Niether theological nor secular: Benjamin and Gracian on Saintliness

VARGAS, MARIELA SILVANA

Simposio; Simposio Internacional 'Walter Benjamin: Ilustración y secularización'; 2015

UNSAM, CIF, AGENCIA. ZfL BERLIN

The history of secularization, understood as the gradual disappearance of religion from society as part of the modernization process, can be deemed as one of the last great stories of the West, associated with the tabooing of religion in the Enlightenment. The latest debates about secularization include not only an analysis of the various theses on the nature of the secularization process, but also, and most importantly, a review of the concept itself and its different meanings. We are referring here to this debate in order to highlight a particularly fruitful aspect of it, namely, the possibility of considering Walter Benjamin?s work outside an idiosyncratic mystique and the theological straitjacket with which it has often been studied. This reading stresses Benjamin?s acknowledgment of the biblical and theological origin of the major concepts in Western thought, such as life, justice or redemption, however, it also shows that the fundamental distinction that shapes his thought between the world of creation and the world of history forces us to understand his perspective as ?post-biblical? (nach-biblisch). The prefix nach not only involves a caesura, a dislocation, but also a survival, that is, a Nachleben of biblical writings. This view, which calls into question the theologization of his work and problematizes the notion of secularization in respect to ideas or societies, also enables an approach to Gracián?s work that is not signaled interested in questioning the coherence in his work and the meaning of the Jesuits? interest in worldly wisdom under Christian ethics. This approach also fails either to explain the exemplary role of the saint in The Art of Worldly Wisdom, or otherwise reduces it to a mere rhetorical expression that would disguise the part of Gracián´s thought that does not suit the religious universe of his time or of that of his interpreters.