Walter benjamin on the mimetic faculty pdf

#Walter benjamin on the mimetic faculty pdf free

In another fragment Benjamin defines his politics as the вЂњfulfilment of the unincreased humanityвЂќ (in: GS VI, 99, translation of the author). But technique and happiness do not relate to each other as means and ends. With technique mankind has a means to organise its relations to the world in a way through which it integrates worldly things on behalf of its quest for happiness. (SW I, 395) Technique plays itself out as a function of the connection between the quest for happiness and the life of the вЂLeibвЂ™. Ultimately, everything that subserves humanityвЂ™s happiness may be counted part of its life, its limbsвЂќ.

It can do this by virtue of technique in which the unity of its life is formed. In his text Schemata on the psycho-physical Problem BenjaminвЂ™s notion of the fabric of politics, happiness and вЂLeibвЂ™ in relation to technique converges in the following paragraph: вЂњIn addition to the totality of all its living members, humanity is able partly to draw nature, the nonliving, plant and animal, into this life of the body of mankind, and thereby into this annihilation and fulfilment. Historically the life of this collective body entails its transformation through the inclusion of nature.

#Walter benjamin on the mimetic faculty pdf free

The political subject of this striving is the free human community which organizes itself in a вЂLeibвЂ™. Politics for Benjamin should exclusively concentrate itself on the organization of worldly happiness. As a movement it has no end outside itself. вЂњThe order of the profane should be erected on the idea of happiness.вЂќ (SW 3, 305, translation modified) This profane striving towards a worldly happiness is free from any intention to redemption. A mediated or intended identity of worldly history and divine kingdom can and should not be pursued, like it is done by theocracy. Uwe Steiner argues that starting from the framework of BenjaminвЂ™s early metaphysics of a collective body (вЂLeibвЂ™) the concept of technique is one of the central elements of BenjaminвЂ™s thoughts on politics, alongside his definition of the collective as political subject as well as his thinking of the Messianic in distinguishing the political from religion, law and morals.ДЄs Benjamin writes in the Theological-Political Fragment from 1920/21, true politics is limited to the order of the profane. Some of BenjaminвЂ™s first explicit reflections on technique can be found in the context of his large project on politics on which he worked between 19/22. The concept of technique in BenjaminвЂ™s early political theory I want to show how BenjaminвЂ™s argumentation changes while the core of his understanding of technique as a non-instrumental medium remains. And thirdly I will contrast this with a concept of technique that Benjamin develops in his first materialist text One Way Street or, to be more precise, its last chapter called To the Planetarium and another text from 1930 Theories of German Fascism. Then I will relate this to a central philosophical concept of mediation from BenjaminвЂ™s earlier works, which, in reference to his Critique of Violence, can be called вЂpure meansвЂ™. In order to point this out I will first sketch out BenjaminвЂ™s earlier concept of technique in the context of his unfinished project on politics and his reading of the writer Paul Scheerbart. Here we can see a continuity as well as a discontinuity in BenjaminвЂ™s notion of technique. In order to do this, I will look at a shift that occured in BenjaminвЂ™s thinking around the mid 1920s вЂ“ the shift that Benjamin himself called a political turning point in his work вЂ“ and which separates as well as connects his early metaphysical-theological and his later materialist writings. In this paper I will outline a central aspect of Walter BenjaminвЂ™s concept of technique throughout his work, namely its non-instrumental character.