Debemos distinguir el pensamiento del conocimiento, en particular en lo que respecta a la Modernidad, desde el Renacimiento italiano, que vio emerger el conocimiento objetivante (Koyré, 1977), que es siempre nuestro ideal de conocimiento, incluso en la época de la escritura numérica. El pensamiento, como lo recuerda H. Arendt (1993), es un flujo natural ilimitado que habita a cada uno de nosotros, sin relación con la cultura, la instrucción, el género sexual, la clase social, los modos de legitimación de los (...) discursos e, incluso, las cosméticas. Es lo que indicaba Lenin cuando reivindicaba el comunismo como la posibilidad de un conserje de hacer política. Rancière no dice algo diferente cuando evoca la igualdad de las inteligencias. (shrink)

The specialist literature has investigated extensively the link between Benjamin and German Romanticism and, less frequently, his relation to Kant. However, these contributions tend to take up these links separately, and therefore do not analyse in detail the process which begins with the theoretical sketches on Kant and concludes with the writing of the doctoral thesis on the Frühromantik. This paper argues that there is a marked continuity between the objectives which led Benjamin to plan, in the first place, his (...) doctoral investigation on Kant and those which were finally realized. I try to demonstrate that such continuity consists in a displacement of the problem of the justification of knowledge, from the field of the criticism of knowledge in general to a particular sphere: that of art criticism. In this shift the purpose of linking the justification of knowledge with a messianic philosophy of time and history is also preserved. (shrink)

Este ensayo analiza algunas semejanzas y diferencias entre la obra de Emmanuel Lévinas y la obra de Walter Benjamin . Se discute la crítica de ambos autores a la noción de totalidad, su cuestionamiento del historicismo y la exclusión de la alteridad que asocian con él, así como la propuesta de ambos autores de una noción de tiempo que rompa con la continuidad. Se discute de qué manera estas reflexiones se relacionan con la noción de responsabilidad hacia el otro.

What does ‘communism’ mean in Walter Benjamin’s writing? It has been used in some quarters to claim that Benjamin has a quasi-Marxist theory of communist society. This paper will argue instead that Benjamin’s communism is framed by his distinctive conception of experience and that it is understandable only through that conception. Benjamin’s image of ‘communist society’ refers to a specific type of experience rather than a type of social organization. The paper discusses the conceptual background of that image and also (...) points out a number of the difficulties that Benjamin’s conception of collective experience faces given its genesis in a model of individual experience. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin wrote extensively on children and childhood, though this aspect of his work has hitherto received scant attention despite continuing and growing interest in his thought. This article makes explicit the connection between his acute observations of childhood and his distinctive messianic philosophy. The twin aspects of redemption in Benjamin's writings: remembrance and now-time, as illustrated in Wim Wender's Wings of Desire, are explored in relation to the ‘task of childhood’. Benjamin asserts the emancipatory potential held within the development (...) of historical consciousness, and leads us to question how our understanding of childhood can foster this potential. (shrink)