From Walter Benjamin to Carl Schmitt, via Thomas Hobbes

Bredekamp, Horst; Hause, Melissa Thorson; Bond, Jackson

doi:10.1086/448919

Cited by 91 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…The influence of Schmitt on Benjamin has been explored in depth and debated by numerous critics in a series of papers and texts including the following: (Weber, 1992) (Heil, 1996) (Bredekamp, et al, 1999) (de Wilde, 2011) (Smith, 2012) (McNulty, 2007 (Pan, 2009) (Witte, 2011) 3…”

Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Walter Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt (‘On the Critique of Violence’): reception, relevance, and a mis-diagnosis?

Whittington

2019

Stud. Soc. Pol. Tho

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Walter Benjamin’s early essay Zur Kritik der Gewalt [Zur Kritik] first published in 1921 is a notoriously difficult text, but its relevance to contemporary politics makes it a text to which theorists repeatedly return. This reading takes issue with those critics, notably Axel Honneth, who see Benjamin’s project in Zur Kritik as fatally, dangerously flawed. It is suggested here that Benjamin’s text, despite the difficulties, still posits the possibility of a ‘lookout point’ - not prescriptive per se but in keeping with his abiding interest in literature, metaphorical and exegetical. There is no ground on which to stand that does not in effect constitute the lookout point of the place and times of the lookout, but this reading suggests that the Benjaminian lookout point is the lookout which is never fixed because it is not ‘looking out’ on but towards others, and is not merely addressing and prescribing, but talking with itself and others. That Benjamin embraces religious language to effect this move, perhaps suggesting, a lookout in judgment from a fixed point, from some ‘higher’ (transcendental) ground, certainly might be troubling for some, but it will be suggested these anxieties are misplaced.

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Section: Endnotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Walter Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt (‘On the Critique of Violence’): reception, relevance, and a mis-diagnosis?

Whittington

2019

Stud. Soc. Pol. Tho

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“…14 In this particular sense, the katechon appears in Schmitt as that which produces history, or as Bredekamp has put it "the space of time between the present and the coming of the Antichrist." 15 It is for this reason that, according to this interpretation, the katechon rules out concrete eschatology and in so doing produces the "neutralisation of a philosophy of history oriented toward salvation." 16 It comes as no surprise that Hobbes's theory of the state has been taken as a To place eschatology in Hobbes's thought in its proper locus, that is, as concrete eschatology, we can begin to unravel any simplistic notion of the Hobbesian state that presents it as that which holds back any and all disorder.…”

Section: The Leviathan As a Secularized Katechonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sovereignty between the Katechon and the Eschaton: Rethinking the Leviathan

Lamb¹,

Primera²

2019

Telos

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This paper both rejects the reading of Hobbes's Leviathan as a secularised katechon and rethinks anew the questions of sovereignty and politics in his thought. It does so by examining the eschatological character of his politico-theological understanding of the relation between the kingdom of the Leviathan and the kingdom of God. Indeed, through different contemporary readings of Hobbes's theory of the State, this paper offers an insight into the concrete eschatology at operation in Hobbes's thought and underscores its relevance for the understanding of government, biopolitics and sovereignty. This is achieved through two different, albeit interconnected undertakings, which in turn allow us to agree but also to go beyond Agamben's claim that the State, in Hobbes, does not have a katechontic function. The first is an exposition of the a-teleological character of Hobbes's eschatology and his metaphysics of motion. The second involves a consideration of the temporality and the nature of the relation between the a-historical world of reason and the historical world of faith that underpins Hobbes's theory of the State. Contrary to the contemporary interpretations in which Hobbes's eschatology is presented as future regarding, we will highlight the chronological coincidence between the historical time of faith and the a-historical time of the Leviathan, placing Hobbes within the political coordinates of Benjamin's messianism. By bringing this eschatological perspective to the fore, not only will the reading of Hobbes's theory of sovereignty that aligns him with liberalism be problematized, but also, an analysis of the resources that Hobbes offers to imagine a different form of politics will be developed.

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“… Schmitt, 1938/1995, translated as Schmitt, 1996, by George Schwab. On Hobbes and Schmitt, seeBredekamp, 1999 and Bredekamp's book, Thomas Hobbes visuelle Strategien (2006). See alsoSpringborg, 2010b republished in Tralau, 2011 Locke, The Second Treatise on Government, ch.…”

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confidence: 99%

Thomas Hobbes and the Political Economy of Peace

Springborg

2018

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Thomas Hobbes's theory of war is currently being reexamined as part of a re-examination of realism in international relations theory which claims to be Hobbes-based. I am not alone in maintaining that Hobbes was first and foremost a peace theorist, rejecting the usual grounds for war, pretexts based on just war, infringements on property or trade, and thus trespass. But those who examine the threefold causes of war that Hobbes gives, as "competition", "diffidence", and "glory", have generally not noticed the relation between Hobbes's theory of war and empire. While Hobbes makes remarkably few references to the colonial ventures of Great Britain, for reasons that we will consider, his theory of empire, like his theory of war, is based on classical notions of internal balance and the homeostasis of the body politic along Aristotelian lines. His treatment of the polity as a natural body is consistent with his materialist ontology and he treats war and empire in terms of both "intestine diseases" and pathologies that afflict the body politic from without. The upshot is a theory remarkably backward-looking in terms of its emphasis on the health of the body politic and the politics of balance, which forbid "vain-glorious wars" and demand that overly-powerful subjects, towns of "immoderate greatness" and grandiose enlargements of dominion be excised, like Aristotle's "big foot" whose disproportion spoils the proportion of the body as a whole.

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From Walter Benjamin to Carl Schmitt, via Thomas Hobbes

Cited by 91 publications

References 0 publications

Walter Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt (‘On the Critique of Violence’): reception, relevance, and a mis-diagnosis?

Walter Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt (‘On the Critique of Violence’): reception, relevance, and a mis-diagnosis?

Sovereignty between the Katechon and the Eschaton: Rethinking the Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes and the Political Economy of Peace

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