Review Essay: Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin on Language and Truth (original) (raw)
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Philosophy and Melancholy : Benjamin on Language and Truth
2014
This essay attempts to discuss the relation of mood to philosophy in the context of Benjamin’s early thought. Reviewing Ilit Ferber’s Melancholy and Philosophy: Benjamin’s Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, I try to show that melancholy, far from merely a psychological-solipsistic-pathological condition as it is generally understood today, is rather to be understood as philosophical attunement and which as such is inseparably connected with profound ethico-political questions concerning responsibility and justice, with work and play and with a possible phenomenological disclosure of the world as a whole. Walter Benjamin’s early works are seen, in this context, to be indispensable help to think such questions anew.
Benjamin on melancholy and truth
This essay attempts to discuss the relation of mood to philosophy in the context of Benjamin's early thought. Reviewing Ilit Ferber's Melancholy and Philosophy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, I try to show that melancholy, far from merely a psychological-solipsistic-pathological condition as it is generally understood today, is rather to be understood as philosophical attunement and which as such is inseparably connected with profound ethico-political questions concerning responsibility and justice, with work and play and with a possible phenomenological disclosure of the world as a whole. Walter Benjamin's early works are seen, in this context, to be indispensable help to think such questions anew. keywords Walter Benjamin, melancholy, mood Ilit Ferber, Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, Stanford University Press, 2013, 264 pp, $24 . 95 (pbk), ISBN-13: 978-0-8047-8520-4.
Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2014
This essay attempts to discuss the relation of mood to philosophy in the context of Benjamin's early thought. Reviewing Ilit Ferber's Melancholy and Philosophy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, I try to show that melancholy, far from merely a psychological-solipsistic-pathological condition as it is generally understood today, is rather to be understood as philosophical attunement and which as such is inseparably connected with profound ethico-political questions concerning responsibility and justice, with work and play and with a possible phenomenological disclosure of the world as a whole. Walter Benjamin's early works are seen, in this context, to be indispensable help to think such questions anew. keywords Walter Benjamin, melancholy, mood Ilit Ferber, Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, Stanford University Press, 2013, 264 pp, $24 . 95 (pbk), ISBN-13: 978-0-8047-8520-4.
This essay attempts to discuss the relation of mood to philosophy in the context of Benjamin's early thought. Reviewing Ilit Ferber's Melancholy and Philosophy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, I try to show that melancholy, far from merely a psychological-solipsistic-pathological condition as it is generally understood today, is rather to be understood as philosophical attunement and which as such is inseparably connected with profound ethico-political questions concerning responsibility and justice, with work and play and with a possible phenomenological disclosure of the world as a whole. Walter Benjamin's early works are seen, in this context, to be indispensable help to think such questions anew. keywords Walter Benjamin, melancholy, mood Ilit Ferber, Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theatre and Language, Stanford University Press, 2013, 264 pp, $24 . 95 (pbk), ISBN-13: 978-0-8047-8520-4.
Melancholy and Praxis: Retrieving a (more) radical Benjamin
ASCP Talk, 2021
Walter Benjamin’s analysis of melancholy, especially its early appearance in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, lends itself to a theological interpretation of Benjamin in which the moment of redemption is always forever far away. In such an analysis melancholy becomes a concept that illuminates a theory of language or being and becomes untethered from more immediate and obvious revolutionary activity. Such readings can be found in Gershom Scholem and Illit Ferber. Scholem himself goes so far as to proclaim this interpretation is evidenced by Benjamin’s final writing, On the Concept of History and Benjamin’s “Melancholic Angel”. However, I believe that such an interpretation misunderstands Benjamin’s use of melancholy and thus obscures Benjamin’s revolutionary commitments. Instead I propose that precisely in as strange and unrevolutionary a concept as melancholia – unrevolutionary in its fixation on the past, its sense of hopelessness, etc, etc – Benjamin finds a revolutionary potential. To demonstrate this, I re-examine Benjamin’s reading of Franz Kafka and the fact then even in the melancholic ruins of Kafka’s world he finds hope. In the final section of my paper I return to Benjamin’s On the Concept of History and show that when it is read alongside The Paralipomena to On the Concept of History and with a proper grasp of Benjamin’s understanding of melancholia, we see – contra Scholem - that Benjamin’s revolutionary commitments remained clear even at the end of his career.
Walter Benjamin: Melancholy and Revolution
From a very young age, Walter Benjamin's influences were anarchism, revolutionary pre-romanticism and messianism. His paradigmatic text "The Life of Students" (1915) is from this phase, as well as other texts that reveal his thinking at the same time. Later, in 1924, Benjamin was confronted with dialectical materialism, based on Luckács' work, History and Class Consciousness, under the influence of Asja Lascis. These three streaks referred to here (messianism, dialectical materialism and anarchism) constitute, throughout his work, the fabric that would give rise to his most finished thought, namely that which is expressed in his last text, "On the Concept of History". As we intend to emphasize in this text, the idea of revolution is the most evident line in his last work, taking it as the expression of class struggle and, at the same time, of messianism. Here, we analyse these trends that ran through the philosopher's thought and texts, during the thirties and until his death, in 1940, in the adverse context of fascism.