Twilight of the Gods: Walter Benjamin’s Project of a Political Metaphysics in Secular Times—and Hannah Arendt‘s Answer Antonia Grunenberg
In the following essay I will talk about elements of a political metaphysics in the thought and writings of Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt.1 Let me make two preliminary remarks: I am using the concept of metaphysics in asking about the transcendental dimension in the concept of the political in the writings of both Benjamin and Arendt. I am not using it in the sense of a “system,“ like Hegel‘s or Kant‘s metaphysical systems. Benjamin and Arendt did not rely on philosophical “systems.“ Rather, their discourse evolved out of criticizing traditional systemic philosophy. A further remark focuses on the methodological aspect: Arendt and Benjamin chose different paths to the process of thinking: they both worked on interrelating categorical thinking and the world of a multitude of experience in order to understand how human existence and political life refer to each other. Benjamin had experienced World War I and its dramatic political aftereffects. He wanted to intertwine philosophical, theological, and revolutionary thinking. However, when World War I broke out, Arendt was still a child. Of course she experienced the consequences of the Great War. In fact, she witnessed the revolutionary activities among the political and military ranks in her Königsberg surroundings. Later on, she was confronted with National Socialism as an adult. For her, being confronted with totalitarian rule became a quite existential experience insofar as she, being a Jew, was forced to flee from Germany. However, she continued working on the question of what this experience meant for political thinking. In the following years, Arendt theoretically reacted by fundamentally criticizing the category-based perception of the world by philosophers. At the same level, she started criticizing the intellectual elite in Europe flirting with National Socialism as well as with Fascism because of their estrangement of the ”real“ world. After having arrived in the United States, she worked constantly at relinking (or superseding) philosophy to the world by political thinking. What she meant was not just any political discourse but referring to the republican discourse that originated in Greek and Roman philosophy.
Twilight of the Gods
Antonia Grunenberg
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