THEOLOGY AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF EXPERIENCE IN BENJAMINIAN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY"

FRANCISCO NAISHTAT

OURO PRETO

Conferencia; 2nd CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR THEORY OF HISTORY "THE PRACTICAL PAST: ON THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF HISTORY FOR LIFE"; 2016

INTERNATIONAL NETWORK FOR THE THEORY OF HISTORY AND UNIVERSIDADE DE OURO PRETO

In his well-known thesis on the concept of history, Benjamin, inspired by Poe?s short story about the fake chess player, suggests placing theology ?at the service? (Dienst) of the ?puppet called ?historical materialism??, and, like in Poe?s story, it should be completely ?invisible?. However this is not the invisibility of the ?invisible hand?, characterizing modern philosophy from Leibniz? theodicy to Hegel?s ?cunning of reason? (List der Vernunft). The invisibility Benjamin seeks is methodological rather than teleological: If criticism is, at the same time, the organon (instrument) and the object of Benjaminian philosophy ?, theology, in turn, is its small and invisible organon, which, concealed, as in this chess-playing automaton, operates in a productive ?counterfugue? to the critical function, which is highly visible in turn. Theology in Benjaminian philosophy of history is therefore heuristic, anthropological and critical, and spreads throughout the corpus according to certain theme constellations. There is however a constellations that seem central to us, the constellation of experience. The category of experience is part of the true core of Benjamin?s thought. Now, theology is involved in Benjamin?s treatment of experience, both through the criticism of homogeneous time and for the benefit of a ?Messianic? time, and through the criticism of the idea of ?subject-object?, favoring the philosophy of language, inspired by an overthrow of the subject of experience as intentional consciousness. The notion of experience is strongly connected with the key thesis of the impoverishment and catastrophe of modern experience, the crisis of storytelling (The Storyteller, GS, II, 438-465) and the loss of the aura (The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, GS, VII, 350-384). This dimension of messianism is seen from the anthropological perspective both of intensity of experience and of remembrance (Eingedenken), which has a theological root through the Hebrew notion of Zajor.