philosophical necessity of the grounding of the

ethical theory, which also then implies that he does not address the possible conflict

between emotions and sentiments in ethical reflection. However, within his own

splittert sich der sogennante moralische Sinn. Und uberall hin wirkt er, und wird er wie ein Fatum
gedacht; wird er doch in alien Richtungen und Deutungen als solches offenbart" {ErW 98-99).
198
"Wie nun das reine Denken, als das Denken der reinen Erkenntnis, von der Empfindung
abgeschieden wurde, so musste demgemass auch der reine Wille, als der Wille der Ethik, als der Wille
der Sittlichkeit von der Empfindung, von aller Sinnlichkeit abgelost werden" {ErW 112). In
Metaphysics of Morals, Kant refers to Moralitat and Sittlichkeit synonymously, hence I translate here in
keeping with the Kant translations that render Sittlichkeit as "morality." However, a major difference
between Kant and Cohen is that for Kant morality refers to Gesinnung (disposition) as an interior
ethical sense, whereas Cohen attempts to rid Kant of this presupposition of a self and of ethics as a
matter of interiority. On Cohen against ethical interiority, see also Reinier Munk's "Some Observations
on the Place of Religion in the System of Hermann Cohen" {Der Neukantianismus und das Erbe des
deutschen Idealismus: Die philosophische Methode, ed. Detlev Patzold and Christian Krijnen
[Wurzburg: Konigshausen u. Neumann, 2002], 65-72; especially 69-72).
199
This methodological purity in the grounding of ethical theory, however, does not imply that we
can therefore be certain to be ethical whenever we find ourselves in conflict with intuitions and
emotions. Fighting emotions is no more or no less a criterion for discerning what is ethical than is
affirming emotions. On the conceptual foundations of Cohen's ethics and his epistemological focus, see
also Michael Zank's "The Ethics in Hermann Cohen's Philosophical System" {Hermann Cohen's
Ethics, ed. Robert Gibbs [Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006], 1-16) as well as Holzhey's Ursprung und
Einheit and Cohen undNatorp (especially 324-350).

158
account this conceptual purity is fractured by the contingent appropriations of

theological insights from the Jewish tradition. In Ethics of Pure Will, Cohen seeks to

undo this contingency by focusing on the formal characteristics of the tropes that he

introduces. In Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, Cohen restricts

himself to arguing that religion can address questions of sin and redemption in ways

that are not available to ethics, which therefore, according to Cohen, implies that

theological reflections constitute an important addition to ethical theory. Even so,

Cohen does not offer a philosophical justification that shows the appropriation of

theological insights from the Jewish tradition as necessary or exclusively possible

complements to philosophical ethics. He does, however, demonstrate how these

theological insights can contribute productively to ethical theory and life.

Cohen's account of the key concepts in ethical theory attains its logical necessity

at the price of this methodological purity that excludes the materiality and specificity

of emotion as the basis for the reflections of ethical theory. By reading Cohen's

conceptual arguments as an inroad into reflecting on our practices of ethical reflection

and action, I part with Cohen's stipulation of methodological purity, which his own

rhetorical framing already complicates.

While Cohen formally excludes the appeal to emotion from grounding ethical

theory, he rhetorically mobilizes affective responses in framing how ethical theory

overcomes mythical thinking.200 As we saw above, Cohen introduces rational agency

200
While Cohen excludes emotions as justification or guidance for our ethical deliberations, he
includes affect as a tendency, in order to explain how we are motivated to act. His commitment to
considering affect as a pure form of a tendency arises out of his aim to avoid positing a self-
consciousness and a self that preexists its production in action. But with this embrace of a purely

159
through a dramatic staging of ethics as the hero who "tears the veil that hides the

individual" (ErW 364). Perhaps not so rationally, ethics appears personified as the

agent who liberates us rather spectacularly to think of ourselves as individuals who

can consider ourselves as responsible for our own Schuld. Even though Cohen's

account of ethics centers on our capacity to be rational agents, in this scene agency is

already displaced onto ethics and freedom as actors in themselves.

This displacement of agency in Cohen's enlightenment scene performs a

displacement of the argument's normative force. Cohen seems to describe what is

happening, rather than addressing his readers to recognize themselves as individuals

and agents: "Ethics tears the veil that hides the individual. ... Freedom [brings] the

individual into the light of day" (ErW 364). Cohen does not directly exhort us to stop

looking for fate and begin taking responsibility for our actions. Instead, the scene of

ethics overcoming myth issues a suggestive appeal to find ourselves as individuals

already enabled to engage in ethical reflection and to distinguish generalized guilt

from guilt for concrete actions that we authored. The conditions for our agency are

prepared allegorically by ethics and freedom; we only need to take up the conceptual

help that ethics provides for us. This rhetorical return of emotion seems to reveal a

certain unfoundedness or contingency in Cohen's normative framework, since the

appeal leaves open the question of its persuasiveness and efficacy. I would like to

suggest that this rhetorical contingency allows us to understand the agency of ethical

theory and its arguments more contingently by acknowledging that we can offer

conceptual grounding of ethics, Cohen excludes a wide range of ethical quandaries that pertain to the
emotions and affects, among them, for instance, the quandary ofakrasia.

160
theoretical arguments, make them as plausible and coherent as possible, but we cannot

control affective dispositions qua logically necessary arguments. Hence it seems more

productive to me not to focus on how Cohen's grounding of ethical principles might or

might not be logically as consistent as it could be, but on how Cohen's framing of

self-responsibility and becoming accountable allows us to rearticulate the problem of

guilt by seeking to distinguish between feeling guilty and being at fault.

Cohen's worries about emotion and substantive accounts of affect

notwithstanding, it seems to me to be more productive to acknowledgerather than

precludethe problematic relation between psychology and ethics in thinking about

guilt. Clearly, deriving normative conclusions from a psychological description omits

any critical reflection on the shift from the descriptive is of the psychological

condition to the normative ought of the ethical implication. By the same token, a

normative ought does not yet produce a psychological can. We cannot expect that

because we rationally recognize that we ought not to feel guilty that we will then

automatically feel no longer guilty.201 I do not believe that ethical theory can offer us

an easy way to acquire such a capacity, but I would like to argue that in ethical theory

we can and must take account of this difficulty in reflecting on accountability.

In order to make inroads into this problematic of guilt and taking responsibility, I

argue that a non-psychological account of guilt such as Cohen's allows us to

distinguish between being at fault and being aware of one's being at fault and the

201
The Kantian dictum that ought implies seems to be inverted here in Cohen's formulation. The
larger problem that this observation points to is what kind of idealism Cohen's approach ends up
formulating. On Cohen's idealism, see Poma's "The New Interpretation of Kant and the Definition of
Critical Idealism" (37-54) and "Critical Idealism" (55-78) in The Critical Philosophy of Hermann
Cohen.

161
feeling of guilt. Where we concentrate on our feeling guilty for everything that

happens, we limit our attention to ourselves, our misery, our failure, and terrible

character. This focus on ourselves then hinders us from both becoming accountable in

relation to others and from analyzing the social conditions of that for which we come

to be held responsible. We might not be able to will our emotions away, but ethical

theory can seek possible inroads to aid us in reorienting our perspectives on guilt,

fault, and responsibility.

Cohen's argument challenges us to rethink rational agency beyond fantasies of

indiscriminately considering ourselves responsible. Rather than identifying rational

agency and authorship of actions with seizing ultimate control over our lives, we need

to consider rational agency as a contingent struggle to act well within specific

situations.202 In the name of Selbstverantwortung (self-responsibility), it is only and

exclusively the self that can answer for itself regarding the question of its fault. We

can take responsibility forand, when we fail, be at fault foronly our own actions.

To show the consequences for these ideas of guilt and fault, I turn to a provocative

remark in Cohen's Ethics of Pure Will. Introducing autonomy, Cohen offers a scene

that reads like an allegorical constellation of three figures, the sittlicher Mensch

(ethical person), life, and Schuld (guilt, fault). Cohen suggests that life summons the

individual as ethical person to stand before the question of Schuld:

"Der Unterschied in der Erorterung des Willens, wie die Ethik sie anzustellen hat, gegeniiber
der Psychologie, liegt in der Berucksichtigung des Begriffs der Handlung. ... Ohne den Ausgang, den
das Wollen nimmt, ist kein Wollen anzunehmen. Die sogenannte Absicht und Gesinnung entziehen sich
menschlicher Einsicht" {ErW 103).

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 Through Selbstgesetzgebung (self-lawgiving, autonomy) I am positing the

self as the proper goal, and so I am giving the self the authority to answer all

questions that life poses to the human being, in which life calls the human

being into question. This answering of all the questions of fate from the

perspective of the self means Selbstverantwortung (self-responsibility). The

question of fate turns self-responsibility into the question of Schuld (guilt,

fault); self-responsibility takes the question of Schuld (guilt, fault) upon

itself. (ErW 370)203

Interestingly, the self is not exactly who we are but rather the one who is called

repeatedly into question by "questions that life poses" and so must respond. But an "I"

seems to give the self the authority to answer to these questions. These questions of

life are also questions of fate and arisenot exclusively but, for Cohen, perhaps most

significantlyin the face of misfortune and suffering. Life poses questions; we run up

against the limits of fitting everything we experience and the consequences of our

actions into a coherent narrative of our life and its overarching purpose. These

questions that "life" poses might be considered as Fragen des Schicksalsquestions

of (our) fate or plightand we can respond in various ways. If we take the messianic

as central for ethical reflection in Cohen, then we have to also read the issue of

individual self-formation against the background that the overarching concern of

ethics is social justice. Fate within this view is not solely our own plight, as is the

203
"Indem ich durch die Selbstgesetzgebung als eigentliches Ziel das Selbst setze, so gebe ich dem
Selbst die Befugnis, alle Fragen zu beantworten, die das Leben an den Menschen stellt, in denen es das
Selbst in Frage stellt. Diese Beantwortung aller Fragen des Schicksals aus dem Gesichtspunkte des
Selbst bedeutet die Selbstverantwortung. Die Frage des Schicksals macht sie zur Frage der Schuld; die
Schuldfrage nimmt sie auf sich" (ErW 370).

163
concern about individual salvation in mythical thinking. Rather, within the horizon of

the ethical labor for messianic humanity, these questions of fate also direct us to

consider our own responsibility in relation to the plight of others as well as our own.

So in Cohen ethical self-formation depends on suffering and misfortune

fracturing the taken-for-granted frameworks that orient us in and to the world.

However, Cohen's matter-of-fact style treats suffering and misfortune as fairly

unspectacular occurrences that are part of life, part of what it means to be human.

Pain, injury, and misfortunethat which we suffer ourselves or that which pains us

because we injured otherscall we ourselves into question. Questions such as "why?"

and "whose fault is it?" in the face of pain as things go awry are for Cohen ordinary

human questions that occur even without exceptional disasters. Where the mythical

thinking stoked by theological concepts such as original sin and diabolic evil

summarily answers these questions with a swift pronouncement of guilt, ethics begins

where there is a self that either takes or refuses to take responsibility. Moreover, while

in mythical thinking the question of guilt points us to a dramatic insight into the fated

condition of human nature, in ethics the question of guilt points us to concrete actions

and their effects. For Cohen, taking responsibility for ourselves cannot evade

questions of Schuld, but in taking responsibility we turn from considering guilt as

fateful destiny to considering actual fault and innocence. So instead of finding in our

feeling guilty a general condition of living as imperfect humans, we begin to treat the

question of guilt in an ethically productive manner, in which we consider specific

164
actions and situations and reflect on whether what we did was right or wrong and for

what reasons.

Cohen's self-responsibility invites scrutiny of our own contribution to the

suffering and misfortune we have undergone, and individual responsibility faces up to

this question of fault. Following Cohen's separation of the formation of the ethical

subject from the workings of a fated guilt, our task remains to rethink ethical agency,

in the face of fault and guilt, as an insurrection of autonomy. This autonomy delimits

the scope of what matters ethically, so that there is room for contingency, which

means to consider as ethically irrelevant factors that cannot be controlled. In other

words, autonomy does not mean to have control over all the circumstances and

consequences of our actions. Instead, if autonomy is more specifically the capacity to

discern and acknowledge the contingency of circumstances and consequences that we

could not control, then autonomy becomes an ongoing project of distinguishing what

we could and could not influence. When we seek to make these distinctions, we do not

abdicate responsibility. But taking responsibility then includes both acknowledging

circumstances beyond our control, for which we can feel sorry and express this sorrow

to others to acknowledge both the extent to which our own actions might have

contributed to the situation as well as the limits of our control.

Returning to the passage on self-responsibility with which we began this section,

we can now see it as proposing a way to talk about fault and the self-reflexive

acceptance of fault without immediately psychologizing this acceptance as guilt and

feeling guilty:

165
 I am giving the self the authority to answer all questions that life poses to the

human being, in which life calls the human being into question. This

answering of all the questions of fate from the perspective of the self means

self-responsibility (Selbstverantwortung). The question of fate turns self-

responsibility into the question of Schuld [guilt, fault]; self-responsibility

takes the question of Schuld [guilt, fault] upon itself. (ErW370)204

Life calls the self into question, and life poses the "questions of fate," which are from

the perspective of the answering self matters of self-responsibility

(Selbstverantwortung). The "mastery" of our fate is not guaranteed. It is rather an

achievement of the self insofar as the self refuses to question its plight. When we no

longer wonder or worry about our plight, especially about whether our guilt makes us

bad persons, we can instead begin to reflect on specific actions for which we can

assume responsibility.

Insofar as guilt is the self-reflexive sense of our being at fault, then what is

interesting here is how Cohen externalizes the question of Schuld. It is not that the

individual posing this question of fault out of a sense of guilt, but that life itself raises

this question. Cohen is not clear on what he means by "life" in this instance, whether it

is life in the sense of the finitude and fragility of our life or life in the sense of our

daily life in our encounters with others. If we follow the latter possibility, then

Cohen's text delivers an appeal in the name of ethics, namely, that the Schuldfrage

204
"Indem ich durch die Selbstgesetzgebung als eigentliches Ziel das Selbst setze, so gebe ich dem
Selbst die Befugnis, alle Fragen zu beantworten, die das Leben an den Menschen stellt, in denen es das
Selbst in Frage stellt. Diese Beantwortung aller Fragen des Schicksals aus dem Gesichtspunkte des
Selbst bedeutet die Selbstverantwortung. Die Frage des Schicksals macht sie zur Frage der Schuld; die
Schuldfrage nimmt sie auf sich" (ErWblO).

166
ought to be externalized and resituated in the context of our interactions with others.

The question of our guilt then primarily arises when our interactions with others go

awry and is not a question we ponder in isolation.

The problem with Cohen's interpretation of autonomy in taking responsibility is

not that we now are charged with considering whether we are at fault with respect to

specific actions that we might have taken. As I will discuss in the following section,

the problem with Cohen's approach is its equivocation of individual responsibility

with holding ourselves to account, because becoming responsible then also implies in

that moment becoming uncritical with regard to the norms and laws by which we are

being held to account. Nonetheless, I would like to hold onto Cohen's insight that

autonomy implies authoring our lives without looking to overarching narratives.

Cohen urges us to focus on specific actions and thus to turn away from questions of

the meaning and totality of our life. Autonomy and the future of ethical agency require

a continuous fragmenting of the self that enables us always to begin anew: "A new

beginning happens in every action. As much as an action must cohere with all the

previous ones, every action still brings about a new determination" (ErW 349).205

Forging new beginnings does not mean that we ignore when we are at fault; rather, it

means letting go of attempts to integrate every experience and every action within an

overarching narrative of who we are. In accountability we then determine not who we

"In jeder Handlung vollzieht sich ein neuer Anfang. Wie sehr die Handlung mit alien
voraufgehenden zusammenhangen muss, so tritt in ihr nicht minder eine neue Bestimmung ein" (ErW
349).

167
are as good or bad persons, but what we did and how to forge possibilities for a

different future by becoming accountable.

Legal Expiation and Menschlichkeit

Accountability, as I have discussed it so far through Cohen's framework, implies

two aspects. First, being held to account describes a situation in which we are

confronted with having to answer the question of whether or not we are guilty for

actions which we took. Second, Cohen also argues that we become fully responsible

persons only by acknowledging our guilt with respect to our concrete actions. The

question then becomes how holding ourselves to account avoids making this guilt

permanent. In other words, how is guilt resolved so that new actions and beginnings

become possible again independent from our wrongdoing in the past?

As a model of how becoming accountable reconciles us with when we wronged

others in the past, Cohen in the Ethics of Pure Will turns to the criminal and legal

procedures of conviction and punishment. For Cohen, the criminal's atoning for his or

her crime through punishment is the model for how we regain our moral freedom

through accountability. In examining Cohen's account of expiation by punishment, I

would like to build on his insight that the expiation of the guilty self entails

considering that self as destroyed by the acknowledgment of one's guilt in order to

leave the past wrongdoing behind. However, I will argue that by framing this

expiation in accountability through the legal procedure of conviction and punishment

168
and by casting responsibility as accountability, Cohen's approach becomes uncritical

against both the legal order and the legal process itself.

If we become fully responsible and ethical selves only by becoming accountable

within the legal order, then we accomplish our self-formation as responsible subjects

precisely but also only as we become uncritical against and within that order. In

Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, Cohen discusses reconciliation and

teshuva (repentance) as turning to new paths after having done wrong. Although he

does not explicitly elaborate on the relationship he sees between legal accountability

and teshuva, his phrasing seems to suggest a close affinity between them since he

frames both in terms of punishment as penance. Rather than adamantly insisting on

this link, I would like to read Cohen on teshuva as a practice of taking responsibility

and, through this practice, seeking paths to move forward beyond having become

guiltythat remains at an angle to his own insistence that the law is the proper

framework for an ethics of accountability.206

As Cohen outlines his idea of self-transformation through accountability, he

explains that in the usual legal procedure the judge cannot and ought not assess the

perpetrator's guilt. The judge can only determine how a deed ought to be punished

before the law. It is the specifically ethical task of the perpetrator for she herself to

take the consciousness of her guilt upon herself.207 This judgment of our own guilt is

On the centrality of teshuva to Cohen's philosophical ethics, see Zank's The Idea ofAtonement
in the Philosophy ofHermann Cohen.
207
"Nur im Urteil der sittlichen Erkenntnis kann ich mein Heil suchen und finden wollen. Und
dieses Urteil der sittlichen Erkenntnis darf ich durch kein Mittel des Himmels oder der Holle mich
entheben lassen. ... Der Richter mag sich des Urteils iiber mich, namlich des sittlichen Urteils, enthalten

169
then how we participate in expiating our guilt and freeing ourselves from it: "The

criminal does not have a character indelebilis. With the first breach into the

consciousness of guilt the criminal vanishes; the character of an ethical being remains

with himas the task of a selfindestructible and fertile" (ErW 383).208 Legal

sanction for Cohen does not destroy the ethical person, but rather through legal

sanction the ethical being is liberated toward the future task of ethical action. There is

no permanency of character that is determined by traits such as being a criminal, but

only the indelible character of a human person being and having a sittliches Wesen

(ethical being). Our ethical being is not predetermined by any characteristics or

qualities nor perpetually bound to any past actions. Instead, our being and becoming

an ethical being is nothing but the task of acting ethically in this world and taking

responsibility for our actions. For Cohen, we break free from our guilt in the very

moment that we accept that we have done wrong and when we then force the past to

give way to a new future. I would again suggest, as I have in the previous section, that

this elimination of guilt is not an automatic consequence of our acknowledgment that

we are at fault, as if we could control our feelings of guilt, but it seems that Cohen's

text is rather an appeal for trust in the ethical being and its "fertility." Self-

transformation is a matter of allowing others and ourselves to let go of our guilt in the

past not by suppressing or ignoring it, but by taking our insight in what we did wrong

as an occasion to learn from the experience and to act differently in the future.

miissen, ich selbst darf es nicht. Denn es handelt sich um mich selbst, um mein Selbst. Auch der
Freispruch des Richters erledigt die Selbstverantwortung nicht" (ErW371).
208
"Der Verbrecher hat keinen character indelebilis. Mit der ersten Bresche in das
Schuldbewusstsein verschwindet der Verbrecher; der Charakter des sittlichen Wesens bleibt ihm, als die
Aufgabe eines Selbst, unzerstorbar und fruchtbar erhalten" (ErW383).

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 The conscious act of acknowledging our guilt is key to freeing us from our guilt.

At the same time, Cohen argues that accountability must have a corresponding public

element that demonstrates and confirms the subject's transformation. Insofar as the

criminal accepts his or her guilt for the crime and endures punishment as reparation,

he or she is changed by the punishment, which eradicates what was criminal about the

self. Cohen argues that punishment liquidates the crime: "After the punishment has

been served the crime is understood as atoned for and as terminated. And thus the

criminal no longer exists, but a new human person has emerged" (ErW 378).209 The

crime, the past action, vanishes with the punishment and the criminal vanishes with

the crime; thus, a new person emerges through this expiation. The term in German

for the serving of punishment is Abbiissen, which is etymologically connected with the

religious practice of Bufie (penance), and Cohen frames the ethical import of the legal

procedure of judging and sentencing within this religious terminology, especially

when he speaks of punishment as able to atone (stihnen) for the crime. The juridical

and the religious meaning converge in the language of atonement, thus tying law and

religion together through punishment as atonement.211

Cohen's understanding of expiation through accountability implies that criminal

law is therapeutic and expiatory in its punishment. Cohen's argument is that legal

209
"Nach Abbussung der Strafe gilt das Verbrechen als gesuhnt, und als vernichtet. Und
demzufolge ist der Verbrecher nicht mehr vorhanden; sondern ein neuer Mensch geworden" (ErW378).
210
The problem here is the intertwinement between legal injury and ethical guilt. What happens
when another person gets hurt, when something happens between two people? Cohen does not suggest
that such an injury could be "healed" by punishment. Instead, reconciliation between individuals cannot
be accomplished within the juridical sphere or through juridical procedures.
211
Gibbs in "Jurisprudence Is the Organon of Ethics" argues that Cohen's understanding of law is
not reducible to liberal legal theory, if one takes the theological commitments to the Jewish
interpretation of law seriously not as additional but as fundamental conceptual commitments from
which Cohen develops his legal philosophy.

171
expiation brings about a new subject, the criminal is extinguished with the served

sentence, and the person emerges anew. As ethical agents, legally criminal or not, we

are free insofar as we are able to change and to begin anew through a procedure of

legal accountabilityor, at the very least, through a procedure akin to the adjudication

of legal accountability in a criminal trial. We assert and produce ourselves as

responsible ethical selves by assuming our own guilt, but at the same time, "The guilt

is the subjective Anerkennung [recognition, approval, acknowledgment] of the law in

the insight of its injury" (ErW 376).212 When we acknowledge ourselves as having

become guilty, we also acknowledge the validity of the law in relation to which we

became guilty. If we do not consider ourselves guilty in breaking a law, we no longer

acknowledge the validity of that law. Insofar as admitting our guilt is an ethical

judgment of ourselves, in this judgment we not only give tacit consent to the law, but

acknowledge the law as spelling out a valid ethical norm.

What we encounter here is a conceptual problem that owes itself to Cohen's

grounding of ethics in law by considering the law as offering the substantive

circumscription of ethical concepts, just as mathematics grounds and lends specificity

Oil
to logical terms and relations (see ErW 85). Cohen begins by discussing the

212
"Die Schuld ist die subjektive Anerkennung des Rechtes in der Erkenntnis seiner Verletzung"
(ErW 376).
213
Cohen's turn to law, Rechtswissenschaft, as the "mathematics" of ethics owes itself to his
attempt to offer substantive, practical formulations of ethical concepts, while avoiding both
ontologizing and naturalizing them. Law offers him this opportunity, insofar as he casts legal categories
as purely functional categories. The first inroad into the vocabulary of law stems from Cohen's
argument against reducing the ethical significance of action to a will that is narrowly circumscribed by
an interior intention (Gesinnung): "Der Wille geht auf das Aussere, und nur in dieser Selbstausserung
vermag er sich zu entfalten und zu vollziehen. Der Wille muss Handlung werden" (ErW 72). To ground
this relation between will and action as both interior and exterior to the acting subject, Cohen turns to
the legal understanding of actions as legal action that is realized in a trial: "[D]ie Handlung, ..., ist

172
criminal as someone who breaks the laws of a legal community. However, within this

discussion he treats the criminal and the legal procedure as exemplary of how

becoming accountable enables us to move beyond what we did wrong in the past. In

Cohen the priority of law as the foundation for ethics is more than a purely

epistemological normativity and lawfulness, but takes its practical instantiation in the

rule of law and the court system. Cohen's interpretation of accountability as

responsibility becomes uncritical in its assessment of punishment as opening a new

future for the individual, because it makes punishment in the name of the legal norm

necessary to expiation.

gleichsam zum Ausdruck des Rechts geworden. Die Rechtshandlung wird beglaubigt durch die
Prozesshandlung" (ErW 72). So law, rather than psychology, can establish the unity of action, which
also then grounds the concept of the moral person through turning to the juridical circumscription of
personhood: "Die juristische Person wird als moralische Person bezeichnet. In diesem Worte soil
freilich nur die nicht natiirliche Wirklichkeit der Personen zum Ausdruck kommen" (ErW 78).
According to Cohen, the legal person is important for grounding our understanding of the moral person,
because the juridical concept does not set the individual over and against a substantive community that
is based on familial ties, kinship, or ethnicity. Instead, the juridical concept offers a formal way of
thinking of associations and of considering a plural but unified subject in relation to this subject's
agency and legal responsibility for its actions. By turning to law, Cohen seeks to anchor the universality
of community beyond the particularism of a communitarianism that is established on the basis of bonds
of familiarity: "Der reine Wille lenkt von diesen naturlichen Illustrationen [wie der Volksidee] ab; er
sucht die begrifflichen Konstruktionen zu verwerten, in welchen die Rechtswissenschaft die Einheit der
juristischen Personen zu konstituieren und zu begriinden vermag" (ErW 78). Cohen insists on legal
concepts as the proper foundation for ethics in order to find an exact, formal vocabulary to ground a
unified community beyond nationalism and particularism: "So wird die Ethik von ihrer exklusiven
Bezogenheit auf Religion, Psychologie und auf inexakte Sammelwissenschaften freigemacht; und die
M6glichkeit einer erkenntnismassigen Gewissheit wachst ihr damit zu. Die moralische Gewissheit
erlangt theoretischen Wert. ... Es kann ftir einen modernen, sozial-ethisch gestimmten Geist keinem
Zweifel unterliegen [sic], dass die Verbindung der Ethik mit der Rechtswissenschaft forderlich und
notwendig ist" (ErW 70-71).
On Cohen's epistemological-critical argument for grounding ethics in Rechtswissenachft (the
science of law), see Gianna Gigliotti's "Ethik und das Faktum der Rechtswissenschaft bei Hermann
Cohen" (trans. Peter A. Schmid and Irmelda Heimbacher Evangelisti, Ethischer Sozialistnus: Zur
politischen Philosophie des Neukantianismus, ed. Helmut Holzhey [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1994], 166-184). On the critique of Volk and nationalism as a context for Cohen's emphasis on the rule
of law and the ideal of the state, see Palmer's "Judaism as a 'Method' with Hermann Cohen and Franz
Rosenzweig" (44-48).

173
 In Cohen's thinking, there is no future for the ethical self without upholding the

normative and, more specifically, the legal order,214 and he argues that we fail in our

ethical task whenever we forgo assuming the consciousness of our guilt in response to

our breaking with this norms and laws. In refusing to acknowledge the norms by

which we are being held to account, however, we also encounter a moment where we

can begin to critically examine those norms and the legal order itself. Responsibility

in contrast with mere accountabilitywithin this view does not then only imply taking

responsibility for our actions, but also that we might find ourselves becoming

responsible precisely where the law no longer secures and grounds the meaning of

ethical action.

While Cohen himself does not pursue this idea of responsibility that emerges

precisely when we are at a distance to the legal order, I would like to conclude this

chapter by turning to Cohen's treatment in Religion of Reason out of the Sources of

Judaism of the practice of teshuva to argue that Cohen's own work provides us with a

productive theological disorientation of the juridical framework of accountability.215

Although Cohen insists that theology should not become coextensive with positive

law enacted by the state, teshuva as a religious practice grounded in theological

considerations allows us to formulate a practice of taking responsibility, where we are

at fault, without considering the wrongdoing as a crime and becoming accountable as

conviction. In teshuva, the Umkehr, the goal, is to enable a new future and, just as in

214
From the perspective of the law, punishment is not compensating the guilt, but compensating
an injury to the law. Punishing the criminal makes up for injury to the law in order to uphold and
reestablish the broken norms and laws.
215
On Cohen's reading of the biblical accounts of teshuva, see Zank's The Idea of Atonement in
the Philosophy ofHermann Cohen (113-134).
174
legal accountability, the path into the future as a new self proceeds by first

acknowledging our wrongdoing. Cohen argues that teshuva implies a need for penance

that is in itself punishment; however, penance should not be seen as a ransom to be

paid to God for breaking a law, and is therefore different from the German legal

tradition understanding of penance, as Bufigeld:

The Hebrew word for return ... however, has been inexactly translated by the

German word for penance"Busse." In Germanic law the word means

"ransom," and thus the word contains a meaning which ... is indeed entirely

different from the meaning of return. On the contrary, the Hebrew word

[teshuva] indicates the change [Wandlung] which was accomplished by the

return. (RR 194-195)216

Whereas the legal framework of accountability binds self-transformation to

punishment, which in turn acknowledges and reestablishes the injured legal norm,

teshuva is different because there is no judge who imposes a punishment on behalf of

a communal Rechtspflege (administration of the law, literally, tending or cultivating of

the law). Like legal punishment, teshuva as a practice of repentance expiates the new

self by undoing the old self. However, the public affirmation of the self-transformation

in teshuva does not take place by means of serving a judge's sentence, but by means of

liturgical atonement and by making amends. The context for taking responsibility in

216
"Das hebraische Wort der Umkehr ... [hat] im Deutschen allerdings eine ungenaue Ubersetzung
gefunden in der BuBe ... Die BuBe bedeutet im germanischen Recht das Losegeld, und so erhalt das
Wort einen Sinn, ... der ganz verschieden ist von der Bedeutung der Umkehr. Dagagen aber zeigt das
neue hebraische Wort die Wandlung an, die an der Umkehr vollzogen ward" (RV227).

175
teshuva is not the broken normative order, but the broken relationships with God and

others:

It is to be noted that the rabbinic shaping of the Day of Atonement

(Versohnungtag) did not fail to make the reconciliation (Versohnung) of man

with God dependent upon the reconciliation between man and man. It is no

mystical reconciliation that, as it were, casts a veil over the moral trespasses

in transactions of everyday life; it is rather human frailties

(Menschlichkeiten) that are to be freed from the shadow of fear and

melancholy. (RR 220)217

Cohen is very clear that the ritual reconciliation of teshuva does not replace with

liturgical practices the requirement to take responsibility for our actions. Moreover,

reconciliation with God is dependent on our apologizing to others and seeking first to

reconcile with them. So within our considerations of being accountable for our action

and taking responsibility for the harm we inflicted, a turning to teshuva foregrounds a

necessary reconciliation with othersan active response to others that is at the heart

of responsibilityrather than the avowal of guilt before a norm against which we

acted, as we have in accountability.218 Seeking reconciliation with others still requires

that we acknowledge when and where we are at fault. Reconciliation does not mean

217
"Dabei ist zu beachten, daB die rabbinische Ausgestaltung des Versohnungtages nicht
verabsaumt hat, die Versohnung des Menschen mit Gott abhangig zu machen von der Versohnung
zwischen den Menschen. Es ist keine mystische Versohnung, die etwa den Schleier breitete iiber alle
sittlichen Vergehungen des burgerlichen Lebens, sondern nur die intimen Menschlichkeiten sollen von
dem Dunkel der Angst und der Schwermut befreit werden" (RV257).
218
Gesine Palmer (54-57) demonstrates how Cohen's focus on the relationship to others plays out
in his philosophical approach to law, where he frames law through an interpretation of Rechtsanspruch
(legal claim) as an Anspruch (address) that brings about a subject in relation to the addressed other.
Palmer argues that Cohen's understanding of law through the category of the address leads to an
interpretation of legal justice as requiring speaking the other's language.

176
glossing over the injuries we inflict on each other, but reconciliation also only

becomes possible when we address wrongdoing done to another outside the legal

categories of crime and punishment or the theological language of evil and damnation.

Acknowledging for and to ourselves where, when, and how we wronged others

prepares us for the possibility of reconciliation with them. Even though Cohen

emphasizes this acknowledgment of wrongdoing as decisive for responsibility, both

the process of reconciliation and the self-transformations we undergo during the

process are steps on a long journey that can only be initiated but is not fully completed

by avowing our fault. We might reformulate responsibility, then, differently than

Cohen's self-responsibility in accountability, as a practice of both acknowledging our

own mistakes as well as allowing each other to begin anew.

Bringing teshuva to bear on our understanding of accountability does not mean

that these theological insights dissolve or overcome our responsibility to each other.

Theology does not supersedes ethics, nor does ethical practice become religious

practice. These theological insights, however, can become occasions for rethinking our

ethical practices.219 At the same time, as Cohen insists, we can and must continuously

question the theological concepts and insights that inflect our perspective on the world

and our lives. But it seems to me that the uniqueness of Cohen's contribution lies in

opening this relation of ethics and theology as a two-way street, so that there can also

be a theological critique of ethics. In particular, the theological insights of messianism

219
On religion in Cohen as critique of philosophy and theology as not as irrational, emotional
counterpart of philosophy but s unique contribution to philosophy and the history that shapes the
understanding of rationality, see Zank's The Idea of Atonement in the Philosophy of Hermann Cohen
(209-212).

177
as social justice and teshuva allow us to reformulate what it means to take

responsibility by interrupting the focus on our own guilt in accountability. The

demand that reconciliation with God must be preceded by reconciling with others

introduces us to a perspective that gives primary importance to others and the pain

they have suffered because of our actions. Redemption in taking responsibility within

this context no longer means achieving forgiveness for our sinfulness, but instead lies

in the release of guilt for our past actions, so that we can reorient ourselves toward the

future and refocus our attention on a perspective beyond our wrongdoing.

Redemption is not postponed to paradise in the next world, but is instead partially

achieved in reworking our relations with others in this life.22 This dimension of our

relationship with others, which is not specifically theological as such, is interrupted

and reoriented by the specifically theological perspective of the messianic, in which,

Cohen urges, we see the task of social justice as eternally imminent and as eternally

needing to be brought about. Put differently, through these theological imports, we can

formulate through teshuva a practice of responsibility in self-transformation that does

not revolve around laws and norms against which we have transgressed, but is instead

a self-transformation that achieves reconciliation with God only through reconciliation

with others. This practice does not yet achieve social justice, but frees us to focus on

these broader social perspectives. Since Cohen argues that the individual is discovered

On Cohen's understanding of the correlation between God and human as denying human self-
redemption, but emphasizing human participation in redemption, see Poma's "Suffering and Non-
Eschatological Messianism in Hermann Cohen."

178
only in wrongdoing and sin and undone again in accountability and teshuva, social

justice and its pursuit also remains irreducible to individual action and individual

rights. But as humans we do also act individually and we fail and become guilty

during our lives. The mythical response to this human situation consoles us by

promising eventual salvation from being human. In contrast, Cohen's articulation of

redemption seeks to allow for us to be human and to embrace a more humane ethics

by acknowledgingwhile neither extolling nor demonizinghuman weakness.

Failing and making mistakes are part of the weakness and imperfection that we

share as humans. Mistakes and wrongdoing are human, but whether we become

humane depends on how we respond to others when things have gone awry. As Cohen

elaborates, understanding wrongdoing as error, as shegagah, is at the heart of what

constitutes wrongdoing as human and forgivable: "All human sin is error; it is

wavering and vacillation" (RR 200).222 To explain wrongdoing as shegagah does not

mean that we could forgo acknowledging when we are in the wrong. But the concept

of shegagah limits our fault by acknowledging that our intentional acts might carry

unintended consequences and that our actions might not have been the wisest to begin

with: "To err, to go astray, is man's lot, but therefore shegagah is the limit of man's

fault" (RR 223).223 Cohen argues that religious and ethical self-consciousness is

On sin as central for Cohen for the discovery of the self and individuality, see Kaplan's
"Hermann Cohen and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on Repentance" (215-221). For a general discussion
of sin and atonement in Judaism, see Michael Wyschogrod's "Sin and Atonement in Judaism" (The
Human Condition in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Frederick E. Greenspahn [New York:
Ktav, 1986], 103-128).
222
"Alle menschliche Siinde ist Irrung, ist ein Schwanken und Wanken" (RV234).
223
"Der Irrtum, auch die Irrung ist [des Menschen] Los, daher aber auch die Schegaga die Grenze
seines Irrtums" (R V 260).

179
formed in the acknowledgment of failure, while not demonizing either failure or

human nature:

Through sin man is to become an individual, and indeed an I conscious of

itself. Is not this a contradiction? It is not; for the sin is the sin of

Menschlichkeit. And this too is no contradiction. For without finding one's

way with Menschlichkeit with all its weaknesses, man cannot find his way to

God. (RR 200-201, translation adapted)224

Cohen argues that our sense of self and of self-knowledge depends on reflecting on

our actions, in particular when we injure others; we become self-conscious human

individuals through sin. Sin in the sense of shegaga (causing harm by erring, going

astray) is what renders us human. However, sin as Menschlichkeit implies not only

humanness, but also humaneness. Making mistakes and being in the wrong are not

only human, but also provide us with the occasion to become humane. To be human

and to become humane (menschlich) mean to make mistakes as well as to become

conscious of those errors and respond well to them.225 As Cohen insists, we do not

"Durch die Stinde soil der Mensch Individuum werden, und zwar als ein seiner selbst bewufites
Ich. 1st das nicht ein Widerspruch? Es ist keiner; denn die Stinde ist die Stinde der Menschlichkeit. Und
auch dies ist kein Widerspruch. Denn ohne die Menschlichkeit mit alien ihren Schwachen sich
zurechtzufinden, kann auch der Mensch sich nicht zu Gott hin finden" (RV 234). The English
translation renders Menschlichkeit into "human frailty," which precociously narrows the meaning of the
term to focus on the weakness and capacity of erring, which is in line with Cohen's earlier
interpretation of shegagah as error and vacillation and is reminiscent of the saying "Irren ist
menschlich" ("to err is human'), which offers the capacity both to err and to be mistaken as
fundamentally human characteristics. But Menschlichkeit carries a further connotation of a generosity
and a good sense of humorin the face of the fact that whenever humans are involved, mistakes
happen and on occasion things and relationships go awry. To translate Menschlichkeit as frailty alone
takes both the generosity as well as the wit out of this rereading of the notion of sin.
225
On Cohen's understanding of Menschlichkeit (humaneness) in the context of messianism as
making humor central, see Fiorato's "Notes on Future and History in Hermann Cohen's Anti-
Eschatological Messianism" (156-160).

180
find our way to God other than through reconciling with this Menschlichkeit in

ourselves and others, our Mitmenschen, fellow humans and neighbors. Committing

shegaga still requires us to make amends, but at the same time it becomes possible to

apologize to those who have been harmed without our repositioning ourselves as the

ethical self at the center of the apology. It is not about us; it is about the other.

Whenever we acknowledge that humans fail each other, we can then focus on how to

rectify the relationship rather than looking to heal a broken norm and to expiate a

"criminal" self. This embrace of human imperfection does not mean that we end up

with an imperative to replace responsibility and accountability with generosity and

forgiveness, but instead that we seek to find and to practice generosity and forgiveness

within responsibility and accountability.

We are asked to become accountable when injuries that we caused in the past

force us to attend to their consequences in the present. As I have argued in this section,

Cohen's analysis of accountability is important insofar as it emphasizes the destructive

dimension of accountability, which is necessary to release us from past wrongdoing.

Using the criminal as the exemplary guilty subject, Cohen argues that as soon as the

criminal acknowledges his or her guilt, the criminalnot the personis destroyed

and the person him- or herself is released from guilt, even if penance in the form of

punishment is still to be done. If who we are is a result of the actions that we take, then

this separation of ourselves from the past self in accountability and indeed the

destruction of this past self has a liberatory effect. By examining the practice of

teshuva, I build on Cohen's argument in an attempt to recover a practice of taking

181
responsibility for past wrongdoing that remains at a distance from the normative

framework of law and from conceiving of wrongdoing primarily as or similar to a

crime. Instead, teshuva and its corresponding concept of sin as shegaga allow us to

consider wrongdoing as evidence of human weakness. Even the unintentionality of the

harm does not eliminate the need for us and others to take responsibility for actions

that injure and by which we get injured. Rather than conceiving of apologies as a kind

of punishment, we might be able to see apologies as marking those relationships

between humans that have gone awry and the need to constantly work to reconcile and

transform these relationships.

* * *

In this chapter I have argued through Cohen that in rethinking ethical theory and

practice we have to take into account that being human means there is always the

possibility that we might become guilty. This becoming guiltybeing at fault in the

ethical senseis different from the condition of guilt, fault, and indebtedness that

arises from original sin. Ethical fault and its concomitant experience of feeling guilty

results from concrete actions by which we have wronged others. For Cohen this guilt

is ethical only insofar as it is neither naturalized nor permanent. Ethical freedom

within this context becomes the ineradicable capacity to transform ourselves. In turn,

Cohen also suggests that this self-transformation is part of the ongoing task of ethical

labor. The openness of the future to ethical practice placed in opposition to a

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"mythical" concept of an unchangeable, original guilt that is fatefully incurred.

Instead, guilt as part of taking ethical and legal responsibility means that we can and

must acknowledge where we are at faultbut we must also recognize only our actions

as the legitimate origin of that guilt. In this we can break from mythical thinking,

under which we assume that we are always already guilty. Despite this break with

mythical thinking, Cohen insists that guilt still plays a crucial role in ethical subject

formation and that ethical life offers us the means by which guilt is destroyed, namely,

through the consciousness of the guilt as our own and through legal punishment.

Rereading Cohen through his account of teshuva and shegaga in The Religion of

Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, I have argued against making legal

accountability into the primary paradigm for taking responsibility. Instead, I have

argued that the theological tropes Cohen outlines allow us to reformulate taking

responsibility as acknowledging our fault and seeking reconciliation with others.

Taking responsibility asks of us that we seek to shape the future after having injured

others rather than making ourselves at home through our feeling guilty.

The problem in Cohen's account that I have laid out over the course of this

chapter is not that there is wrongdoing, fault, or even guilt in his account, nor that he

considers these as important and difficult quandaries for ethics. The problem rather is

that Cohen binds responsibility to guilt before the law, insofar as in his view we

become fully responsible when we recognize our transgressions against norms and the

law. As I have argued, under this construct it is no longer possible to question the legal

order by which we are being held to account; if responsibility means to find ourselves

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guilty and acknowledge when we are at fault, then in that moment it is no longer

possible to question the contingency of ethical norms themselves and the social

institutions through which ethical norms have passed on or are enforced.

Building on these ideas, in the following chapter I will turn to Benjamin's reading

of the commandment in "Critique of Violence" to argue that we become responsible

where we emerge at a distance from the legal order. Against Cohen's account of

messianism as eternal futurity, which stipulates that there will always be a future, in

Benjamin the possibility of an ethical future lies in refusing reconciliation and

insisting on a hope for redemption that can appear only in brief interruptions. I will

argue that Benjamin allows us to recuperate a "weak futurity" in which the past

unsettles the present and thus infuses the present with an urgency to act. As I argued in

the second chapter, the theological concept of evil as a power in this world merges

with remnants of Christian eschatology and stokes fears of perpetually impending

catastrophes, which focus us on protecting the status quo in fear of a worse future that

is to come. In contradistinction to this kind of thinking, from the perspective of

Benjamin's appropriation of the messianic the status quo appears to us as a catastrophe

that must be changed. Our responsibility is not primarily to take account of our own

fault in the past, but to seize the hopes and dreams of others in the past, which remain

unabgegolten and uneingelost. Yet, as I argue, Benjamin's understanding of

remembrance {Eingedenkeri) as the "weak messianic power" with which each present

is endowed is not the task to redeem by memorializing, but to redeem by making the

past pass away and thus inutile to the politics of the day.

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 Chapter Four:

Benjamin's Transient Messianism:

Experience, Demise, and the Critique of History

In this chapter I will turn to Benjamin's appropriation of theological concepts in light

of my overall argument in this dissertation that explicit normative precepts are not the

only and perhaps not even the most persistent contribution of theology to ethics.

Instead, I foreground the ethical implications of theological concepts for shaping our

understanding of life and history as the temporal continuum of our experiences,

encounters, and actions. Benjamin, like Cohen, draws on Jewish messianism to break

with conceptions of life and history as fated and inexorably guilty. However, in

Cohen's work theological concepts provide the basis on which to ground freedom and

individual action. In particular, although messianism as idea of history in Cohen

affirms the hope for ethical progress and a better future, this idea also presents this

future as ethical task and labor. Cohen's Kantian ethics is grounded in ideas of agency,

freedom, justice, and history through which the ought is determined by reason. In

order to formulate those ideas with normative necessity, Cohen follows Kant in

excluding all experience from the basis for ethics. Through reading Benjamin, I would

like to add a critical perspective on Cohen's exclusion of experience by which he

grounds ethics in individual agency, accountability, and the idealization of progress. In

particular, I will turn to Benjamin's use of the messianic as foregrounding transience,

demise, and decay in experience and history. Against Cohen's futurity as an eternally

185
new beginning and continuous progress in history, Benjamin's interpretation of

messianism introduces a transient disruptive experience drawn from encounters with

the unredeemed past that fuel criticism of the present.226

Unlike Cohen, who was raised in a religious home and initially studied in Breslau

(today Wroclaw) to become a rabbi, Benjamin grew up in an assimilated German-

Jewish family and his interest in and studies of theology were never anchored in lived

27
religious practice. It is widely acknowledged in throughout the critical literature that

Benjamin draws on Jewish theology, and on messianism in particular, as the

conceptual framework for theorizing history and life. However, as obvious as that

initial observation is, it is rarely questioned systematically why Benjamin turns to

theological concepts in particular to reflect critically on history and life.228

In his essay "Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Criticism: The Contemporaneity of Walter

Benjamin" (New German Critique 17 [1979], 30-59), Jtirgen Habermas asserts Benjamin's importance
for critical theory and distinguishes Benjamin's understanding of critique from the type of criticism that
seeks to raise awareness about injustices. Instead, Benjamin's understanding of critique, as Habermas
explains, works through its unique conception of history, which is characterized by an "impulse to
rescue and redeem" (38). Habermas suggests that in retrieving Benjamin's understanding of critique in
the contemporary debates on critical theory, the "mystical causality" (38) that Benjamin attributes to the
critique of history would need to be reconsidered, since religion (in Habermas' estimation) has retreated
into private belief. Habermas' assessment in this essay has been taken up by his successor at the Institut
fur Sozialforschung, Axel Honneth in his essay "A Communicative Disclosure of the Past" (The
Actuality of Walter Benjamin^ ed. Laura Marcus and Lynda Nead [London: Lawrence & Wishart,
1998],118-134).
227
On Benjamin's complicated relation to Judaism, see Gillian Rose's "Walter Benjamin: Out of
the Sources of Modern Judaism" in Judaism and Modernity: Philosophical Essays ([Oxford: Blackwell,
1993], 175-210). On Benjamin's relation to Judaism vis-a-vis Cohen's and Scholem's, see Deuber-
Mankowsky's Derfruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen (7-80).
228
In "'Now': Walter Benjamin on Historical Time," Hamacher offers a thorough reading of
Benjamin's understanding of Jetztzeit (now-time) and of the concept of historical time in Benjamin.
However, without further commentary, messianism in Hamacher's argument eventually only figures as
a trope of the constitutive possibility and impossibility of history's redeemability. In my estimation, the
problem with most readings of Benjamin's messianism is not simply that eventually it is no longer clear
what is theological about this argument, although that is a concern, as I will argue in the final section of
this chapter; Benjamin's understanding of the messianic implies the continuous undoing of the
theologicaldistinctively transcendent and religiousdimension of the messianic itself. But in my
interpretation I part from those such as Hamacher's. I find it important to mark precisely the arrest

186
Consequently, a commentator like Axel Honneth can read Benjamin's theological

concepts, especially in "On the Concept of History," as merely metaphors that refer to

moral rights and to an ethical practice of restitution of full membership to the moral

community to those who were previously excluded.229 Differing from this approach

that considers the philosophical import of Benjamin's theological language solely in

their metaphorical expression of ethics, I will in this chapter argue that we need to

read the theological concepts in Benjamin as sites where for him truth and affect

converge, as Benjamin's attempt at a historical metaphysics of transient experience.

{Stillstellung) and undoing of theology and oppose the quasi-transcendentalism of deconstruction

through Benjamin's recuperation of metaphysics. For another example of a reading that renders the
messianic into a quasi-transcendental framework of history, see Dimitris Vardoulakis' "The Subject of
History: The Temporality of Parataxis in Benjamin's Historiography."
There are a great number of interpretations that tarry incisively with the theological specificity in
Benjamin's work. Jacobson's Metaphysics of the Profane provides an extremely attentive study of the
early political theology in Benjamin's and Scholem's thought. Jacobson elaborates on the theological
and the specifically Jewish dimension in Benjamin, but also cautions against overemphasizing
Benjamin's involvement with Judaism. Jacobson explains that his method and goal will be "not seek to
apply Judaism to Benjamin, but rather Benjamin to Judaism" (5). In Derfriihe Walter Benjamin und
Hermann Cohen, Deuber-Mankowsky attends to Benjamin's Jewish theological interest in connecting
epistemological critique and cultural critique, especially his critique of Zionism. By reading Benjamin
together with Cohen, Deuber-Mankowsky elaborates systematically how the theological context
animates Cohen's and Benjamin's conceptions of epistemological critique as an ethical imperative. In
"Non-Messianic Political Theology in Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History'" {Walter Benjamin and
History, ed. Andrew Benjamin [London: Continuum, 2005], 215-226), Howard Caygill argues that
paying attention to theology is proper, because theology has never disappeared and continues to
undergird purportedly secular conceptions of history and time. Gillian Rose makes a similar case and
substantiates the interpretation of Benjamin's own vocabulary by contextualizing it with reference to
Jewish religious sources in her essay "Walter Benjamin: Out of the Sources of Modern Judaism." Susan
Handelman's Fragments of Redemption; Jewish Thought and Literary Theory in Benjamin, Scholem,
and Levinas (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991) and Susan Buck-Morss' Dialectics of Seeing both anchor
the discussion of Benjamin's theology in readings of Scholem's studies on Kabbalah. Robert Gibbs, in
"Messianic Epistemology: Thesis XV" {Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin [London:
Continuum, 2005, 197-214], draws on Rosenzweig's work to offer a theological discussion of
Benjamin's reference to a liturgical temporality in "On the Concept of History."
229
Walter Benjamin, "Uber den Begriff der Geschichte," Gesammelte Schriften: Band 1-2, ed.
Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 691-704; "On
the Concept of History," trans. Harry Zohn, Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938-1940, ed. Howard
Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 2002), 389-400. I will
return to Honneth's argument specifically in the second section of this chapter to demonstrate in more
detail how Honneth's elision of the systematic specificity of Benjamin's messianism as theological
directly affects the ethical account he derives out of Benjamin.

187
The religious significance of this approach lies in Benjamin's insistence on

understanding transience in reference to redemptiontransient experience as needing

to be redeemed and as occasion for redemption.230

Benjamin introduces his unique metaphysical interpretation of theology in

philosophical essays written before 1920 and continues to work with the concept

throughout his projects, much to the frequent displeasure of his Marxist friends and

later commentators. In a letter from May 25, 1935, to Werner Kraft, Benjamin

explains that joining experience and theology remains crucial to his work, in this case

the Arcades Project.2*2 Similarly, in "Convolute N: On the Theory of Knowledge,

Theory of Progress" of the Arcades Project, Benjamin advises emphatically, "Bear in

The conceptual difficulty with reading Benjamin's understanding of theology on its own
grounds lies in the fact that for Benjamin the divine or theological can manifest itself in the profane
only as a form of undoing or destruction, which is not necessarily distinctly recognizable as divine; see
in particular Benjamin's conclusion to his essay "Critique of Violence." On profanation and the
undoing of theology itself as part of Benjamin's understanding of theology, see Werner Hamacher's
commentary on "Das Theologisch-politische Fragment" in Benjamin-Handbuch: LebenWerk
Wirkung (ed. Burkhardt Lindner [Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2006], 175-192). Theologically inventive
transpositions of Benjamin's theological concepts in Christian theology, include among others,
Johannes Baptist Metz's Memoria Passionis: Ein provozierendes Geddchtnis in pluraler Gesellschaft
(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2006); Helmut Thielen's Eingedenken und Erlosung: Walter Benjamin
(Wurzburg: Konigshausen u. Neumann, 2005); and Benjamin Taubald's Anamnetische Vernunft:
Untersuchungen zu einem Begrijfder neuen Politischen Theologie (Miinster: LIT Verlag, 2001). These
readings appropriate Benjamin to offer critical reformulations of Christian theology, but they also tend
to bypass Benjamin's attempt at undoing theology.
231
On the discussion of the theological versus the materialist tendencies in Benjamin's thinking
and Brecht's, Scholem's, and Adorno's influence, see Rolf Tiedemann's Dialektik im Stillstand:
Versuche zum Spdtwerk Walter Benjamins (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983) and Mystik und
Aujkldrung: Studien zur Philosophic Walter Benjamins, mit einer Vorrede von Theodor W. Adorno und
sechs Corollarien (Munich: Edition Text & Kritik, 2002); Richard Wolin's Walter Benjamin: An
Aesthetic of Redemption (New York: Columbia UP, 1982); Lane's Reading Walter Benjamin: Writing
through the Catastrophe; Terry Eagleton's Walter Benjamin: Or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism
(London: Verso, 1981); Buck-Morss' The Dialectics of Seeing.
232
Walter Benjamin, "An Werner Kraft, 25.5.1935" (Gesammelte Briefe: Band 5: 1935-1937, ed.
Christoph Godde and Henri Lonitz [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995], 115). Benjamin comments to
Kraft on the need for a "total revolution" of his terminology to save the "immediately metaphysical,
indeed, theological thinking" out of which his terminology had come, so that he could work with these
ideas throughout the Arcades Project.

188
mind that commentary on a reality (for it is a question here of commentary,

interpretation in detail) calls for a method completely different from that required by

commentary on a text. In the one case, the Grundwissenschaft (scientific mainstay) is

theology; in the other case, philology" {Arcades 460; N2,l). 233 Benjamin casts reality

as a legible surface to be interpreted, but he carefully distinguishes what he calls the

legibility of reality from the legibility of texts. Whereas the meaning of texts can be

established through philological insight, which elaborates on the world internal to the

text and stays within the text, reality requires a theological reading that reaches

beyond the world of the text, its accounts, and its characters. In the chapter "Is This

Philosophy?" (217-252) of her Dialectics of Seeing, Susan Buck-Morss suggests that

for Benjamin theology is an hermeneutic that invests objects and experiences with a

metaphysical dimension that carries both ethical and political meaning.2 4 Throughout

his work, Benjamin positions theology as a discourse and a tradition of knowledge that

forms and transmits the underlying conceptions of life and history that shape our

experience.235 Taking up this metaphysical perspective on Benjamin's work, I will

"Sich immer wieder klarmachen, wie der Kommentar zu einer Wirklichkeit (denn hier handelt
es sich urn den Kommentar, Ausdeutung in den Einzelheiten) einer ganz anderen Methode verlangt als
der zu einem text. Im einen Fall ist Theologie, im anderen Fall Philologie die Grundwissenschaft"
(Passagen-Werk 574).
234
In Metaphysics of the Profane, Jacobson suggests that the way to understand Benjamin's
metaphysics is as "a highly speculative philosophy of fundamental questions regarding politics and
theology" (5).
235
In "Walter Benjamin: Out of the Sources of Modern Judaism," Rose suggests that "Strictly
speaking, there is no Judaic theologyno logos of God ... Talmud Torah means the teaching of the
teaching, or the commentary on the law" (182). In response to this claim that there is no Jewish
theology, David Kaufmann ("Beyond Use, within Reason: Adorno, Benjamin and the Question of
Theology," New German Critique 83 [2001], 151-173) argues that while there is no systematic
elaboration of a Jewish creedno dogmaticsif one looks to the Middle Ages, there is a tradition of
Jewish theological texts concerned with speculations on creation, revelation, and redemption (see
Kaufmann 153). Theology, in other words, need not only be restricted to the dogmatics of faith, but can

189
argue in this chapter that the theological concepts in Benjamin on the one hand

provide an immanent critique of theologically informed conceptions shaping our

experience in history and, on the other hand, elaborate an affective register to

transform those ideas that orient our experience.236

Focusing in the first section of this chapter on "On the Program of the Coming

Philosophy," I will explain Benjamin's unique recuperation of a metaphysics of

transient experience against the Kantian and neo-Kantian antinomial limitation of

experience.237 Understanding theology as a theory of experience means to disarticulate

theology from being primarily conceived as a set of transcendent ideas or personal

beliefs. Benjamin's approach does not locate theology beyond history, but rather

considers theology as a historical, non-subjective elaboration of the experience of

existence, of the experience of transience.238 In his brief "Theological-Political

be extended to speculative commentary; in Benjamin and Adorno, their sense of theology revolves
around the concept of redemption in particular.
236
Jacobson's interpretation of the theological character of Benjamin's metaphysics in
Metaphysics of the Profane works out the crucial links among language, justice, and politics in
Benjamin's work. I am here concerned more with the issue of experience. On theological critique and
its bearing on experience and affect, see also Dobbs-Weinstein's "The Power of Prejudice and the Force
of Law: Spinoza's Critique of Religion and Its Heirs."
237
Walter Benjamin, Uber das Programm der kommenden Philosophic," Gesammelte Schriften:
Band 2-1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977),
157-171; "On the Program of the Coming Philosophy," trans. Mark Ritter, Walter Benjamin: Selected
Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap P-Harvard UP, 1996), 100-110. For an examination of this text as a critique of Cohen in
particular, see Deuber-Mankowsky's Derfruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen (80-89). In her
argument Deuber-Mankowsky does not consider Benjamin's claim that we encounter metaphysics
especially by way of theology, which is the claim that I want to turn in order to suggest that Benjamin
offers theology as a theory or, in his terms, as a metaphysics of transient experience.
238
In the background of my approach to this interpretation of metaphysics in Benjamin is
Adorno's 1965 lecture course on metaphysics (Metaphysik: Begriff und Probleme, ed. Rolf Tiedemann
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998). On Benjamin's attempt to think experience beyond inferiority
and subjectivity, see also Martin Jay's "Walter Benjamin, Remembrance, and the First World War"
(Benjamin Studien/Studies 1.1 [2002], 185-208) and his "Lamenting the Crisis of Experience:
Benjamin and Adorno" in Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a
Universal Theme ([Berkeley: U of California P, 2005], 312-360). Benjamin's approach offers an

190
Fragment," Benjamin interprets transience itself as messianic, insofar as it is a passing

away in Gliick (happiness).239 This interpretation of the messianic allows Benjamin at

the same time to affirm the experience of demise and to refuse uncritical affirmations

of suffering as well as the postponement of redemption to afterlife.240 Hence

Benjamin's overlay of the concept of the messianic onto the experience of transience

compels critical scrutiny of the conditions under which worldly demise is experienced.

In the second section of this chapter, I take up Benjamin's messianism as central

to his critique of history as progress in "On the Concept of History" and in Convolute

N of the Arcades Project. With his idea of theology as the metaphysics of transient

experience in the background, we can read the ethical impulse in Benjamin's critique

of history as a theological disorientation of experience that remains tied to its own

undoing.241 This ethical impulse appears in Benjamin's argument when he suggests

that unsettled injustices of the past make a claim to redemption on the present.

implicit critique of how the concepts of theology and religion in European modernity have become
narrowly defined through reference to individuality and inferiority. Within Protestantism in particular,
religion becomes primarily a matter of individual faith. Benjamin's work offers an inroad to consider
how the experience of and experience within a theological horizon exceed religion as an individual,
private commitment as well as religion as socially perceived as a cultural foundation. Theological
discourses elaborate both an implicitly binding sense of experience while at the same time containing
within themselves already a heterogeneity of critiques, disagreements, and reinterpretations.
239
Hereafter the "Theological-Political Fragment" will be referred to as TF.
240
On Gliick (happiness), demise, and the messianic in Benjamin, see also Deuber-Mankowsky's
"Walter Benjamin's Theological-Political Fragment as a Response to Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia"
and "The Image of Happiness We Harbor: The Messianic Power of Weakness in Cohen, Benjamin, and
Paul"; Elissa Marder's "Walter Benjamin's Dream of 'Happiness'" {Walter Benjamin andThe Arcades
Project, ed. Beatrice Hanssen [London: Continuum, 2006], 184-200; and Hamacher's "'Das
Theologisch-politische Fragment."
241
For different interpretations of the ethical impulse in Benjamin's "On the Concept of History,"
see Honneth's "A Communicative Disclosure of the Past"; Habermas' "Consciousness-Raising or
Redemptive Criticism: The Contemporaneity of Walter Benjamin"; Johannes Baptist Metz's "Future in
the Memory of Suffering" (Faith and the Future: Essays on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity, by
Johannes Baptist Metz and Jurgen Moltmann [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995], 3-16). See also
Hanssen, who complements Benjamin with a Levinasian reading of ethics in her Walter Benjamin's
Other History: Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels.

191
Benjamin introduces the messianic as a transient cessation of history against a

secularized version of salvation found in the predominant conception of history as

progress. Through the messianic Benjamin formulates and aims to summon an

experience that instigates refusal of the continuation of injustice in the present and an

experience that transitions from ethical critique to action. At the same time, the

interruptive quality of the messianic also means that in Benjamin neither the

theological nor the ethical impulse are introduced as permanent norms or grounds of

action. Instead, I argue that by joining ethics and theology in the concept of the

messianic, both theology and ethics in Benjamin are subjected to their own undoing in

transient experience and release this experience into action.

Over the course of this chapter, I hope to show how Benjamin's positioning of

theology and of the messianic in particular enables a critical perspective on ethics and

reframes the contribution of theology to ethics, in that he severs theology from the

focus on individual faith and interior commitments and positions theology as non-

individual elaboration of a sense of history. Just as Benjamin insists in one of his notes

that "Nicht ist Moral: Gesinnung (Morality is not: ethos)" ("Problem der

Physiognomik" 93)242, theology is not faith. Benjamin's theological sense of

experience in history introduces a fleeting ethical demand and infuses the present with

a messianic impatience against injustices that have both remained without redress, but

also continue in the present. But theology for Benjamin as a momentary interruption

Walter Benjamin, "Zum Problem der Physiognomik und Vorhersagung," Gesammelte

Schriften: Band 6, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1985), 91-93.

192
and a disorientation in experience also urges theology's own undoing as well as that of

the ethical moment itself as passing into action inspired by the messianic interruption.

Benjamin's Messianic Metaphysics of Transience

At different moments in his career, Benjamin stresses different aspects of the

theological concepts that he invokes. Recourse to these concepts, however, is a

constant feature of his work, and they provide critical resources for his approach to

history and experience. In "On the Program of the Coming Philosophy" (1918),

Benjamin sets up what is arguably his most programmatic philosophical argument for

the conceptual relationship between philosophy and theology. In this essay, Benjamin

positions theology as the metaphysics of experience. "Meta-physics," literally "what

comes after physics (science)," has in a standard way been interpreted to mean the

transcendence of experience. As opposed to this common meaning, Benjamin

recuperates the term to describe instead a non-subjective, non-individual, but

immanent reality of transient experience. Metaphysics for Benjamin does not exist as a

transcendent structure of reality beyond experience; rather, his metaphysics arises out

of experience. The privileged discourse within which Benjamin sees metaphysics

surviving in the modern world and being continuously elaborated is theology,

especially in its pervasive contribution of concepts that structure our experience of

history. In particular, Benjamin criticizes the prevalent understanding in Weimar

culture of history as progress as rather an experience in which the concept of salvation

193
history that we have discussed in the first two chapters survives in secularized form.

The philosophical targets of his critique are the Neo-Kantians and especially Kant

himself. In particular Benjamin criticizes both Kant's exclusion of theology from the

epistemological grounding of experience and the theological underpinnings of Kant's

treatment of history that exclude demise and dissolve suffering into the idea of

progress.244 Against the idealization of salutary progress, Benjamin introduces the

messianic, understood as redemption in demise, as a critical framework through which

to affirm the experience of transience without likewise affirming the historical

conditions of this experience. Opposing Kant's and Cohen's ethical formalism,

Benjamin's metaphysics of experience allows and compels a shift from ideas (and

ideals) to experience. His aimto rid philosophy of Kantian subjectivityseems to

imply that there is no sustained philosophical ethics that he embraces, but his critique

On Benjamin's own understanding of secularization, see The Origin of German Tragic Drama
and his brief text "Capitalism as Religion" (trans. Rodney Livingstone, Selected Writings, Volume 1:
1913-1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP,
1996; 288-291; "Kapitalismus als Religion," Gesammelte Schriften: Band 6, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and
Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985], 100-103). In "Capitalism as
Religion," Benjamin comments critically on Max Weber's understanding of secularization in Die
protestantische Ethik undder "Geist" des Kapitalismus (ed. Dirk Kaesler [Weinheim: Beltz Athenaum,
1993]; The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons [New York: Allen &
Unwin, 1930]). For rethinking theology and secularization beyond the dichotomy of reason versus
religion, see Blumenberg's Legitimitdt der Neuzeit; Jacob Taubes' Vom Kult zur Kultur: Bausteine zu
eine Kritik der historischen Vernunft (ed. Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Wolf-Daniel Hartwich, and
Winfried Menninghaus [Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1996]); Anthony J. Cascardi's "Secularization and
Modernization" in The Subject of Modernity ([Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992], 125-178); Talal
Asad's Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2003);
Charles Taylor's A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 2007).
244
Cohen parts with Kant since he rejects Kant's natural teleology, but Cohen retains the Kantian
idealization of progress. For an account of the differences and connections between Kant and Cohen in
their philosophy of history, see Kluback's "Hermann Cohen and Kant: A Philosophy of History from
Jewish Sources." On the issue of theodicy and the justification of suffering in Cohen in the name of
progress, see Schulte's "Theodizee bei Kant und Cohen" and Poma's "Suffering and Non-
Eschatological Messianism in Hermann Cohen."

194
of the Kantian view of experience elaborates work on the conditions of life and

experience as a theological as well as ethical critique of these conditions.

In this section, I argue that Benjamin's early critique of the Kantian formulation

of experience offers us two useful ways to understand his critique of theological

concepts. First, Benjamin's rejection and modification of Kantianism illuminates his

invocation of theology as a metaphysics of experience. Second, the experience of

transience becomes an occasion for critique insofar as Benjamin interprets transience

as redemptive, but only insofar as transience is understood as demise in happiness. I

begin by exploring Benjamin's objections to the Kantian and neo-Kantian construal of

objectively valid experience as systematic knowledge of nature. Against this view,

Benjamin includes religion and history as systematic structures of experience

irreducible to the experiences of empirical individuals. To clarify Benjamin's position

on this issue, I turn to "On Perception" and "On the Program of the Coming

Philosophy" and elaborate Benjamin's conceptualization of a metaphysics of

experience that can affirm "the dignity of transient experience."245 Finally, I turn to the

"Theological-Political Fragment" to argue that the Benjamin's recuperation of

transience as messianic provides access for an ethical commentary and critique.

In this section, I position Benjamin's appropriation of theological concepts within

the context of his attempts to recuperate a post-critical metaphysics of experience. The

central texts for this analysis are "On the Program of the Coming Philosophy" (1918)

245
Walter Benjamin, "Uber die Wahrnehmung" (Gesammelte Schriften: Band 6, ed. Rolf
Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985], 33-38; "On
Perception," trans. Rodney Livingstone, Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926,
ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 1996], 93-
96).

195
and its draft version, entitled "On Perception" (1917). Benjamin's turn to

theological concepts is not a matter of his melancholic character or his despair in light

of his historical circumstances.247 Rather, I argue that theological concepts make their

appearance in his work precisely at those points where he insists on metaphysical

claims, especially in reference to the transience of life and history.248 In what follows,

I examine Benjamin's distinctive "metaphysicalization" of theology as a way of

formulating the affective force of theological concepts at the level of our experience of

transience in life and history. The implications of Benjamin's insistence on the

philosophical dignity of transience reach beyond a simple effort to include forms of

experience other than the scientific by allowing additional objects of experience.

Rather, Benjamin's critique reformulates the very philosophical grounding of

experience and knowledge in the Kantian transcendental unity of apperception.

For an elaboration on the main arguments of "On the Program of the Coming Philosophy," see
Peter Fenves's '"Uber das Programm der kommenden Philosophie'" in the Benjamin-Handbuch:
LebenWerkWirkung (ed. Burkhardt Lindner [Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2006], 134-150). On
Benjamin's reading of different understandings of metaphysics in "On Perception," see also Deuber-
Mankowsky's Der friihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen (80-85). For a careful philosophical
analysis of "On the Program of the Coming Philosophy," see Caygill's chapter "The Programme of the
Coming Philosophy" (1-32) in Walter Benjamin: The Colour ofExperience.
247
In his Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption, Wolin tends to mitigate the systematic,
philosophical challenge of Benjamin's theological claims either by considering religion a "regulative
idea" (36) or by personalizing Benjamin's turn to theology as a leap of faith compelled at first by his
melancholic psychic disposition and later by his despair in the face of fascism (see especially 203-207).
248
As Caygill indicates at the end of his reading of the "Program," Benjamin's concern with
experience is mostly considered in the context of his critique of modernity and is presented as an issue
with the disintegration of experience (see Caygill, Colour 29-31). In Songs of Experience, Martin Jay
points out that the theological grounds of Benjamin's arguments remains un- or under-examined in
most arguments that appropriate Benjamin's critiques in the context of cultural theory. Jay concludes
that Benjamin's theoretical framework and his efforts to offer an alternative understanding of
experience are in the last instance "frankly dogmatic and based on a doctrinal belief in the Absolute,
which could somehow manifest itself in mundane experience" (341). It is hard to tell whether Benjamin
indeed held such a belief, since his letters paint a complex picture of Benjamin's avowed beliefs and
commitments, which also vary significantly depending on the addressee of the letter. Taking up Jay's
concern that the theological aspect in Benjamin requires attention, but differing with it insofar as I do
not consider the question as one of "frank dogmatics," I read Benjamin's metaphysical elaborations as a
diagnostic of how to frame the affective force of theological concepts in their bearing on experience.

196
Benjamin insists that a recuperation of post-critical metaphysics needs to work with a

non-subjective elaboration of a unity of experience in transience. This unity or

concrete totality, as Benjamin calls it, is neither transcendent nor monolithic, but is

instead fragmented and marked by decay. Benjamin moves beyond Kant by

articulating the source of philosophical knowledge and experience as both historical

and material in transience. To consider the specifically messianic aspect of

transience in Benjamin, I turn to the "Theological-Political Fragment", written at the

same time as "On the Program of the Coming Philosophy." In the profane worldthe

world that is pro fano, "out in front of the temple"according to Benjamin's

interpretation in this fragment, we encounter the messianic only in the natural

transience. In this assertion, he departs from traditional Christian eschatological

expectations of a linear progression toward the final goal of eternal salvation that

results in the end of history. Moreover, unlike Cohen, who uses the messianic as an

idea to ensure ethical futurity, Benjamin uses the messianic to frame the importance of

transience and demise for history and experience.250 As I will argue, Benjamin's

insistence on transience as a messianic mode provides a critical perspective on history

On Benjamin's unique materialism, see Caygill's Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience
and Buck-Morss' Dialectics of Seeing. With attention to Benjamin's understanding of materialism
especially in his book on German mourning plays, see Pensky's Melancholy Dialectics. On Benjamin's
examination of surrealism to find a different account of materialism, one against nineteenthcentury
mechanical materialism, see Margaret Cohen's Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of
Surrealist Revolution (Berkeley: U of California P, 1993). On Benjamin's appropriation of historical
materialism, see Christoph Hering's Die Rekonstruktion der Revolution: Walter Benjamins
messianischer Materialismus in den Thesen "Uber den Begriff der Geschichte" (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 1983) and Roland Beiner's "Walter Benjamin's Philosophy of History" (Political Theory
12.3 [1984], 423-434).
250
On transience as key to Benjamin's critique of Cohen, see also Deuber-Mankowsky's Der
friihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen (80-90, 112-120) and her "The Ties between Walter
Benjamin and Hermann Cohen: A Generally Neglected Chapter in the History of the Impact of Cohen's
Philosophy."

197
and on the future because it raises the question of the conditions of this natural demise

and the livability of demise within these events.

Benjamin refers to the neo-Kantians in general in "On the Program" and in its

precursor "On Perception." The summary reference understates the importance of

Benjamin's engagement with Kantian philosophy. As early as 1913, Benjamin studied

Cohen's work with Heinrich Rickert, the leading neo-Kantian of his day, so it is

probable that both Cohen and Rickert are the foils for Benjamin's criticism of the neo-

Kantian treatment of experience and theology found in these pieces, written only a few

years later. In the seminar with Rickert, Benjamin studied Cohen's Kants Theorie

der Erfahrung (Kant's Theory of Experience) (first published in 1871), which does not

address religion nor does it work with theological concepts.252 By Ethik des reinen

Willens (1907), Cohen attributes a crucial role to messianism in order to frame the idea

and ideal of an historical temporality within which human freedom and social justice

can and must be accomplished. By the posthumously published Religion of Reason out

of the Sources of Judaism (1928), Cohen seeks to demonstrate the rational ethical core

of his philosophy as coming from the scriptural and theological tradition. Cohen in

this final work goes beyond his previous arguments by reading biblical sources to

demonstrate Judaism's rational, ethical core. Even so, for Cohen, religious ethics are

rationally and philosophically justified; the theological tradition is merely a site where

251
On experience in neo-Kantianism more generally, see Alan W. Richardson's "Conceiving,
Experiencing, and Conceiving Experiencing: Neo-Kantianism and the History of the Concept of
Experience" (Topoi 22.1 [2003], 55-67).
252
Hermann Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1987).

198
the progress of reason both advances and still needs to be advanced. Nonetheless, the

material in Religion of Reason provides inroads for the possibility of reformulating

Cohen's concept of experience and his insistence on establishing a unity of ethics and

religion within pure reason. Cohen himself did not pursue these paths, which would

have led to a further revision of his Kantianism. Instead, throughout his work,

including Religion of Reason, Cohen remains committed to restricting his concept of

experience to the Kantian view of experience as systematic knowledge of the world

according to the laws of nature. In Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, which Benjamin

studied in Rickert's seminar,253 Cohen embraces Kant's aim:

He [Kant] aimed especially at and aimed at (sic) constituting the unity of

experience as the unity of the mathematical natural science, in order to obtain

from it the norm for all other kinds of wissenschaftlicher (scientific,

scholarly) certainty and for the distinguishing value of objective knowledge.

(753)254

Kant seeks, Cohen explains, to ensure the certainty of knowledge as experience by

framing experience as derived from the ordering of individual experiences according

to the laws of nature, immutable laws that yield a systematic conceptual unity among

these disparate individual experiences. Kant elaborates this understanding of

experience in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Prolegomena to Any Future

253
On Benjamin's studying Kant and Cohen's Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, see Deuber-
Mankowsky's Derfriihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen (29-80) and Fiorato's "Die Erfahrung,
das Unbedingte und die Religion: Walter Benjamin als Leser von Kants Theorie der Erfahrung."
254
"Vor allem gait und gait es ihm [Kant] (sic), die Einheit der Erfahrung als die Einheit der
mathematischen Naturwissenschaft zu konstituieren, um an ihr die Norm zu gewinnen fur alle anderen
Arten wissenschaftlicher Gewissheit, und fur den auszeichnenden Wert objektiver Erkenntnis" {Kants
Theorie der Erfahrung 753).

199
Metaphysics by way of explaining his transcendental method, which aims at

grounding the possibility of objective knowledge through abstaining from making

claims about the things in themselves and by locating the conditions of knowledge and

experience in the subject of knowledge itself.255 In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant

introduces the transcendental turn by explaining that while all Erkenntnis (knowledge)

begins with experience, not all knowledge need derive from experience. While

temporally there is no knowledge prior to experience, we can discern conditions that

make this experience possible that are logically prior to or independent of that

experience.257 The transcendental turn aims to ensure the certainty of knowledge by

discovering the a priori conditions of the possibility of experience and knowledge,

rather than by making claims about the nature of experience and of the objects

themselves.

Kant's intent to establish the certainly of theoretical knowledge without recourse

to speculative metaphysics also led him to reformulate the philosophical concept of

experience. In the opening of the "A" version of the introduction to the Critique of

Pure Reason, Kant distinguishes between experience and the "raw material" of sense-

perceptions. In contradistinction from sensory perception, experience is a reflective

Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena zu einerjeden kiinftigen Metaphysik., die als Wissenschaft wird
auftreten konnen (ed. Konstantin Pollok [Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2001]).
256
Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood in their translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason render
Erkenntnis as "cognition." However, it seems to me that Erkenntnisin particular for Benjamin
denotes more than solely the action of cognizing. Erkenntnis also implies knowledge in the sense of
insight.
257
See, for instance, the "B" introduction of the Critique of Pure Reason: "Wenn aber gleich alle
unsere Erkenntnis mit der Erfahrung anhebt, so entspringt sie darum doch noch nicht eben alle aus der
Erfahrung" (Kritik der reinen Vemunft B1,45).

200
awareness of these sensations organized by our Verstand (understanding). The (for

Kant) passive faculty of sensibility is affected by objects and provides Ansschauungen

(intuitions) as the mechanism by which the raw material of perception is to be

cognized by understanding. Understanding determines these intuitions conceptually

and so produces experience. Since Kant requires experience be dependent on

sensibility, all experience for him must be spatio-temporal. In other words, for Kant

both experience and theoretical knowledge are limited to the possibility of empirical

consciousness.

In Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Cohen presents Kant's circumscription of

experience as an accomplishment for philosophy, because with this theory of

experience Kant develops the fundamentals of natural scientific knowledge as the

ideal for all philosophical knowledge. Cohen follows Kant in restricting the concept of

experience to the perception and knowledge of nature in accordance with its laws; for

Cohen this approach is critical because of the foundational role Cohento an even

greater extent than Kantattributes to the natural sciences and their theoretical

grounding in natural laws. In Ethik des reinen Willens, Cohen identifies his aim as

"die Fixierung der Erfahrung in den Wissenschaften (anchoring experience in the

sciences)" {ErW 85). Cohen parts with Kant, however, by severing the concept of

experience completely from that of empirical consciousness. Cohen does so in order to

elaborate a purely functional account of the philosophical concept of experience that is

thoroughly independent from the empirical perception at the heart of Kant's argument.

258
"Erfahrung ist ohne Zweifel das erste Produkt, welches unser Verstand hervorbringt, indem er
den rohen Stoff sinnlicher Empfindungen bearbeitet" {Kritik der reinen Vernunft A2,48).

201
Instead, Cohen moves to a purely epistemological account of philosophical experience

within which to ground the certainty of objective and universal philosophical

knowledge. With this move, Cohen seeks to get rid of what he considered

metaphysical residues in Kant's account, namely, the presupposition of the entity of a

subject who receives sensory stimuli. Cohen's main concern was that this

presupposition of a subject introduces a speculative assumption and so can no longer

assure a pure apriority within which to produce natural scientific knowledge beyond

all empiricist skepticism. This focus of Cohen's on philosophically ensuring

incontrovertible certainty becomes central to Benjamin's criticism, since this certainty

is won at the expense of either ignoring or not taking seriously the singular,

unrepeatable Verganglichkeit (transience) of experience as affecting philosophical

"yen

knowledge.

In Cohen, this exclusion of transience is the underlying philosophical

commitment that compels him to elaborate ethics as a framework of ides and concepts

on which the possibility of rational agency and ethical progress can be grounded. For

Cohen, ethics does not, need not, and cannot concern itself with experience

In his countering the Kantian and neo-Kantian focus on a natural-scientific ideal of knowledge,
questions of philosophy of language are also at issue for Benjamin. Benjamin's own early work on
philosophy of language needs to be read in this context of a reformulation of the Kantian
epistemological critique. An examination of Benjamin's philosophy of language is beyond the scope of
this dissertation, which foregrounds his philosophy of history and the ethical implications arising from
the theological concept of the messianic in Benjamin's work. On redemption and Benjamin's
philosophy of language, see Handelman's Fragments of Redemption. On language and epistemological
critique in Benjamin, see Caygill's "Language and the Infinities" (13-22) in The Colour of Experience;
Rodolphe GascWs "Saturnine Vision and the Question of Difference: Reflections on Walter
Benjamin's Theory of Language" (Benjamin's Ground: New Readings of Walter Benjamin, ed. Rainer
Nagele [Detroit: Wayne SUP, 1988], 83-104); Peter Fenves's "The Paradisial Epoche: On Benjamin's
First Philosophy" in Arresting Language: From Leibniz to Benjamin ([Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001],
174-226).

202
philosophically, because the validity of ethical ideas depends on their independence

from experience. In Religion of Reason, Cohen explains to this end that while ethics

cannot and may not concern itself with consequences, it is therefore the task of

religion to deal with consequences and experiences: "According to ethics, ... [reason]

is not responsible for anything that happens beyond its borders and basically,

therefore, is not interested in the outward success or failure of moral duty. Yet here,

too, religion objects to this fiction of indifference" (RR 20). 260 But these insights do

not affect the ethical ideas in return, since those ideas have been established a priori.

In the place of the elaboration of ethical ideas to orient actions, Benjamin examines

experience and the ways in which our experience of transience is formed. In

Benjamin, an ongoing theoretical critique of experience and the attempt to rework

philosophical experience takes the place of philosophical ethics.261

In "On Perception" and "On the Program of the Coming Philosophy" Benjamin

criticizes Kant and especially the neo-Kantians such as Cohen for narrowing the

conceptual grounding of experience to scientifici.e., mechanical and

psychologicalproduction and consequent representation of experiences.262 In "On

"Und wahrend nach der Ethik ... [die Vernunft] unverantworlich ist fur alles, was auBerhalb
ihrer Grenzen geschieht, ... und daher auch eigentlich gar nicht interessiert ist fur den Erfolg, den die
Pflicht nach auBen erlangt oder nicht erlangtso erhebt auch hier die Religion Einspruch gegen diese
Indifferenz"(tfF 23-24).
261
See also Deuber-Mankowsky's Derfruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen on critique as
an ethical commitment and her foregrounding the role of transience as key to Benjamin's critique.
262
In his Kritik der Urteilskraft (ed. Wilhelm Weischedel [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1957];
Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews, ed. Paul Guyer [Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2000]), Kant attempted to mitigate the rift between nature and freedom and between
theoretical and practical knowledge through aesthetics and a theory of judgment. However, the
grounding of this mediation remains subjective, and the validity of trans-individual experience is only
hypothetical through reference to common sense, which Kant argues must be assumed as an a priori
condition of possibility for subjective cognition to become objective knowledge. But aesthetic

203
Perception," Benjamin reminds us of the distinction between two different

understandings of experience that Kant and especially Cohen tend to gloss over. First

there is experience in the sense of the individual empirical events we experience;

Benjamin terms this kind of experience as "immediate and natural" experience. He

distinguishes this first meaning of experience from "der Erfahrungsbegriff des

Erkenntniszusammenhangs (the concept of experience in the context of knowledge)"

("Wahrnehmung" 36). The second meaning of experience, then, is not different from

the first in the sense that there is something new added, but the concept of experience

in this case denotes the transformation of experiences into a different form than that of

discreet individual instances: "[Experience as the object of knowledge is the unified

and continuous manifold of knowledge" ("Perception" 95). 263 Experience does not

lose its variegated character in the context of knowledge, but insofar as experience

sediments into knowledge, the multiplicity of instances creates a unity and continuity,

similar to that of scaffolding, as Benjamin describes it later in the Arcades Project?6*

experience lacks a definite objective principle and hence Kant must deny its unconditioned necessity.
His argument in Section 22 demonstrates the subjective limitation of experience that implies that
aesthetic experience can never be objectively universal: "The common sense, of whose judgment I here
offer my judgment of taste as an example and on account of which I ascribe exemplary validity to it, is a
merely ideal norm" {Critique of the Power of Judgment 123). The common sense to which aesthetic
experience appeals neither arises out of shared experience nor bears on elaborating this framework of
experience further. Common sense is solely an ideal norm that must be presupposed. Kant renders
common sense epistemologically necessary through his analysis of the possibility and structure of
judgments of taste, but in this turn also shows exemplarily how he epistemologizes metaphysics,
dissolving the possibilities of experience into the conditions we are forced to assume so that experience
is possible in the first place.
263 "Erfahrung als Gegenstand der Erkenntnis ist die Einheitliche (sic) und Kontinuierliche (sic)
Mannichfaltigkeit (sic) der Erkenntnis" ("Wahrnehmung" 36).
264
"So hat ouch der Historiker heute nur ein schmales, aber tragfdhiges Gerustein
philosophisches zu errichten, um die aktuellsten Aspekte der Vergangenheit in sein Netz zu Ziehen.
([T]he historian today has only to erect a slender but sturdy scaffoldinga philosophic structurein
order to draw the most vital aspects of the past into his net)" (Passagen-Werk 572; Arcades 459,
Nla,l).

204
Benjamin insists that all experiencesincluding those that are intangible, such as

religion, magic, or hallucinationsneed to be considered as possibly contributing

equally to this scaffolding. While Kant and the neo-Kantians do not discard unity and

continuity as crucial to the philosophical concept of experience, their idea of the unity

of experience within the context of knowledge is an impoverished one, because they

limit the concept of experience as Erkenntniszusammenhang (epistemic context) to the

possibility of scientific experience that arises out of a priori concepts.

According to Benjamin, Kant's critical limitation of experience breaks with the

pre-critical philosophers' speculative interest to establish "the closest possible

continuity and unitythat is, to create the closest possible connection between

knowledge and experience through a speculative deduction of the world"

("Perception" 94).266 Benjamin's main critique is that Kant and the neo-Kantians sever

experience from knowledge in the sense that no certainty of knowledge can ever be

derived from experience. For the neo-Kantians empirical experience is an occasion for

knowledge, but their concept of the certainty of knowledge refers only to the

conditions of the possibility of experience and of the possible objects of experience,

not to experience itself. Moreover, Benjamin contends, Kant has no interest in the

In the Critique of Pure Reason, the first sense of experience would be the "raw material" of
sense-perceptions, which understanding determines conceptually and so produces experience. However,
Kant makes no clear distinction between the two senses, when he introduces that "Wenn aber gleich alle
unsere Erkenntnis mit der Erfahrung anhebt, so entspringt sie darum doch noch nicht eben alle aus der
Erfahrung" (Kritik der reinen Vernunft Bl, 45). Experience here seems to include and also denote
experience in the sense of sensations and impressions.
266
The full passage here reads in German: "Es ist uberaus merkwurdig, daB Kant im Interesse der
Aprioritat und Logizitat da eine scharfe Diskontinuitat u[nd] Trennung macht wo aus dem gleichen
Interesse die vorkantischen Philosophen die innigste Kontinuitat und Einheit zu schaffen suchten,
namlich durch spekulative Deduktion der Welt die innigste Verbindung zwischen Erkenntnis und
Erfahrung zu schaffen" ("Wahrnehmung" 35).

205
unity of all variations of experiences or in the world as a totality of experience, where

the concept of the world stores up and gives rise to experiences of all sorts.267 Kant

limits the sense of the unity of experience that is philosophically relevant for the

production of knowledge to the discovery of regularity in empirical Zufalligkeiten

(chance occurrences), which can then be used to infer the structure of experience in

the integration of the individual instances with each other through the laws of nature.

For Kant, concepts like God, freedom, the soul, or the world as a whole have nothing

to do with experience, because they involve the extension of concepts of the

understanding beyond any possible spatio-temporal realization. Whatever does not

have a corresponding Anschauung (intuition) in time and space cannot be an object of

experience. From the perspective of knowledge, such over-extended concepts are

"empty."268 Hence they must be regarded as ideas of reason and can only have

regulative use. For Benjamin, this Kantian formulation of experience and its adoption

by his successors give experience an "erstaunlich geringes spezifisch metaphysisches

Gewicht (astonishingly small specifically metaphysical weight)" ("Programm"

159).269 Specifically, after Kant, ethical, aesthetic, and religious experience no longer

Totality in Benjamin needs to be understood through his use of the monad, which creates a
multiplicity of totalities that are in themselves fragmented. On the monad as a critical category in
Benjamin, see Rainer Nagele's "Das Beben des Barock in der Moderne: Walter Benjamins
Monadologie" (MLN 106.3 [1991], 501-527).
268
"Ohne Sinnlichkeit wurde uns kein Gegenstand gegeben, und ohne Verstand keiner gedacht
werden. Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind. Daher ist es ebenso
notwendig, seine Begriffe sinnlich (d.i. ihnen den Gegenstand in der Anschauung beizufugen), als,
seine Anschauungen sich verstandlich zu machen (d.i. die unter Begriffe zu bringen)" (Kritik der reinen
VernunftBl,75).
269
The translation is mine, since the English translation by Mark Ritter in the Selected Writings
mistakes the relationship between the adverbs and adjectives here. This issue of the metaphysical
weight of experience is at the heart of Benjamin's essay "Experience and Poverty" (trans. Rodney
Livingstone, Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2: 1931-1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard

206
have any weight philosophically and are relegated to solely private, individual, or

group-specific claims to meaning. Ironically, Kant's so-called Copernican revolution

grounds philosophical certainty and universality in transcendental subjectivity and the

transcendental unity of apperception, but the consequent epistemological focus of

philosophy renders this subject worldless to a degree unparalleled even by pre-Kantian

speculative metaphysics.270

Despite his criticisms of the Kantian and neo-Kantian view of experience,

Benjamin is not seeking to return to pre-critical metaphysics. In aspiring to "die

Umprdgung der 'Erfahrung' zu 'Metaphysik' (the re-embossing of 'experience' into

'metaphysics')" ("Programm" 169), Benjamin is not proposing a restoration of the

speculative deduction of the world from first principles or the establishment of the

concept of a transcendent totality such as spirit or substance as grounding all existence

Eiland, and Gary Smith [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 1999], 731-736; "Erfahrung und
Armut," Gesammelte Schriften: Band 2-1, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser
[Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977], 213-219). In his later work, Benjamin continues to examine the
decay of experience as in "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire" (trans. Harry Zohn, Selected Writings,
Volume 4: 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-
Harvard UP, 2002], 313-355; "Uber einige Motive bei Baudelaire," Gesammelte Schriften: Band 1-2,
ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974], 605-653)
and "The Storyteller: Observations on the Works of Nikolai Leskov" (trans. Harry Zohn, Selected
Writings, Volume 3: 1935-1938, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings [Cambridge, MA:
Belknap P-Harvard UP, 2003], 143-166; "Der Erzahler: Betrachtungen zum Werk Nikolai Lesskows,"
Gesammelte Schriften: Band 2-2, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1977], 438-465).
270
In general, Benjamin seems to agree with some of Hegel's critique of Kant, but rejects Hegel's
solutions, in particular Hegelian teleology and mediation (see Caygill, Colour 2). In a letter to Scholem
from January, 31, 1918, Benjamin expresses his being repelled by Hegel's work and calls him an
"intellektueller Gewaltmensch (intellectual thug, person of intellectual violence)": "Von Hegel dagegen
hat mich das was ich bisher las durchaus abgestoBen. Ich glaube wir wurden wenn wir uns einige
Sachen auf kurze Zeit vornehmen wurden bald auf die geistige Physiognomie kommen die daraus
blicktL die eines intellektuellen Gewaltmenschen, eines Mystikers der Gewalt, die schlechteste Sorte,
die es gibt: aber auch Mystiker" {Gesammelte Briefe: Band 1: 1910-1918, ed. Christoph Godde and
Henri Lonitz [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995], 422-423). It is not clear what Benjamin read that
was written by Hegel or how extensive his studies were. In his Mystik und Aufklarung, Tiedemann
suggests that there are strong affinities between Benjamin and Schelling in Benjamin's rejection on
conceptual knowledge of the absolute (19^44).

207
beyond history. Instead, Benjamin insists on both the transience of experience and the

experience of transience as crucial to recuperating metaphysics. Early in the

"Program" essay, Benjamin explains that both Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy

neglect any philosophical treatment of transience. Understanding transience, he

argues, is one of the two tasks for philosophical critique after Kant: "First of all, there

was the question of the certainty of knowledge that is lasting, and, second, the

question of the dignity of an experience that was verganglich (transient, perishable)"

("Program" 100).271 Kant addressed the first question, but neglected the second. Hence

Benjamin's essay focuses on the unity of transient experience. Benjamin concludes his

essay by stating that he has arrived at a new formulation of metaphysical knowledge

that makes transient experience central qua its relation to Dasein (existence): "To say

that knowledge is metaphysical means in the strict sense: it is related via the

Stammbegriff (original concept) of knowledge to the concrete totality of experience

that is to existence''' ("Program" HO).272 The transient totality of experience is nothing

other than Dasein (existence). In other words, philosophical knowledge is

metaphysical and therefore exceeds epistemology insofar as it both is formed in

relation to and also bears on our sense of our existence as transient, as perishable and

perishing.

271
"Es war erstens die Frage nach der Gewiflheit der Erkenntnis die bleibend ist; und es war
zweitens die Frage nach der Dignitat der Erfahrung die verganglich war" ("Programm" 158). The
English translation is problematic, since it renders Dignitat into "integrity" and verganglich into
"ephemeral" without any commentary to explain these choices. Moreover, the translation elides that the
German uses the past tense to describe this transience of experience, in contrast to asserting the lasting
certainty in the present tense.
272
"Eine Erkenntnis ist metaphysisch heiBt im strengen Sinne: sie bezieht sich, durch den
Stammbegriff der Erkenntnis auf die konkrete Totalitat der Erfahrung, d.h. aber auf Dasein"
("Programm" 170-171).

208
 The difficulty of Benjamin's interpretation of the experience of transience is that

within this one concept both the transience of both history and existence converge.273

Benjamin's approach to transient experience counters Kant's dissolving of historical

events and experiences into the idea of progress, an aim that becomes most clear in

Kant's "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View."274 In this

short essay, Kant seeks to develop an "Idee, wie der Weltlauf gehen miifite, wenn er

gewissen vernilnftigen Zwecken angemessen sein sollte (idea of how the course of the

world would have to go if it were to conform to certain rational ends)" ("Idee" 48;

"Idea" 21). He admits that this idea sounds like fiction, but argues that the idea is

necessary so that "there will be opened a consoling prospect into the future (which

without a plan of nature one cannot hope for with any ground)" (22).275 For Kant the

systematic framework for making sense of individual instances in history is not

affected by history itself, since he derives the idea of progress in history out of a

rational necessity. Moreover, in the conclusion of his argument, Kant suggests that the

theological issue of affirming the creation as good rationally compels the "justification

Benjamin seems to seek to bring both senses to bear on each other, but he is not very
forthcoming in explaining this relation. It is relatively easy to grasp how a more general sense of history
and historical experience bears on and inflects our experience of our own transience, yet Benjamin
seems to be more interested in the second relation, namely in how our experience of our own transience
bears on the general sense of transient history.
274
Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim," trans. Allen Wood,
Essays on Kant's "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim," ed. Amelie Rorty and
James Schmidt (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009), 9-23; "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in
weltburgerlicher Absicht," Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pddagogik,
ed. Wilhelm Weischedel (Frankfurt am Main: Surhkamp, 1964), 31-50.
275
The full passage reads in German: "[S]o wird sich, wie ich glaube, ein Leitfaden entdecken, der
nicht blofi zur Erklarung des verworrenen Spiels menschlicher Dinge ... dienen kann ...; sondern es wird
(was man, ohne einen Naturplan vorauszusetzen, nicht mit Grunde hoffen kann) eine trostende Aussicht
in die Zukunft eroffnet werden, in welcher die Menschengattung in weiter Feme vorgestellt wird, wie
sie sich endlich doch zu dem Zustande empor arbeitet, in welchem alle Keime, die die Natur in sie legte
vollig kfinnen entwickelt und ihre Bestimmung hier auf Erden kann erftillet werden" ("Idee" 49).

209
of providence" on which his argument relies. Benjamin's own approach to the

philosophy of history does not oppose the Kantian one by criticizing a reliance on

theological concepts to develop a concept of history. In fact, Benjamin seems to agree

that philosophy of history is theology; philosophy of history is metaphysical because it

develops a unity of meaning and philosophy of history is theological because it aims

to redeem individual historical instances.

In the argument that follows, I will read Benjamin as opposing the mostly

disavowed theological dimension of Kant's concept of history in two ways. First,

whereas Kant reduces the unity of history to an immutable idea of history necessitated

by reason, Benjamin considers this unity as developed through and transmitted by

traditions, whose affective and historical force cannot be simply opposed by the

judgment of reason. Second, Kant excludes from his idea of history the material

experience of history as not only time passing, but also as demise. Kant dissolves the

demise of individuals into the idea of the overall progress of the species and justifies

suffering as the ploy by which nature propels humanity to overcome its laziness and

toward incremental perfection.276 Against the Kantian idealist theodicy of history,

Benjamin introduces the messianic as redemption in worldly demise.

Viewing history under the idea of progress subsumes all suffering in history into this account of
progress, which, according to Kant, reveals suffering as the cunning providence of nature to coax
humans into an effort to overcome adversity and so make progress by inventing solutions. In the fourth
proposition of "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbiirgerlicher Absicht," he writes: "Der
Mensch will Eintracht; aber die Natur weifl besser, was fur seine Gattung gut ist: sie will Zwietracht. Er
will gemachlich und vergnugt leben; die Natur will aber, er soil aus der Lassigkeit und untatigen
Genugsamkeit hinaus, sich in Arbeit und Muhseligkeiten sturzen, urn dagegen auch Mittel auszufinden,
sich kliiglich wiederum aus den letzteren heraus zu Ziehen" ("Idee" 38-39).

210
 Benjamin introduces Lehre (teaching, doctrine, and in a wider sense, tradition) as

the medium for what he terms the "unity of experience" or "concrete totality of

experience," an implicit integrating sense of our existence in history that is a socially

pervasive sensibility.277 In reaction to his reading of Kant and the neo-Kantians as well

as to his perception of Hegel, Benjamin does not formulate the unity of transient

experience as an abstract absolute unity that is beyond critical engagement or as a pre-

established reality or force, waiting only to manifest itself in this world. Rather,

Benjamin conceives of this totality of existence as immanentthat is, existence refers

to the experience of our transience in the world.278 He therefore grounds the unity of

transient experience neither psychologically-empirically nor epistemologically.

Indeed, to be precise, transient experience cannot be grounded at all, but must be

elaborated historically. Nonetheless, this historical immanence is also how for

Benjamin metaphysical experience exceeds epistemology:

Earlier in the "Program," Benjamin invokes the scientific sensibilities of the Enlightenment as
example of how experience is a historically constituted "horizon" or Weltanschauung, which Kant
could not acknowledge as "singulare zeitlich beschrankte (singularly temporally limited)" experience
("Programm" 158). Benjamin suggests we must understand these "horizons" through tradition and
Lehre (teaching, doctrine) in particular, because of the way in which traditions are both historical and
non-relative, and neither immutable nor easy to switch or transform.
278
Benjamin's use of "totality" as a non-individual, non-systematic, fragmented totality constantly
in demise is complicated and would demand further examination, for instance especially through the
"Erkenntniskritische Vorrede (Epistemo-Critical Prologue)" of The Origin of German Tragic Drama.
The concept of the totality of experience contains the kernel of a critical potential that Benjamin's later
work brings to full fruition as an interruptive contraction of the continuum of time into a single
moment. In Thesis XVII of "On the Concept of History," Benjamin explains his methodology of
historical materialist historiography as the production of monads to contract history into just such a
totality, where an image contains the entire history of an era (and presumably its metaphysics as well).
These monads can then enter into constellations with each other, so that history no longer appears as a
continuous development and progress, but reveals occasions for critique and action. It seems to me that
the early work elucidates the philosophical underpinnings of these later invocations of monadic
totalities in relation to Benjamin's theory of experience.

211
 However, the Stamm- und Urbegriff (original and primal concept) of

knowledge does not reach a concrete totality of experience in this context [of

an epistemological-critical inquiry], any more than it reaches a concept of

existence {Dasein). But there is a unity of experience that can by no means

be understood as the sum of experiences, to which the concept of knowledge

as teaching (Lehre) is immediately related in its continuous development.

("Program" 109)279

We can gather two insights from this passage. First, Benjamin indicates that the

concrete totality of experience as transient existence can be experienced, but not

philosophically grounded. Second, this ungroundedness is what allows Benjamin to

consider this totality as both non-subjectively and historically formed. Benjamin

rejects the idea that either the concrete totality of experience or even the concept of

existence could be derived by summing up empirical experiences and then finding

their most basic commonality. While concrete, Benjamin's concept of totality does not

denote a psychological process of integrating experiences made over time with all

others. In fact, Benjamin suggests that the experience of our existence is cannot be

split into individual elements. At the same time, this experience is also more than pure

facticity; as Benjamin argues, we encounter this unity of experience in its concrete

"Jedoch kommt der Stamm- und Urbegriff der Erkenntnis in diesem Zusammenhang nicht zu
einer konkreten Totalitat der Erfahrung, ebensowenig zu einem Begriff von Dasein. Es gibt aber eine
Einheit der Erfahrung die keineswegs als Summe von Erfahrungen verstanden werden kann, auf die
sich der Erkenntnisbegriff als Lehre in seiner kontinuierlichen Entfaltung unmittelbar bezieht"
("Programm" 170).

212
elaborations as Lehre, as teachings, as traditions. Knowledge of this experience is

historically passed on as Lehreas traditions and our understanding of life and of the

world that we derive from these traditions that orient our awareness of our existence in

this world in a visceral, but mostly implicit and pre-reflective sense.

Experiences, insofar as they are integrated into the metaphysical, undergo what

Benjamin describes as an Umprdgung, a re-embossing, re-minting, a material

transformation into frameworks and traditions.281 The sense of experience is not

anchored in subjective categories of cognition, but in Lehre, history sediments into

affective truth without the mediation by subjectivity. The implication for ethics that

we can mark at this point is that Benjamin's metaphysics of experience shifts the

attention from a key concern with how we think about the world and how we ought to

think about it to one in which we consider how we feel about the world and to how our

Through the elaboration of the unity of experience into knowledge, this knowledge becomes
Lehre (doctrine, teaching), a part of tradition. In the epistemological critical prologue of The Origin of
German Tragic Drama, Benjamin explains that "Philosophische Lehre beruht auf historischer
Kodifikation (Philosophical Lehre rests on historical codification)" (Trauerspiel 207; Origin 27).
Historical codification lends authority to the philosophical doctrine as it sediments into a presentation of
truth. Benjamin argues that the mode of presentation in philosophy cannot be a methodological manual
for how to attain knowledge. Philosophical presentation, Benjamin suggests, should follow a method of
contemplation to produce experience. But the argumentative force of the text itself and of thinking
cannot force the insights to turn into Lehre. Lehre cannot be philosophically proven (or falsified), but
undergoes historical elaboration through passing into a collective, general imaginary and so shaping the
reality of experience. In connection with Benjamin's recuperation of tradition as a critical category, not
as content, but as process, see also Adorno's last lecture of his metaphysics course (Adorno, Metaphysik
214226). Adorno cautions against an uncritical rejection of traditional knowledge, because such a
rejection tends to forego the possibility of reckoning with the force of traditions and hypostasizes
rational autonomy without reflecting on how the sense of the incontrovertible truth of reason as more
compelling than other "humbug" is part of a tradition itself and derives its persuasiveness out of this
tradition of rational scientificity (see Adorno, Metaphysik 216).
281
Benjamin's consideration of the unity of experience non-subjectively means that there is no
interiority within which this unity is forged. So time, which in the Kantian transcendental aesthetic is
the form of interior representations, in Benjamin becomes historical.

213
affective orientation and our sense of life and history are shaped and can be reshaped

by our experiences.

In the program essay, Benjamin follows up this interpretation of metaphysics as

immanent and historical in Lehre, in tradition, by suggesting that religion, as tradition,

is more than simply one kind of possible experience under this new conception of

experience. For Benjamin, religion is the privileged site where philosophy encounters

the metaphysics of experience: "The object and the content of this Lehre (teaching),

this concrete totality of experience, is religion, which, however, is presented to

philosophy in the first instance only as Lehre (teaching)" ("Program" 109, translation

adapted).282 Metaphysics and religion here seem to merge in the terminology of Lehre,

especially as Benjamin suggests that the "object and content" of the concrete totality

of experience is religion. Later he corrects himself, suggesting that theology may be

more what he means than religion. We might reformulate Benjamin here to consider

religion as a concretion of this unity of experience in history and theology as that

which more specifically emerges from the commentary on this unity of experience.283

Benjamin ends the program essay without further clarifying why or how the

metaphysical reformulation of experience is particularly either religious or theological.

"Der Gegenstand und Inhalt dieser Lehre, diese konkrete Totalitat der Erfahrung ist Religion,
die aber der Philosophie zunachst nur als Lehre gegeben ist. Die Quelle des Daseins liegt nun aber in
der Totalitat der Erfahrung und erst in der Lehre stofit die Philosophie auf ein Absolutes, als Dasein,
und damit auf jene Kontinuitat im Wesen der Erfahrung in deren Vernachlassigung der Mangel des
Neukantianismus zu vermuten ist" ("Programm" 170).
283
This focus on experience does not mean that Benjamin embraces life-philosophy. To the
contrary, he is vehemently critical of life-philosophy's organicist accounts of life. On Benjamin against
life-philosophy, see Jay's "Lamenting the Crisis of Experience: Benjamin and Adorno." On Benjamin's
criticism of Stefan George and the proximity of the Georgekreis to life-philosophy, see Deuber-
Mankowsky's Derfruhe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen (164203) and Lane's "Goethe and the
Georgekreis" (75-100) in Reading Walter Benjamin: Writing through the Catastrophe.

214
In the argument that follows, however, I will turn to Benjamin's interpretation of the

transience of existence as messianic to elaborate on his theological critique of the

conditions of experience. At this point, I would only like to suggest that by

considering theology as a metaphysics of experience, as Benjamin seems to do, he

offers a different approach to theology and religion than one that would take religion

or theology as primarily connected to individual commitments and acts of faith.

Theological and religious experience as Lehre, as a metaphysical framework, is

precisely not limited to nor grounded in private beliefs and practices. Benjamin's

critique of Kant demonstrates that the Kantian restriction of objective experience to

scientific experience undergirds later approaches that understand religion as primarily

a private, individual matter that might or might be supported in the public sphere.284

Against Kant, Benjamin's approach foregrounds religion as historically transmitted

and theological concepts as furnishing our very sense of life, history, and the world.

Rather than centering on private faith or on theological normative stipulations for

individual actions, Benjamin brings into focus the idea that theological concepts attain

their binding, non-relative character out of history itself through shaping the

experience of transient existence and a related outlook on life and the world.285

Because of the commitment to transcendental subjectivity as grounding the account of

experience and as necessitating the split between Verstand (understanding) and Vernunft (reason), the
Kantian approach produces a restricted perspective on religion as individual faith, universalizable only
as ethics, and as a political matter only with regard to the institutional location of theology in the
university and the church in the state.
285
Taking this experiential metaphysical dimension of religion and theology seriously implies that
any critique of religion and theology becomes a question of how to affect the metaphysical force of
these traditions. The Kantian resources for such a critique are in the end rather anemic because of
Kant's and the neo-Kantians' focus on an epistemological account and on the concordance of religious
practice and theological accounts with the demands of reason. Benjamin's own approach in "On the
Program of the Coming Philosophy," unlike in his later works, still seems rather similar to a Kantian

215
 As I mentioned previously, "On the Program of the Coming Philosophy" ends

without Benjamin's resolving how or why we are to understand the experience of

existence in its transience, not only in metaphysical terms but also more specifically in

theological terms. Against Kant's eschatology of progress, Benjamin considers

transience as messianic to enable a critique of the historical conditions of the

experience of transience rather than to abstract, as Kant does, from those historical

conditions to find in them evidence for an idealized hope for progress. To clarify this

theological dimension in Benjamin and suggest that theology itself carries an ethical-

critical potential, I will draw on Benjamin's "Theological-Political Fragment" from

1919. This brief text argues that transience and Gliick (happiness) are central to

messianic temporality, which sets Benjamin's understanding of redemption and the

messianic apart both from the Christian incarnation- and salvation-based

understanding of redemption as within and beyond history and from Cohen's idea of

the messianic as an eternal futurity that guides ethical progress. I would like to suggest

that Benjamin's conceiving of transience in happiness as messianic introduces an

ethical qualification into Benjamin's metaphysics of experience, because the

completion or totality of this undoing and passing away that is the messianic cannot be

taken for granted nor can it be accomplished by being indifferent about or even

response, insofar as Benjamin simply insists on a confrontation of the religious Lehre with philosophy
and philosophical critique. He writes, "Der philosophische Daseinsbegriff muB sich dem religiosen
Lehrbegriff, dieser aber dem erkenntnistheoretischen Stammbegriff ausweisen" ("Programm" 171).
Benjamin does not explain the force of this must, which seems more an ideal of what ought to happen
than a description of a critical confrontation that is bound to happen.

216
desiring one's own death. Rather, passing away in happiness is a matter of the

conditions and circumstances under which life in this world is allowed, rather than

forced, to perish.

The theological-political argument in the fragment centers on Benjamin's

rejection of theocracy through his insistence on a messianic framing of history.

Denouncing any attempt at ordering the profane world in accordance with divine

principles, Benjamin argues for a stringent discontinuity between messianism and the

profane world in which we live and act. For Benjamin, politics and history are in the

first place profane and are in need of redemption. While insisting on the discontinuity

that exists between the profane and the messianic, Benjamin also recovers an intimate,

yet indirect relationship between the two:

For in Gluck (happiness) all that is earthly seeks its Untergang (downfall),

and only in happiness is it destined to find its downfall. Whereas admittedly

the immediate messianic intensity of the heart, of the inner man in isolation,

passes through Ungluck (unhappiness), as suffering. The spiritual restitutio

in integrum, which introduces into immortality, corresponds to a worldly

restitution that leads to an eternity of Untergang, and the rhythm of this

eternally transient worldly existence, transient in its totality, in its spatial but

286
My argument here is indebted to the critical force Deuber-Mankowsky attributes to Benjamin's
recuperation of transience and demise against Cohen's focus on futurity and progress. See Deuber-
Mankowsky's Der friihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen and her "Walter Benjamin's
Theological-Political Fragment as a Response to Ernst Bloch's Spirit of Utopia." For a different
approach to the critical force of happiness in Benjamin through its relation to Cohen's account of
human weakness, see Deuber-Mankowsky's "The Image of Happiness We Harbor: The Messianic
Power of Weakness in Cohen, Benjamin, and Paul."
287
On the distinction between profane and messianic as crucial to the argument in the
"Theological-Political Fragment," see also Hamacher's '"Das Theologisch-politische Fragment'" in the
Benjamin-Handbuch: LebenWerkWirkung.

217
 also in its temporal totality, the rhythm of messianic nature, is Gliick. For

nature is messianic by reason of its eternal and total Vergangnis (transience,

passing away). (TF 305-306, translation adapted)288

Benjamin frames transience as messianic insofar as transience is both the rhythm of

nature and the path to a worldly restitution. Unlike in the Christian salvation paradigm,

which presents as its goal an incorruptible body and eternal life, for Benjamin worldly,

material restitution and integrity can be found precisely in the natural rhythm of

perishing, not in the overcoming of this perishing. Benjamin seems to distinguish this

worldly restitution from a spiritual one that leads to immortality, but after this single

mention, spiritual immortality immediately drops out of his argument, never to return.

While Benjamin does not explain himself further, this distinction between spiritual

and worldly restitution does not seem to me to indicate that Benjamin is some sort of

modern-day Gnostic looking to overcome the imperfect or sinful bodily, earthly world

through its destruction, aspiring thereby to find a purer form of the life of the soul

beyond the body. Instead, Benjamin emphasizes both body and soul as inseparable in

the individual bodily experience that is at the same time the experience of the "inner

heart." It is this worldly existence in its finitude that Benjamin understands as

messianic. However, Benjamin likewise does not cast this finitude as a final limitation

"Im Gliick erstrebt alles Irdische seinen Untergang, nur im Gliick aber ist ihm der Untergang zu
flnden bestimmt. Wahrend freilich die unmittelbare messianische Intensitat des Herzens, des inneren
Menschen durch Ungluck, im Sinne des Leidens hindurchgeht. Der geistlichen restitutio in integrum,
welche in die Unsterblichkeit einfuhrt, entspricht eine weltliche, die in die Ewigkeit eines Untergangs
fuhrt und der Rhythmus dieses ewig vergehenden, in seiner Totalitat vergehenden, in seiner raumlichen,
aber auch zeitlichen Totalitat vergehenden Weltlichen, der Rhythmus der messianischen Natur, ist
Gliick. Denn messianisch ist die Natur aus ihrer ewigen und totalen Vergangnis" ("Theologisch-
politische Fragment" 204).

218
toward which existence tends, but rather as an inner-worldly rhythm and experience of

aging and, in Benjamin's terms, decaying.289 The demise and transience that we

humansbut not only or even especially we humansundergo with all nature is not

opposed to redemption but is part of it.290 The time of redemption for Benjamin is a

rhythm of completion found in undoing, rather than either in a mythic penance for

one's imperfect existence or in a salutary new beginning in which this life and this

world are exchanged for eternal perfection.

Bringing the messianic to bear on the profane allows Benjamin to introduce a

critical perspective on the conditions of life in the profane world by insisting on the

redemption of life as transient without declaring the demise of life as directly

redemptive. This perspective is critical, because, as Benjamin insists, "only in

happiness is it [the worldly] destined to find its Untergang (downfall)" (TF 305,

emphasis added). Benjamin sets up happiness as the exclusive condition for and sole

medium by which this Untergangthe going under and passing away of the

worldlybecomes possible. So demise as such is not necessarily redemptive, but

becomes so in those moments when demise and happiness coincide. The fragment is

brief and condensed, so Benjamin's concept of Gliick in this context does not receive

This aspect of decay would require further elaboration through Benjamin's interpretation of
natural history in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, where he suggests that nature and history
converge in transience, because nature is historical in its transience, which is the way in which time
leaves its mark on objects. On this interpretation of natural history, see also Adorno's "Die Idee der
Naturgeschichte" and Bainard Cowan's "Walter Benjamin's Theory of Allegory."
290
Even though this understanding of demise as totally encompassing the world in its entirety
bears similarities to the sensibilities that Benjamin uncovers in the Baroque quasi-eschatology (see my
discussion in Chapter 2), this messianic demise is different insofar as Benjamin neither hastens nor
anticipates a final catastrophe and spectacular destruction. Benjamin's messianic rhythm of nature is not
the path to a final catastrophe in which the entire world will end to exist, but rather for him the worldly
passes away eternally. I argue against subsuming Benjamin under an apocalyptic heading, as Mark Lilla
does in The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (New York: Knopf, 2007).

219
extensive commentary; however, it seems not to be a state of mind, but rather to be

akin to a state of life, such as when Gluck is used in translating the Aristotelian

eudaimonia in German.291 This convergence of demise and happiness means that this

happiness is not the fulfillment of a promise to be found on the other side of this life's

demise; it is part of life in this world. Benjamin thus renders redemption thoroughly

immanent and profane; life in this world is redeemed as it passes away fully and

totally into happiness in this world. In contradistinction from the Christian visio

beatifica that renders happiness salutary as eternal and transcendent, for Benjamin

happiness itself becomes redemptive only insofar as it is transient and immanent. Even

so, Benjamin insists that the individual does not directly experience what he calls the

rhythm of demise as happiness. Benjamin here seems to distinguish the messianic

rhythm of demise from a romanticized version of redemptive suffering and with this

argument denies anyone their aspirations to actively seek happiness and reconciliation

in death. The individual suffers the demise, even if it may be a passing away in

happiness. Or in the words of the oft-cited last line of Benjamin's Goethe essay,

"There is hope only for the hopeless."292

Benjamin makes no allusion to Aristotle in this context or in any of the other brief notes on
politics and Gluck. It is not clear how much Aristotle beyond the Poetics he might have read and
engaged with.
292
"Nur um der Hoffhungslosen willen ist uns die Hoffnung gegeben" ("Goethes
Wahlverwandschaften" 201). For a discussion of Benjamin's argument against glorifying suffering and
death in his work on Goethe, see Deuber-Mankowsky's Der friihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann
Cohen (234-281); Lane's "Goethe and the Georgekreis" (75-100) in Reading Walter Benjamin:
Writing through the Catastrophe; and Stanley Corngold's "Genuine Obscurity Shadows the Semblance
Whose Obliteration Promises Redemption: Reflections on Benjamin's 'Goethe's Elective Affinities'"
{Benjamin's Ghosts: Interventions in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory, ed. Gerhard Richter
[Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2002], 154-168).

220
 For Benjamin transience is neither a failure nor deficiency of life in this world

whose overcoming theology can and must promise. At the same time, Benjamin's twin

concepts of transience and redemption do not justify the suffering and pains of demise,

neither as penance that will lead to perfection and reconciliation nor as an inevitable

condition that must be affirmed and embraced as such. Rather, Benjamin figures

demise as redemptive only when passing away becomes possible fully and totally,

when individuals, nature, and history can all pass away without continuing to haunt

the present as the unredeemed past. The experience of transience is neither redemptive

per se nor perceived as such by the individual. Instead, the non-subjective focus of

Benjamin's account of transience reorients our perspective from our own individual

experiences to that of seeking to alter the conditions of life itself such that they can

enable this full passing away in happiness.

We might understand Benjamin's attempt to articulate the philosophical dignity of

transience in a material metaphysics of experience along the lines of Theodor

Adorno's suggestion that "die Metaphysik geschlupft ist in das materielle Dasein

(metaphysics slipped into material existence)" {Metaphysik 183), to which we become

attentive especially, he argues, insofar as we refrain from seeking an epistemological-

critical grounding for insights in order to guarantee their philosophical certainty and

instead acknowledge their experiential foundation. Adorno made this remark in his

1965 lecture course Metaphysics to explain that the material reality of suffering

inflicted and intensified by human action delivers a new categorical imperative,

221
namely, that this suffering ought not to be. However, Adorno continues, this

imperative carries within it a metaphysical moment, a metaphysical experience, if we

but acknowledge the material, historical, and experiential source of this imperative.

This imperative, according to Adorno, cannot and should not be deduced from nor

grounded in logical principles, even though it can and must be subjected to critical

reflection. The demonstration of the certainty, validity, and necessity of this principle

can be attained only at the price of neglecting the material origins of this imperative

and the contingency of this experience.

Similarly, Benjamin's positioning of theology as the metaphysics of experience

moves theology from an absolute, eternal, and unchanging transcendence into

transient existence. Moreover, Benjamin's interpretation of transient existence through

the rhythm of demise as messianic introduces a critical perspective on the conditions

of the experience of demise, insofar as passing away is only complete and redemptive

in happiness. As I will elaborate further in the next section by drawing on Benjamin's

late work, through this embrace of transience Benjamin seeks to instigate a refusal to

settle with the status quo of the conditions under which the perishing of life has been

and continues to be experiencedwhich for most is anything other than happiness.

The passagea single sentenceon this point in Adorno's lecture reads in full: "Wenn ich
Ihnen sage, dass eigentlich der Grand der Moral heute in, ich mochte fast sagen: in dem Korpergefuhl,
in der Identifikation mit dem unertraglichen Schmerz beruht, so zeige ich damit etwas von einer
anderen Seite her an, was isch Ihnen vorhin in einer viel abstrakteren Form anzudeuten versucht
habe,namlich daB die Moral, das was man moralisch nennen kann, also die Forderung nach dem
richtigen Leben, fortlebt in ungeschminkt materialistischen Motiven; daB also gerade das
metaphysische Prinzip eines solchen 'Du sollst'und dies 'Du sollst' ist ja ein metaphysisches, ein
tiber die bloBe Faktizitat hinausweisendes Prinzip, daB das selber seine Rechtfertigung eigentlich
finden kann nur noch in dem Rekurs auf die materielle Wirklichkeit, auf die leibhafte, physische
Realitat und nicht an seinem Gegenpol, als reiner Gedanke; daB also, sage ich, die Metaphysik
geschlupft ist in das materielle Dasein" {Metaphysik 182-183).

222
Messianic Undoing: Eingedenken and Profanation

For Benjamin the theological concept of messianism poses the possibility of an

interruption and provocation to the status quo and everyday practices and thus

introduces ethical claims into the idea of redemption. The messianic for Benjamin

manifests itself in both history and nature in an undoing that is completed only by

passing away in happiness. Benjamin expands his early attention to the concepts of

demise, decay, and fragmentation by giving greater weight in his later writing to the

interruptive and disorienting potential of the experience of transience and

fragmentation in demise and to the critical demands arising out of the absence of this

possibility for passing away in happiness. In particular, Benjamin formulates the

messianic in his later work as a momentary cessation of elapsing time when an image

of the past enters into a constellation with the present moment and the experience of

this cessation demands the rescue of the past through a criticism of the present itself.

As in his early work, in Benjamin's later work he continues to elaborate a theoryor

to use his term, a "metaphysics of experience"that is reducible to neither an ideal of

history nor to individual experience. At the heart of his view of the messianic is an

affective aspect not dissimilar to his interpretation of the eschatological concept of

history insofar as both ideas focus on the efficacy of delimiting experience. For

Benjamin, the difference between these two is that eschatology provides a permanent,

transcendent theological structure of experience, whereas the messianic heightens the

transience of experience and of the theological concept itself along with the ethical

223
demand that the messianic introduces. As I will argue in this section, the theological

charge of the messianic as Benjamin conceives it renders the ethical claim temporal,

so that the messianic neither establishes a new or higher ethical norm nor imposes a

debt, but instead interrupts everyday experience and inspires critique and a refusal of

the status quo.

To position my argument for why and how the theological specificity of the

messianic carries the particular critical potential it does, I will first consider very

briefly Axel Honneth's rejection of Benjamin's theological concepts in favor of an

exclusively ethical interpretation of Benjamin's philosophy of history. I will then turn

to the 1937 exchange of letters between Benjamin and Max Horkheimer to show how
i
Benjamin's approach to experience and history are specifically theological in his

insistence on redemption, which Benjamin introduces as compelled by the experience

of the past as unredeemed and hence incomplete. To consider the specifically ethical

and critical impulse in Benjamin's critique of history, I will turn to Benjamin's

elaboration of Eingedenken (remembrance) in "On the Concept of History" as a

critique of the implicit eschatological commitments in the conception of history as

progress. Finally, I will conclude by suggesting that Benjamin's interpretation of the

messianic as demise, transience, and destruction implies also the undoing of

theological concepts through profanation. Whereas secularization enables the

permanent redeployment of theological concepts, profanation renders them useless.

While the messianic in Benjamin infuses the present with an ethical demand,

224
profanation also rums this demand into a fleeting one to be undone within the political

action that Benjamin hopes to summon.

In his essay "A Communicative Disclosure of the Past," Honneth elides theology

in Benjamin, resulting in a problematically moralizing reading by Honneth of the

ethical impulse that Benjamin introduces through the messianic. In his essay, Honneth

assumes that "we no longer share the metaphysical premises of his [Benjamin's]

project" (131) and so argues that in the present day Benjamin's insistence on

redemption "can of course only have a symbolic character" (128). Over the course of

his article, Honneth describes the messianic in Benjamin not as theology, but as what

Honneth calls "magic" to mark its irrational character more expressly, even though

Benjamin himself did not see magic and theology as necessarily opposed to each

other.294 Honneth eventually refers to Benjamin's line of argument as one that seek to

summon "a quasi-magical experience" that can be understood as redemptive "only in a

metaphorical sense" (131). Discarding both the theological and the magical

dimensions in Benjamin as not "compatible with the presuppositions of postreligious

thinking" (128), Honneth sees his own project as that of extracting and elaborating on

the "moral impulse" in Benjamin's critique of history without any reference to

Benjamin sought to include magic, astrology, drug experiences, and all kinds of supernatural
experiences in his account of experience, which he did not consider as therefore impervious to critical
engagement. On the profane and critical character of Erleuchtung (illumination) in experiences of all
kinds, see Margaret Cohen's Profane Illumination; Jasiel Cesar's Walter Benjamin on Experience and
History: Profane Illumination (San Francisco: Edwin Mellen P, 1992): Norbert W. Bolz and Richard
Faber's Walter Benjamin: Profane Erleuchtung und rettende Kritik [Wurzburg: KSnigshausen u.
Neumann, 1982).

225
theology and without distinguishing theology as a discourse from religion as a

practice.

By discarding theology as a metaphysics that is no longer shared by "us,"

Honneth's reading of Benjamin foregoes any consideration of how Benjamin's

metaphysical claims might be a crucial part of his critique of experience and affect.

Reading any theological claims directly as that of strictly symbolic ethical discourse

presumes that the theological specificity of the language does not fundamentally affect

the ethical ideas stored up in these claims. Working under this assumption, Honneth

ends up implicitly drawing on the Kantianism within the underlying theory of

experience that Cohen himself works with explicitly, seeing the generalizable content

of theology as contained within a set of underlying, rational ethical ideas.295 This

abstraction of ethical ideas from their theological charge excludes from consideration

the question to what extent that presupposition of the possible abstraction of ethics

already relies on a specific metaphysics of experience all its own, namely, one that

cannot understand theology other than as a particular set of cultural commitments.

Honneth's position thus ends up regarding any metaphysical commitments that "we"

might not share with Benjamin as additional and accidental and therefore as not part of

critical endeavors today, especially that which might call "our" own metaphysical

commitments into question. Consequently, Honneth ends up creating a particularly

295
As I comment on in the introduction, Cohen relies on the Kantian apriority of ethical ideas as
grounded in pure reason and so holds that "Nicht an die Religion in irgend welcher verlarvten Form
darf die Ethik abgtreten werden. Auch darf jener der Vortritt nicht eingeraumt werden. Was Ethik sei,
hat die Philosophic nach ihren Methoden zu ermitteln und zu ergrtinden, und also auch erst
festzustellen. Was in der Religion Sittlichkeit sei, das hat die Religion selbst erst von der Ethik zu
lernen. Die Theologie muss Ethiko-Theologie werden." (ErW 21).

226
moralizing Benjamin precisely because by omitting the theological dimension from

further inquiry as a factor that could disorient the ethical demands he sees Benjamin

making. Instead, Honneth reads the theological concepts within Benjamin's work only

as ethical metaphors, albeit as ethical ideas expressed in a heightened poetic manner.

Honneth suggests that Benjamin's theological language need not or in fact cannot by

"us" be taken too literally, which is the only way he can see to rescue the ethical

import of Benjamin's argument. Against Honneth's reading, I argue that Benjamin's

understanding of the theological dimension of the messianic both introduces and

dislodges the ethical claim Benjamin attributes to his understanding of history. In

particular, I argue that the critical function of theology is that it exceeds a solely

ethical interpretation by rendering the ethical demand of the redemption of the past as

contingently and affectively grounded in experience.296

Benjamin clarifies his commitment to theology in Convolute N "On the Theory of

Knowledge, Theory of Progress" of his Arcades Project by excerpting from and

commenting on a letter Horkheimer sent him on March 16, 1937. In this letter

Horkheimer questions Benjamin's insistence on history's openness to transformation:

"The determination of incompleteness is idealistic if completeness is not comprised

within it. Past injustice has occurred and is completed. The slain are really slain. ... If

one takes the incompleteness entirely seriously, one has to believe in the Last

296
On Benjamin's theological commitment to redemption as irreducible to aesthetics, see the brief
essay by Norbert Bolz, "Asthetik? Geschichtsphilosophie? Theologie!" (Walter Benjamin: Asthetik und
Geschichtsphilosophie, ed. Gerard Raulet and Uwe Steiner [Bern: Peter Lang, 1998], 223-230;
"Aesthetics? Philosophy of History? Theology!" trans. Gerhard Richter, Benjamin's Ghosts:
Interventions in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory, ed. Gerhard Richter [Stanford, CA:
Stanford UP, 2002], 226-233).

227
Judgment" (Arcades 471; N8,l). Horkheimer further speculates that past injustices

are perhaps only complete in the sense of being unchangeable and irrecoverable, but

suggests that past justice and happiness might not be complete in the same sense, since

"their positive character is largely negated by the transience of things" (Arcades 471;

N8,l). 298 Past injustice and suffering stand fixed; insisting on the possibility of

undoing them would be, says Horkheimer, idealistic and uncritical. Past suffering is

impossible to redeem, he continues, because the past is beyond the reach of the

present; the injustices, violence, and suffering of the past cannot be undone. To

believe otherwise, one would have to, as Horkheimer says, believe in the Last

Judgment, which seems an acknowledgment that we cannot change the past on our

own accord. Horkheimer implies that such an act of faith is not an acceptable because

of the betrayal of the material reality that such a leap of faith performs in trusting in

the redemption of the unredeemed.299

Commenting on this passage from Horkheimer's letter, Benjamin concurs with

Horkheimer that to insist on the openness and changeability of the past, "that is

"Die Feststellung der Unabgeschlossenheit ist idealistisch, wenn die Abgeschlossenheit nicht in
ihr aufgenommen ist. Das vergangene Unrecht ist geschehen und abgeschlossen. Die Erschlagenen sind
wirklich erschlagen ... Nimmt man die Unabgeschlossenheit ganz emst, so muB man an das jungste
Gericht glauben" (Passagen-Werk 588-589).
298
Horkheimer's full sentences here reads in German: "Die geubte Gerechtigkeit, die Freuden, die
Werke verhalten sich anders zur Zeit, derm ihr positiver Charakter wird durch die Verganglichkeit
weitgehend negiert" (Passagen-Werk 589).
299
An interesting aspect warranting further consideration is the distinction that Horkheimer draws
in allowing for a non-theological undoing of the past with respect to injustice and suffering. In contrast
with past injustice and suffering, according to Horkheimer, past justice and happiness are a different
quality, insofar as affirming their openness to being undone in the present does not require any
theological register. For Horkheimer there is a non-theological undoing of past events by virtue of
transience, erosion over time. But only past justice and happiness are subject to this worldly, non-
theological, and seemingly automatic being worn out and undone over time in the scheme of history as
violence and suffering subsequently inflicted and suffered outweigh the brief moments of happiness in
the past.

228
theology." The difference between Horkeimer and Benjamin, however, lies in what

this theological dimension implies for the two of them. What Horkheimer describes as

an act of faith, which he rejects for its tending toward an uncritical hope, Benjamin

harnesses as an experience, which he embraces for its critical potential to inspire a

rejection of the status quo:

The corrective of this line of thinking [that the past is fundamentally past]

lies in the consideration that history is not solely a science but also not less a

form of Eingedenken (remembrance). What science has 'established,'

remembrance can modify. Remembrance can render the incomplete

(happiness) into something complete and the complete (suffering) into

something incomplete. That is theology. {Arcades All, translation modified;

N8,l) 300

Horkheimer is concerned that a belief in the incompleteness of history necessarily

commits us to an idealist speculation that also implies profound disregard for the

material conditions of history. Where Horkheimer sees the theological turn as idealist,

Benjamin insists instead on this theological dimension as radicalized attention to the

materiality of history. Benjamin's theology here is not theology in the traditional

sense, as a systematic engagement with doctrine or a reflection on the faith of

individuals. Rather, Benjamin introduces theology in the form of a collective practice

300
"Das Korrektiv dieser Gedankengange liegt in der Uberlegung, da(5 die Geschichte nicht allein
eine Wissenschaft sondern nicht minder eine Form des Eingedenkens ist. Was die Wissenschaft
'festgestellt' hat, kann das Eingedenken modifizieren. Das Eingedenken kann das Unabgeschlossene
(das Gliick) zu einem Abgeschlossenen und das Abgeschlossene (das Leid) zu einem
Unabgeschlossenen machen. Das ist Theologie" (Passagen-Werk 589).

229
and experience in Eingedenken, remembrance. For Benjamin, the specifically

theological force of Eingedenken lies in its power to modify a past that seems settled.

This assertion rests uneasily with Horkheimer and Honneth out of two separate

concerns, both of which converge in the worry that we might have to become believers

in order to embrace Benjamin's view. For Horkheimer, as I mentioned above, such an

assertion implies an act of faith that turns into uncritical idealism that forsakes the

material world; for Honneth this assertion draws upon a magical register that requires

a metaphorical and symbolic interpretation to translate it into a putatively universal

philosophical register that then requires no prior religious or theological

dispositions.302 Honneth argues at length that the Benjaminian concept of the rescue of

the past can be merely metaphorical, not real, because "even if such a methodological

reproduction of quasi-magical experience were possible, it would be still unclear to

what extent it would be meaningful to speak of a meaningful communicative

relationship to ... the dead" (Honneth, "Communicative Disclosure" 131). Honneth

wonders how real this power to change past injustices can be, since he interprets the

redemptive power of Eingedenken as an act of restitution that renders the victims of

history into "interacting partners in our present experiences and [that] thereby [has

For an account of theology as memory in Benjamin's work, see also Tomoko Masuzawa's
"Tracing the Figure of Redemption: Walter Benjamin's Physiognomy of Modernity" (MLN 100.3
[1985]: 514-536).
302
Honneth does not seem to distinguish between metaphor and symbol. For an examination of the
different theological connotations and valences of both metaphor and symbol see Paul Ricoeur's
Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (trans. David Pellauer, ed. Mark I. Wallace
[Minneapolis: Fortress P, 1995], 35-72). For Benjamin's own distinction between symbol and allegory,
see Trauerspiel 340-344; Origin 163-167. Benjamin there recuperates Baroque allegory against the
Romantic notion of the symbol because of the immanence and fragmentary nature that distinguishes
allegory from the symbol, which refers to transcendent wholeness. On the relation of allegory and
symbol to the messianic, see Max Pensky's Melancholy Dialectics and John McCole's Walter Benjamin
and the Antinomies of Tradition ([Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993], 130-155).

230
them] become members of the moral community" (Honneth, "Communicative

Disclosure" 129). Honneth reads what to him seems the unviable claim to a

redemptive power in Eingedenken as a transformation of the past as such that brings

the dead to life again.

At an angle to Horkheimer's and Honneth's interpretations, Benjamin elaborates a

way of thinking about theology as disarticulated from individual belief and faith, but

as nevertheless enabling a disorientation of our everyday experience that is crucial for

the critique of the status quo. In his commentary on Horkheimer's letter in the Arcades

Project, Benjamin introduces the theological force of Eingedenken more modestly

than even Honneth's interpretation by prefacing the claim that Eingedenken modifies

the past with the following explanation: "What Wissenschaft (science) has

'established,' Eingedenken can modify. ... That is theology" {Arcades All, translation

modified; N8,l). 303 Benjamin argues that the scientific fixing of history into a set of

unchangeable facts about the past is rendered problematic by the theological

experience that lays claim to the redemption of the past. This theological claim

directly challenges any complacency that might be located in accepting the findings of

history as a science that is beyond questioning and is therefore settled. In "On the

Concept of History" and the Paralipomena to that text, Benjamin points to the

blindness pervading historicist historiography, whose methodological attempt at

establishing how the past "really was" by empathizing with the past amounts to

"Was die Wissenschaft 'festgestellt' hat, kann das Eingedenken modifizieren. ... Das ist
Theologie" (Passagen-Werk 589).

231
"Einfiihlung in den Sieger (empathy with the victor)" ("Paralipomena" 406).

Because historicism provides a perspective that is focused on and contented with

enshrining the past as object of knowledge, it becomes uncritical against the ways in

which the past as such does not exist, but instead is always made and written by the

victors, by those who are recognized as "making history." Benjamin is concerned

about what he refers to as the "scraps," "trash," and "anonymous victims" of history,

those whose existence falls by the wayside as dispensable, insubstantial, and

negligible with respect to what counts as relevant for the narrative of history.305

Benjamin seeks an alternative to historicism in Eingedenken by circumscribing it as an

experience of the necessity for the rescue and redemption of the past. The theology

that Benjamin elaborates as necessary in Eingedenken is primarily an affective

Walter Benjamin's "Paralipomena to 'On the Concept of History'" (trans. Edmund Jephcott
and Howard Eiland, Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938-1940, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W.
Jennings [Cambridge, MA: Belknap P-Harvard UP, 2002], 406-407; "Notizen zu: Uber den Begriff der
Geschichte (Aus den Paralipomena) [Benjamin-Archiv, MS 447 und MS 1094]," Gesammelte
Schriften: Band 1-3, Ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhauser [Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1974], 1240-1241). On Benjamin against historicism, see also Philippe Simay's "Tradition
as Injunction: Benjamin and the Critique of Historicisms" (trans. Carlo Salzani, Walter Benjamin and
History, ed. Andrew Benjamin [London: Continuum, 2005], 137-155).
305
The emphasis in Benjamin's understanding of the "scraps of history" lies in its non-human and
inanimate nature, but extends also to human victims of history. He comments in the Arcades Project on
the rescue of phenomena: "What are phenomena rescued from? Not only, and not in the main, from the
discredit and the neglect into which they have fallen, but from the catastrophe represented very often by
a certain strain in their dissemination, their 'enshrinement as heritage.'They are saved through the
exhibition of the fissure within them.There is a tradition that is catastrophe" (473; N9,4). Rescue
performs a completion by taking up "rags" and making use of them, but also at the same time rendering
them useless for further handing down: "I shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no ingenious
formulations. But the rags, the refusethese I will no inventory but allow, in the only way possible, to
come into their own: by making use of them" {Arcades 460; Nla,8). On Benjamin's understanding of
the "trash of history," see also Fritsch's The Promise of Memory: History and Politics in Marx,
Benjamin, and Derrida and Pensky's "The Trash of History" (211-239) in Melancholy Dialectics.
306
For a discussion of the critical role of memory in the context of Benjamin's writings on Proust
and Baudelaire, see Aniruddha Chowdhury's "Memory, Modernity, Repetition: Walter Benjamin's
History" (Telos 143 [2008], 22-46).

232
disorientation, an experience that calls into question the closure of the past as an object

of knowledge unaffected by the present.

Benjamin's unusual positioning of theology within the philosophy of history

elaborates a way of thinking about theology as disarticulated from individual belief

and faith, but as critical in enabling a disorientation of our everyday experience.

Theology enters our lives not motivated by a speculative interest, but as a contingent

claim that arises out of experience: "[I]n Eingedenken we have an experience that

forbids us to conceive of history as fundamentally atheological, just as little as we are

allowed to attempt to write it [history] with immediately theological concepts."

{Arcades 471, translation modified; N8,l). 307 Benjamin circumscribes with the

concept of Eingedenken not an activity or project by which we set out to save the past;

rather, Eingedenken is an experience with the past that compels us to insist on the need

for redemption in the present. At the same time, this experience does not allow us to

rewrite history as some kind of salvation narrative, but instead insists on taking past

suffering and injustice as still unsettled. With this prohibition against a linear narrative

that culminates in a guaranteed happy ending, Benjamin responds to Horkheimer's

concern that his view is couched in an uncritical idealism, while still holding to the

need for redemption out of what Benjamin sees as necessitated by a commitment to

reality of the material sufferings and experiences of injustice in the past. Neither

Horkheimer nor Honneth seem to have understood that for Benjamin the theological

"[I]m Eingedenken machen wir eine Erfahrung, die uns verbietet, die Geschichte grundsatzlich
atheologisch zu begreifen, so wenig wir sie in unmittlebar theologischen Begriffen zu schreiben
versuchen diirfen" (Passagen-Werk 589).

233
turn was, as I hope to show, important to intensify this experience of outrage into a

moment ripe for action without turning this insistence on redemption into an idealistic

affirmation of a salvific future.

In his theses or aphorisms "On the Concept of History" (1940), Benjamin

elaborates on his understanding of historical materialism as a critique of historicism

and in particular of the Social Democratic view of history as progress.308 The

theological concept of the messianic allows him to articulate a materialist critique of

his present political situation without subscribing to the Marxist teleological account

of history. Benjamin draws on the theological concepts of the messianic and

redemption to reformulate the present's relation to the past Against the Social

Democratic faith in progress, Benjamin casts the messianic as the interruptive

experience of Eingedenken that infuses the present with a sense of timeliness and

agency.309 In the following pages, I will first examine Benjamin's criticism of this

faith in progress as overly reliant on a secularized version of salvation history and

demonstrate how Eingedenken as an experience with the past circumscribes alternative

sense of history. In particular, Eingedenken instigates an ethical responsiveness to the

For a systematic overview over the arguments in "On the Concept of History," see Jeanne
Marie Gagnebin's '"Uber den Begriff der Geschichte'" in the Benjamin-Handbuch: LebenWerk
Wirkung (ed. Burkhardt Lindner [Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2006], 284-300). For an in depth examination
of Benjamin's later work on history and its political implications, see Fritsch's The Promise of Memory:
History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida.
309
On the sense of timeliness and the critique of the faith in progress, see also Brown's Politics
out of History and Anson Rabinbach's In the Shadow of Catastrophe (Berkeley: U of California P,
1997). On the critique of the Social Democratic idea of progress, see also Michael Lowy's On
Changing the World: Essays in Political Philosophy, from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin (Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993) and Raluca Eddon's "Arendt, Scholem, Benjamin: Between
Revolution and Messianism" (European Journal ofPolitical Theory 5.3 [2006], 261-279).

234
past that disorients the faith in progress Second, I will argue that developing an ethics

of memory from the concept of Eingedenken evacuates the political critique of the

messianic interruption in Eingedenken. Hence to honoring the political orientation in

Benjamin's argument implies the perpetual undoing of the ethical impulse that

Eingedenken introduces.

In his diagnosis of the Weimar-era German Social Democrats' defenselessness in

the face of ascendant fascism, Benjamin links the Social Democrats' political

acquiescence to their unquestioned faith in history as fundamentally structured by the

progress of humanity as a whole. This sense of history abstracts the meaning of

progress from concrete "Fortschritt ihrer Fertigkeiten und Kentnisse (advances in

human ability and knowledge)" ("Begriff 700; "Concept" 395) and generalizes it as

the progress of humanity toward moral perfection. Benjamin's criticism is that the

Social Democrats regard this progress as infinite, inevitable, and unstoppable. In their

philosophy of history, Social Democrats draw on the Kantian idea of history as

progress toward final perfection, an idea in which the concept of a salvation history

persists tacitly, in a secularized form, but for which the final goal still remains always

beyond the reach of the arc of infinite progress. Benjamin points out that the

consequence of such a faith in humanity's progress is that it dissolves historically

specific events and circumstances into an abstract continuum of time: "The concept of

mankind's historical progress cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression

235
through a homogenous and empty time" ("Concept" 395).310 Time in this view

becomes an empty and homogenous medium through which humanity passes towards

a final telos. The Social Democrats' teleological interpretation of history understands

events as material manifestations of that final telos, albeit in an imperfect way pending

full realization in the future. Within this view, events that happen over the course of

time can be perceived as meaningful only through the framework of progress and with

respect to this overall goal. Any event or circumstance that does not fit this narrative is

discarded.

Benjamin observes that a secularized Christian eschatology, where the final end is

guaranteed and faith proves itself precisely through its steadfastness in the face of

adversity, remains at work in the Social Democratic identification of labor practices

with cultural progress, giving rise to "the illusion that the factory work ostensibly

furthering technological progress constituted a political achievement. The old

Protestant work ethic was resurrected among German workers in secularized form"

("Concept" 393).311 Within this monolithic view of inexorable progress, the historical

interpretation of societal changes driven by technology, such as changes in labor

conditions affected by the invention of the assembly line, sees these changes as

progressive accomplishments. This view of social and cultural evolution is based in

and fueled by a secular, science-focused interpretation of human progress toward the

310
"Die Vorstellung eines Fortschritts des Menschengeschlechts in der Geschichte ist von der
Vorstellung ihres eine homogene und leere Zeit durchlaufenden Fortgangs nicht abzulosen" ("Begriff"
701).
311
"Von da war es nur ein Schritt zu der Illusion, die Fabrikarbeit, die im Zuge des technischen
Fortschritts gelegen sei, stelle eine politische Leistung dar. Die alte protestantische Werkmoral feierte in
sakularisierter Gestalt bei den deutschen Arbeitern ihre Auferstehung" ("Begriff 698-699).

236
perfection of human capacities, which retains the old salvation-theological paradigm

while the path to final social and cultural perfection will be painful, progress toward

this goal manifests itself in hard work. Benjamin explains that the consequence of this

fixation on technological advancement as indicative of social and cultural progress

was that this Social Democratic, vulgar-Marxist concept of labor "recognizes only the

progress in mastering nature, not the retrogression of society" ("Concept" 393).312 The

reliance on this understanding of history as progressing toward perfection masks the

present exploitation of both the laborers and nature because social change is

immediately and unquestionably perceived as evidence of a better future.

Against these secular progress narratives, Benjamin introduces the theologically

charged Eingedenken, remembrance, as a form of attentiveness to past occurrences,

one that shifts the perspective of history from that of a continuity of progress that

disregards the past as inferior to the present to that of keeping open the meaning of the

past in the experiences of the present. For Benjamin, a more adequate conception of

history than that of history as progress must be able to interrupt the complacency on

the part of the present generation and alert it to past oppression not in the name of

progress, but in the name of past exploitation that continues in the present.

"Er [der vulgar-marxistische Begriff] will nur die Fortschritte der Naturbeherrschung, nicht die
Ruckschritte der Gesellschaft wahr haben" ("Begriff 699).
313
Both Kant and Cohen insistent on "ethical progress" as a measure of society, rather than seeing
cultural progress as necessarily manifest in any technological advance. Cohen is ambivalent on
technological progress and insists on socializing the means of production. On Cohen's socialism, see
Holzhey's Cohen und Natorp and Deuber-Mankowsky's Der friihe Walter Benjamin und Hermann
Cohen on Cohen as a socialist but nevertheless arguing against the Marxist socialist Left of his time.
For an account of Kantianism and socialism, see also Willey's Back to Kant: The Revival ofKantianism
in German Social and Historical Thought. On the social democratic understanding of history as
progress and Benjamin's appropriations of Marxism, see also Lowy's On Changing the World: Essays
in Political Philosophy, from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin.

237
Eingedenken forges a unique relationship between a moment in the past and the

present in which this past moment appears. Benjamin suggests that this encounter with

the past heightens the responsibility of the present to the incomplete past, but also

redirects the gaze of the present from the past to the present again, urging action in the

present. Benjamin refers this encounter and its affective interruption in a theological

register by suggesting that we in the present come to recognize the past as unredeemed

through being struck by the reality of the unlived happiness in the past. In this

happiness that never came to fruition, Benjamin writes,

the past carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to redemption. ...

[T]here is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one.

Then, like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a

weak messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim

cannot be settled cheaply. ("Concept" 390)314

In Eingedenken the present generation becomes alert to the unsettled claims of the past

and to the way in which the past remains unredeemed and incomplete in the dreams,

plans, desires, and happiness that remained unlived. Benjamin explains that this

experience endows the present with redemptive agency.315 Although this agency is

weak, it is still redemptive, fueled by outrage and pain that Benjamin likens to the

envy over happiness that could have been. Benjamin indicates subsequently that the

314
"Die Vergangenheit fuhrt einen heimlichen Index mit, durch den sie auf die Erlosung
verwiesen wird. ... [D]ann besteht eine geheime Verabredung zwischen den gewesenen Geschlechtern
und unserem. ... Dann ist uns wie jedem Geschlecht, das vor uns war, eine schwache messianische Kraft
mitgegeben, an welche die Vergangenheit Anspruch hat. Billig ist dieser Anspruch nicht abzufertigen"
("Begriff' 693-694).
315
On the weak messianic power in relation to Benjamin's understanding of liturgical temporality,
see also Gibbs' "Messianic Epistemology: Thesis XV."

238
redemptive character of this power manifests itself in the way the present acts on the

circumstances in the present itself. In order to consider this weak redemptive potential,

it is crucial to recognize the affective orientation that Benjamin attributes to

Eingedenken. Beyond the envy of happiness lost and the outrage over past injustice,

suffering, and misfortune, the historical gaze instructed by Eingedenken instills horror

in the present by revealing the "anonymous toil," the obscured exploitation that made

these cultural achievements possible, which means that "There is no document of

culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism" ("Concept" 392).316

The reaction to the continuing barbarism and the agency created out of the resulting

outrage that Benjamin seeks to fan are not reducible to a "moral debt" that the present

has always already inherited from the past, as Honneth suggests. Honneth's reading

interprets what Benjamin introduces as outrage, pain, envy, and horror as instead a

sense of indebtedness that instills an obligation to the past and inspires the ethical

motivation to make good on this debt, in order to create a better future.317 However,

the affects that Benjamin mobilizes seem to instill solidarity with the oppressed past in

the present generation rather than a sense of indebtedness. More importantly,

Honneth's focus on making good on the debt to the past ends up eclipsing the weak

redemptive power that for Benjamin lies in the critique directed against the present

"Es ist niemals ein Dokument der Kultur, ohne zugleich ein solches der Barbarei zu sein"
("Begriff' 696).
317
Equally Honneth's embrace of Benjamin's insistence on the memory of the past still adheres
implicitly to a vision of ethical progress accomplished through the restitution of "moral integrity" to the
victims of history and their integration into the moral community, which improves this community
("Communicative Disclosure" 128). While not directly legitimating past and present suffering in the
name of future progress, Honneth's interpretation nevertheless results in quelling outrage over past
injustice by the prospect of future reforms.

239
conditions that continue the exploitation and barbarism inherent to this tradition of

"enshrinement as heritage" (Arcades 473; N9,4). 318

Benjamin introduces this experience of a responsibility to the unredeemed past as

theological, but he does not politicize this responsibility by setting it up as a

legitimating principle of action for the present.319 Instead, beyond the messianic

interruption and the consequent outrage of the present, there is no political program

that directly follows from the messianic power of the present. Equally, the present

cannot appeal to the memory of the past to justify subsequent actions. The messianic,

interruptive character that Benjamin attributes to the memory of the past lies precisely

in the memory's fleeting appearance. This memory is not always available to the

present for reflection; it cannot be conjured up or retained for future reference. The

memory or image of the past breaks into the present as "a memory ... that flashes up in

a moment of danger. ... The danger threatens both the content of the tradition and

those who inherit it. For both, the danger is one and the same thing: the danger of

becoming a tool of the ruling classes" ("Concept" 391).320 While the memory of the

past has a potential that can be threatening to the ruling powers because it gathers and

For a reading of the revolutionary aspirations in Benjamin's "On the Concept of History," see
Michael Lowy's Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History" (trans. Chris
Turner [London: Verso, 2005]); Christoph Hering's Die Rekonstruktion der Revolution: Walter
Benjamins messianischer Materialismus in den Thesen "Uber den Begriff der Geschichte"; Susan
Buck-Morss's "Revolutionary Time: The Vanguard and the Avant-Garde" (Benjamin Studien/Studies
1.1 [2002], 209-225).
319
On the non-religious politics in Benjamin, see also Giacomo Marramao.'s "Messianism without
Delay: On the 'Post-Religious' Political Theology of Walter Benjamin" (Constellations 15.3 [2008]:
397-405).
320
The full passage reads in German: "Vergangenes historisch artikulieren ... heiBt, sich einer
Erinnerung zu bemachtigen, wie sie im Augenblick einer Gefahr aufblitzt. ... Die Gefahr droht sowohl
dem Bestand der Tradition wie ihren Empfangern. Fiir beide ist sie ein und dieselbe: sich zum werkzeug
der herrschenden Klasse herzugeben" ("Begriff 695).

240
mobilizes the present to resist against those powers, the memory of the past itself is

within this very moment in danger of being exploited and thereby sustaining the

existing power relations. This danger that threatens both the memory and the present

recipients is not simply that these ruling classes might instrumentalize the past and the

present, but even more the danger lies in becoming complicit in this exploitation of

past and present. The past does not consist of "dangerous memories" that we could

readily invoke for critical purposes; rather, the pasts enters into the present as

"endangered memories" that can always be also exploited and that need to be rescued

by being made unusable.321

The ethical moment in Benjamin's Eingedenken does not therefore lie in

memorializing the past, but in recognizing that the memory of the past not only refers

to the injustice and unlived happiness in the past, but also orients the present to a

political moment of danger, to an imminent conformism, and to ongoing exploitation

in the present. The moment when an image of the past flashes up, history seen as a

continuous temporal progression is interrupted. Benjamin argues that we must become

historical materialists to hone our abilities to heed the critical potential of this

321
The term "dangerous memory" stems from Johannes Baptist Metz's engagement with
Benjamin's thought in the context of Metz's project to articulate a "political theology" that insists on
the remembrance of past suffering and the "eschatological proviso." Metz draws on Benjamin's notion
of Eingedenken in his essay "Future in the Memory of Suffering" to ask: "What prevents memory from
being a traditionalistic, even reactionary category? ... In what sense can memory as a practical and
critical, and even dangerously emancipatory, force?" (7). In response to his question, Metz concludes:
"As the remembered history of suffering, history retains the form of a 'dangerous tradition'" (8),
because the predominant mode of historiography and remembering is one that eclipses the memory of
the suffering. Metz joins Benjamin in being concerned about radical change in the present, but
disregards the extent to which the memory of suffering and past injustices can be appropriated to shore
up rather than to question the current institutions and practices that might carry on in a different
appearance the same exploitation and injustice. See Johannes Baptist Metz's "Future in the Memory of
Suffering."

241
interruption. For Benjamin, the historical materialist is the one who "grasps the

constellation into which his own era has entered, along with a very specific earlier

one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as Jetztzeit (now-time) shot

through with splinters of messianic time" ("Concept" 397).322 This reference to

Jetztzeit "shot through with splinters" shows that for Benjamin the messianic is neither

an age nor a project nor an idea, but a rupture of the homogeneity of time.323 What I

have interpreted as an ethical demand on the present or the experience of the ethical

responsiveness of the present arises out of the constellation that this messianic rupture

brings about. The ethical demand that the encounter with the past introduces does not

extend beyond this momentary duration of Jetztzeit. Through the theological concept

of the messianic, Benjamin elaborates an experience that infuses the present with an

ethical awareness, but through the theological fleetingness inherent in the messianic

the ethical demand is given over to its own undoing. The ethical demand must give

way to a political critique of continued exploitation, injustice, and unhappiness. This

experience with the past, as Benjamin envisions it, constitutes an ethical responsibility

to the past and renders recognizable the political urgency of a situation in the present,

which in return becomes discernible only because we are faced with a particular

memory of past injustices. With the concepts of Eingedenken and messianic cessation,

"Er erfaBt die Konstellation, in die seine eigene Epoche mit einer ganz bestimmten friiheren
getreten ist. Er begrundet so einen Begriff der Gegenwart als der 'Jetztzeit', in welcher Splitter der
messianischen eingesprengt sind" ("Begriff 704).
323
On Benjamin's understanding of dialectics and historical materialism, see Rolf Tiedemann's
Dialektik im Stillstand. For a critical account arguing that Benjamin embraces a materialist historicism
rather than a historical materialism, see Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner's "Erwachen aus dem Traumschlaf:
Walter Benjamins Historismus" in Listen der Vernunft: Motive geschichtsphilosophischen Denkens
([Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1998], 150-181).

242
Benjamin seeks to unsettle the complacent expectation that there will always be time

to create a better future and thus to harness an affective charge in the present moment

that will discharge itself into action.324 Benjamin's own efforts to rally a sense of

urgency in the present indicate that the experience of urgency might in fact be

necessary to elicit action on a broad scale. This urgency that Benjamin's messianic

introduces into the present differs substantively from that of stoking a sense of

urgency to stave off a looming catastrophic threat, since Benjamin is very clear that

the status quo has long been as devastating as any future catastrophe might be: "The

tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is

not the exception, but the rule" ("Concept" 392).325 Benjamin observes that the real

catastrophe is not in an impending threat, but in the continuity of the tradition of

exploitation. As long as this continued injustice tends to be perceived as normal,

Benjamin urges that our sense of the status quo needs to be disoriented in order to

enable action. But the affective disorientation and the appeal that he introduces

In his essay "Dialectic of the Past/Disjuncture of the Future: Derrida and Benjamin on the
Concept of Messianism," Owen Ware argues that there is an absence of futurity in Benjamin that also
constitutes an often overlooked difference between Derrida and Benjamin. Derrida affirms a future-to-
come that cannot be rendered fully contemporary with any present, which is more akin to Cohen's
affirmation of the messianic age as an ethical future than to Benjamin's. For Cohen and Derrida, this
ideal of history bears on and enjoins the present ethically. However, futurity is not entirely eliminated in
Benjamin by an exclusive focus on past. Instead, as I would argue, the future for Benjamin is no longer
what can be simply affirmed, but rather what must be forged every moment. In Benjamin, the future
becomes more a concern of being accomplished indirectly through attention to the past in the present.
The transformation of the present takes precedence over an assertion of a future that is alwayseven if
only theoreticallyavailable, but still there is a futurity that opens up in Benjamin through a rigorously
non-nostalgic understanding of history as decay. On urgency and the invocation of an impending
catastrophe as justificatory gesture, see my argument in Chapter 2.
325
"Die Tradition der Unterdruckten belehrt uns daruber, dafi der 'Ausnahmezustand', in dem wir
leben, die Regel ist" ("Begriff" 697). On Benjamin's interpretation of the state of exception as a direct
criticism of Schmitt's state of emergency, see Agamben's State of Exception, Heil's "Gefahrliche
Beziehungen", and Marc de Wilde's "Violence in the State of Exception: Reflections on Theologico-
Political Motifs in Benjamin and Schmitt" {Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular
World, ed. Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan [New York: Fordham UP, 2006], 188-200).

243
through the messianic are only fleeting, unlike the moralistic rhetoric of mythical

thinking that perpetuates a sense of fear and obligation. The fleetingness of "now-

time" summons an experience of outrage and horror that constitutes an occasion for

action, not the beginning of a moral project. "Now-time" is only a chance that is

transient and can be missed or will be undone by acting upon it.

To conclude this chapter and this dissertation, I return now to Benjamin's

"Theological-Political Fragment" and his understanding of messianic transience as the

profanation of theological concepts, which differs in substantive ways from their

secularization.326 Drawing on Benjamin's text, Giorgio Agamben offers a succinct

explanation of the distinction between secularization and profanation: "Secularization

... leaves intact the forces it deals with by simply moving them from one place to

another. ... Profanation, however, neutralizes what it profanes. Once profaned, that

which was unavailable and separate loses its aura and is returned to use" {Profanations

ll)?21 The secularization of theological concepts translates them into immanent terms,

but structurally retains a form of the theological separation between sacred and

See also my discussion of remnants of eschatology as subtending the perpetuation of

catastrophic urgency in Chapter 2.
327
The full passage in Agamben's Profanations (trans. Jeff Fort [New York: Zone, 2007]) reads:
"Secularization is a form of repression. It leaves intact the forces it deals with by simply moving them
from one place to another. Thus the political secularization of theological concepts (the transcendence
of God as paradigm of sovereign power) does nothing but displace the heavenly monarchy, leaving its
power intact. Profanation, however, neutralizes what it profanes. Once profaned, that which was
unavailable and separate loses its aura and is returned to use. Both are political operations: the first
guarantees the exercise of power by carrying it back to a sacred model; the second deactivates the
apparatuses of power and returns to common use the spaces that power had seized" (77). On
Agamben's interpretation of profanation, see also Leland de la Durantaye's "Homo prof anus: Giorgio
Agamben's Profane Philosophy" (Boundary 2 35.3 [2008], 27-62). Hamacher in his commentary on
Benjamin's "Theological-Political Fragment" does not refer to Agamben's work, but offers a similar
argument on profanation as different from secularization.

244
profane that preserves the binding and transcendent force of the theological concept

and rids it only of its explicit theological content. As an example, Agamben refers to

sovereignty as secularized paradigm of divine omnipotence. In contrast, according to

Agamben's interpretation, profanation neutralizes the incontestable, absolute character

of the theological concept by making it available for use, as for instance when a sacred

space once used for liturgical purposes is returned to common use once it has been

deconsecrated. In the following section, I will argue, somewhat differently from

Agamben, that in Benjamin the profaning of the messianic is not so much a matter of

returning the concept to common use, but rather of rendering its force transient rather

than permanent. Whereas secularizing the messianic allows the concept to be invoked

to legitimate a political agenda, profaning the messianic seeks to render the concept

useless for justifying political claims, while nevertheless embracing its interruptive

quality. What is crucial for Benjamin is that messianism acts as a spark for political

action, but only in a way that cannot be controlled and exploited by the ruling classes.

For him, profanation redeems the power of the theological concept not by allowing its

persistent deployment, but by making it unusable beyond providing an occasion for

intervention.

By considering profanation as a mode of mobilizing as well as undoing theology,

the "Theological-Political Fragment" elaborates the possibility of a critical

interpretation of messianism that avoids the two extremes of either legitimating

politics on the basis of theological sources or reducing theology to private faith alone.

Benjamin approaches this task of critical interpretation as a problem of considering the

245
relationship between the profane (i.e., the political order) and the sacred (i.e., the

messianic kingdom of God) within history.328 His interpretation of the messianic

allows us to interrupt the contemporary assumption that bringing messianism to bear

on politics necessarily legitimates apocalyptic or millenarian politics, which in turn

inspires political subservience to the promised leader on earth and violence in the

name of bringing about the Last Days. Against such apocalyptic and millenarian

theocratic politics, Benjamin argues in the "Theological-Political Fragment" that

history, life, and actions in history belong to the "order of the profane" and that taking

the profane nature of history seriously means denying all aspirations to profane self-

On theological-political critique in Benjamin's "Fragment," see also Idit Dobbs-Weinstein's

"Rereading the Tractatus theologico-politicus in Light of Benjamin's 'Theologico-Political Fragment'"
{Piety, Peace and the Freedom to Philosophize, ed. Paul J. Bagley [Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic,
2000], 67-89).
329
In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla voices his concern regarding messianism and its political
implications. Messianism for Lilla seamlessly turns into apocalyptic eschatology and milleniarism:
"Messianic expectations have a predictable way of becoming impatient, especially in moments of
historical crisis. A pious withdrawal from history and politics can thus be followed, through a reflux
action, by a passionate embrace of untamed actionand faithfulness to the true Messiah replaced by
worship of a profane political idol" (277). Lilla considers political theology as politicized theology
dangerous because it makes people vulnerable to the political exploitation of hopes for the end or at the
very least of hopes for radical change. This impatience, Lilla worries, erodes capacities to react calmly
in moments of crisis and leads to a transference of desires for a spiritual leader found in the messiah to
that for a worldly leader. Moreover, the theological potential to re-imagine the world radically provides
dangerous inspiration to passionate political activism and, according to Lilla, even to outright
destructive nihilism. At this point, it would seem that we would have to distinguish between different
visions of a transformed societyand even programs of radical social and political change nourish not
therefore necessarily visions of annihilation. Implicitly Lilla's argument seems to suggest that such
distinctions are useless and beside the point, if not outright dangerous, since once passionate political
activism ensues, these distinctions are too intellectual to reign in the passions that theological discourse
kindles. Lilla's own arguments eventually commit the very appeal to passion that they indict so sharply
in the name of reason and restraint. When Lilla alarms us about the political treachery of late
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germans' rekindling of messianic language, Lilla's argument
conjures the past as ever-looming future threat and so Lilla himself fuses passion and history in the way
that he criticizes as dangerous rhetoric. While I do not share Lilla's position that all theological
concepts are necessarily complicit with violent politics and that we must keep a lid on passion in
politics at all times, Lilla's approach is productive insofar as his book shifts away from a focus reason
versus faith and issues of justification and takes temporality, history, affect, and rhetoric as central
categories for considering the relation between religion and politics.
On understanding the political implications in Benjamin as non-apocalyptic, see also Caygill's
"Non-Messianic Political Theology in Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History.'"

246
redemption. Benjamin emphasizes that "only the Messiah himself completes all

history, in the sense that he alone redeems, completes, creates its relation to the

messianic. For this reason nothing that is historical can relate itself, from its own

ground, to anything messianic" (TF 203). The messiah for Benjamin cannot be strictly

defined as a person, a force, or an age, but Benjamin insists that only the agency of the

messianic can be what exclusively redeems and completes history, not human

historical agents. For Benjamin there is no direct connection to the messianic that can

be established from within earthly life and history. Consequently, Benjamin rejects the

notion that the messianic in the form of the coming kingdom of God should ever be

the goal of a theologically inspired politics, because this form of messianic politics

presupposes the direct capacity and intention of the profane world to bring about the

messianic kingdom and its resulting complete redemption.330 Instead, Benjamin

suggests an alternative understanding of how the messianic can appear in the profane

world and how the profane world can indirectly further the messianic:

It is not clear how familiar Benjamin was with Maimonides or with Cohen's essay on the
Ethics of Maimonides. Maimonides focuses on the political interpretation of the messianic age as the
age of good governance and introduces the messianic through a ban on speculating about what is
beyond this world, because we cannot know anything about the world that is to come. Benjamin was
familiar through Scholem with the antimomian traditions of Jewish messianism and the link between
messianism and destruction (see Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism). In a letter to Scholem from
November 18, 1927, Benjamin proposes a brief text as "Idee fur ein Mysterium" in which he develops
the idea of the impossibility of deciding the coming of the messiah further: "Die Geschichte
darzustellen als einen ProzeB in welchem der Mensch zugleich als Sachwalter der stummen Natur
Klage fuhrt uber die Schopfung und das Ausbleiben des verheiBenen Mesias. Der Gerichtshof aber
beschlieBt, Zeugen fur das Zukunftige zu horen. Es erscheint der Dichter, der es fuhlt, der Bildner, der
es sieht, der Musiker, der es huort und der Philosoph, der es weifi. Ihre Zeugnisse stimmen daher nicht
uberein, wiewohl sie alle fur sein Kommen zeugen. Der Gerichtshof wagt seine Unschlussigkeit nicht
einzugestehen. Daher nehmen die neuen Klagen kein Ende, ebensowenig die neuen Zeugen. Es gibt die
Folter und das Martyrium. Die Geschwornenbanke sind besetzt von den Lebenden, die den Mensch-
Anklager wie die Zeugen mit gleichem MiBtrauen horen. Die Geschwornenplatze erben sich bei ihren
Sohnen fort. Endlich erwacht eine Angst in ihnen, sie konnten von ihren Banken vertrieben werden.
Zuletzt fliichten alle Geschwornen, nur der Klager und die Zeugen bleiben" {Gesammelte Briefe: Band
3:1925-1930, ed. Christoph Godde and Henri Lonitz [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995], 303).

247
 The order of the profane has to align itself with the idea of Gltick

(happiness). ... [T]he quest of free humanity for happiness strives away from

the messianic direction; but just as a force, by virtue of the path, can augment

another on an opposite path, so the profane order of the profane promotes the

coming of the Messianic Kingdom. The profane, therefore, although not

itself a category of this kingdom, is a most zutreffendsten (appropriate)

category of its quietest approach. For in Gltick (happiness) all that is earthly

seeks its Untergang (downfall), and only in happiness is it destined to find its

Untergang (downfall). (TF 203-204)

The quest for happiness prepares indirectly the approach of the Messianic Kingdom,

since Benjamin suggests that happinessmore specifically, passing away in

happinessis how earthly existence partakes in the messianic.331 For Benjamin, the

messianic can only appear within the profane by being profaned itself, which means

that the messianic does not remain a transcendent force or hope that legitimates or

mitigates demise in the profane. Rather, by being brought to bear on the profane

world, the messianic itself should pass away, namely, by being dissolved into the

concept of happiness as the criterion for action in the profane world. Benjamin hence

aims to render useless the concept of the messianic as a justification for our politics

and political aims. By joining the profanation of the messianic with the rhythm of

existence in this world in its constant demise, Benjamin renders the theological

331
Different from Cohen and Maimonides, who both attribute persistence to the messianic age, in
Benjamin there is no persistence beyond transience. For further discussion of profanation and undoing,
see also Jacobson's Metaphsyics of the Profane (19-51, 193-232).

248
concept itself transient by bringing it to bear on profane experience. As both profaned

and profaning, Benjamin's theological concept of the messianic provides no

transcendent or permanent grounds for legitimating a political agenda, but rather

introduces a persistent disorientation in its transient demand for redemption.

This understanding of profanation as rendering theological concepts transient

elucidates Benjamin's final remark in the fragment where he explains that "To strive

for such passing away, also for those stages of man that are nature, is the task of world

politics, whose method must be called nihilism" (TF 204). Benjamin is not advocating

random annihilation and destructiveness, since "such passing away" is for him a

passing away in happiness. Rather, Benjamin's political nihilism would seem to call

for undoing the constraints that infringe on the flourishing of life and that make its

transience unlivable and unbearable. Benjamin does not explain his commitment to

nihilism further in the brief fragment, but this perspective seems to connect with his

argument about the anarchic, critical force of divine violence and the commandment in

his essay "On the Critique of Violence."332 In that essay, he suggests that divine

violence unhinges and destroys norms and legal bonds, but in so doing also allows

responsibility to emerge where norms and obligations wither. As a disorientation and

interruption of ethical and legal norms, Benjamin offers the commandment as an

332
See Butler's "Critique, Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence'" on the
ethical implications of Benjamin's interpretation of divine violence and the commandment:
"Responsibility is something that one takes in relation to the commandment, but it is not dictated by the
commandment. ... If there is a wrestling, then there is some semblance of freedom" (212-213). For
another appraisal of Benjamin's nihilism, see Irving Wohlfarth's "No-man's-land: On Walter
Benjamin's 'Destructive Character'" (ed. Andrew E. Benjamin and Peter Osborne, Walter Benjamin's
Philosophy: Destruction and Experience [London: Routledge, 1993], 153-179) and his "Nihilismus
kontra Nihilismus: Walter Benjamins 'Weltpolitik' und heutiger Sicht" (Theologie und Politik: Walter
Benjamin und ein Paradigma der Moderne, ed. Bernd Witte and Mauro Ponzi [Berlin: Erich Schmidt,
2005], 107-136).

249
ethical demand that can neither be ignored nor enforced. Benjamin suggests that the

commandment undoes ethical norms because it functions only as a guideline, not a

norm; it directs and even demands responsible action, but there is no debt, guilt, or

punishment that one could incur in relation to it. Considering Benjamin's nihilism in

this light would then imply a politics that furthers the transience and demise, but in the

form of demise in happiness by disrupting normative orders without establishing new

norms to replace or intensify the old ones now disrupted.

If we consider Benjamin's nihilism as a profanation that unhinges normative

orders in relation to the ethical demand that Eingedenken and the weak messianic

power of the present pose, the core question might be whether we subsequently

profane or merely secularize this demand in taking it up. Honneth's reading of the

theological language in Benjamin as an ethical metaphor seems to secularize the

demand, turning it into a permanently available and inevitable debt to the past that we

must constantly pay but can never quite settle. This interpretation of the ethical

demand as an enduring moral debt ends up blunting the critical force of Benjamin's

fleeting memory of the past that establishes the present and its traditions, practices,

norms, and institutions as the primary site for action. Benjamin's insistence on the

profanation of theological concepts as a critical method for rendering theology

immanent seeks to render transient the theological concepts as well as the ethical

impulses. Theology and profanation are both key to Benjamin's harnessing the

affective charge of the ethical imperative out of experience, while at the same time

loosening the grip of guilt.

250
 As I have argued in this chapter, Benjamin draws on a theological conceptthat

of messianismand elaborates through the messianic an ethical demand on the

present for the sake of the past. This demand becomes specifically theological because

at its heart is a demand for redemption. Against narratives of progress, the experience

and perspective that Benjamin sets up through the messianic facilitate an encounter

with the past that also acknowledges the urgency of the present situation without

presuming an infinite time for progress and change. By renouncing fantasies of

"fixing" the past and other dreams of self-redemption, the theological concept of the

messianic shifts the role of theology from policy claims based in religion to a question

of our sense of history and to the kinds of responsibility and agency that arise out of

our consequent experience of history. Understanding theological concepts as shaping a

metaphysics of experience does not insulate them against critique, but only shifts the

task of theological critique from rationality to affect. Understanding the messianic in

particular as introducing an ethical disorientation and demand in relation to injustices

in the past neither necessarily implies nor actively seeks to found a religious politics or

a theological ethics. Instead, as I have argued through examining Benjamin's

appropriation of the messianic, theological critique takes on the task of working on the

concepts that shape our experience. Theology need not fortify restrictive norms, but

can loosen their hold on us, interrupt our everyday experience, and renew our desire

not to settle easily with injustices past and present.

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 If our time is a post-secular one, then acknowledging this post-secularity does not

mean that critiques of theology have become irrelevant. Rather, this post-secularity

challenges us to examine how theological concepts continue live on and have

valanceoften spectrally and altered, but no less powerfully. Cohen's and Benjamin's

work offer productive inroads into analyzing and taking seriously the return of

theologically informed quandaries without subscribing to narratives and ideals of

overcoming religion. Theology itself can provide critical a critical orientation.

Equally, to take theological and religious traditions, concepts, and practices seriously

does not mean to uncritically herald newly rediscovered theological thinking. Rather

we are called to persistently reconsider and hone our conceptual resources, so that we

may know well how to grasp, discern, counter, and redirect the historical and affective

potentials that theological traditions harbor.

252
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