Sparks Will Fly

Description

Despite being contemporaries, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger never directly engaged with one another. Yet, Hannah Arendt, who knew both men, pointed out common ground between the two. Both were concerned with the destruction of metaphysics, the development of a new way of reading and understanding literature and art, and the formulation of radical theories about time and history. On the other hand, their life trajectories and political commitments were radically different. In a 1930 letter, Benjamin told a friend that he had been reading Heidegger and that if the two were to engage with one another, "sparks will fly." Acknowledging both their affinities and points of conflict, this volume stages that confrontation, focusing in particular on temporality, Romanticism, and politics in their work.
Abbreviations

Introduction: “Sparks Will Fly”
Andrew Benjamin and Dimitris Vardoulakis

Part I. Knowledge

1. Entanglement–Of  Benjamin with Heidegger
Peter Fenves

2. Critique and the Thing: Benjamin and Heidegger
Gerhard Richter

Part II. Experience

3. Stimmung: Heidegger and Benjamin
Ilit Ferber

4. Commodity Fetishism and the Gaze
A. Kiarina Kordela

Part III. Time

5. Monad and Time: Reading Leibniz with Heidegger and Benjamin
Paula Schwebel

6. Time and Task: Benjamin and Heidegger Showing the Present
Andrew Benjamin

Part IV: Hölderlin

7. Who Was Friedrich Hölderlin? Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and the Poet
Antonia Engel

8. Sobriety, Intoxication, Hyperbology: Benjamin and Heidegger Reading Hölderlin
Joanna Hodge

Part V. Politics

9. Beyond Revolution: Benjamin and Heidegger on Violence and Power
Krzysztof Ziarek

10. A Matter of Immediacy: The Political Ontology of the Artwork in Benjamin and Heidegger
Dimitris Vardoulakis

11. Politics of the Useless: The Work of Art in Benjamin and Heidegger
David Ferris

Biographical Notes
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• History of philosophy
• Philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 23 février 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438455068
• Langue: English

Extrait

Sparks Will Fly
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
Sparks Will Fly
Benjamin and Heidegger
Edited by
Andrew Benjamin
and
Dimitris Vardoulakis
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production, Jenn Bennett Marketing, Kate Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sparks will fly : Benjamin and Heidegger / edited by Andrew Benjamin and Dimitris Vardoulakis.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5505-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) — EISBN 978-1-4384-5506-8 (ebook)
1. Benjamin, Walter, 1892–1940. 2. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. I. Benjamin, Andrew E. II. Vardoulakis, Dimitris.
B3209.B584S635 2015
193—dc23
2014012475
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS Abbreviations Introduction: “Sparks Will Fly” Andrew Benjamin and Dimitris Vardoulakis Part I. Knowledge ONE Entanglement—Of Benjamin with Heidegger Peter Fenves TWO Critique and the Thing: Benjamin and Heidegger Gerhard Richter Part II. Experience THREE Stimmung : Heidegger and Benjamin Ilit Ferber FOUR Commodity Fetishism and the Gaze A. Kiarina Kordela Part III. Time FIVE Monad and Time: Reading Leibniz with Heidegger and Benjamin Paula Schwebel SIX Time and Task: Benjamin and Heidegger Showing the Present Andrew Benjamin Part IV. Hölderlin SEVEN Who Was Friedrich Hölderlin? Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and the Poet Antonia Egel EIGHT Sobriety, Intoxication, Hyperbology: Benjamin and Heidegger Reading Hölderlin Joanna Hodge Part V. Politics NINE Beyond Revolution: Benjamin and Heidegger on Violence and Power Krzysztof Ziarek TEN A Matter of Immediacy: The Political Ontology of the Artwork in Benjamin and Heidegger Dimitris Vardoulakis ELEVEN Politics of the Useless: The Work of Art in Benjamin and Heidegger David Ferris Biographical Notes Index
ABBREVIATIONS Walter Benjamin: AP The Arcades Project , trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1999). All references to the Convolutes of The Arcades Project are given parenthetically according Convolute number without further specification. BA Briefwechsel 1938–1940: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin , ed. Gershom Scholem (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994). BS Briefwechsel 1933–1940: Walter Benjamin, Gerschom Scholem , ed. Gershom Scholem (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985). C The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin 1910–1940 , ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, trans. Manfred R. Jakobson and Evelyn M. Jakobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). CA Theodor W. Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence 1920–1940 , ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Nicholas Walker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). CS The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem , ed. Gershom Scholem, trans. Gary Smith and André Lefevere (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). GB Gesammelte Briefe , ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995–2000). GS Gesammelte Schriften , eds. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974 ff.). OT The Origin of the German Tragic Drama , trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1998). SW Selected Writings , ed. Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1997–2003). Martin Heidegger: BPP The Basic Problems of Phenomenology , trans. Albert Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). BQP Basic Questions of Philosophy, Selected “Problems” of “Logic,” trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). BT Being and Time , trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper, 2008). BW Basic Writings , ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Routledge, 1993). CP Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) , trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999). FCM Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude , trans. W. McNeill and N. Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). GA Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klosterman, 1974 ff.). All German references to this edition. HH Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Isther,” trans. William McNeil and Julia Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). HP Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry , trans. Keith Höller (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000). IM Introduction to Metaphysics , ed. and trans. Gregory Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). M Mindfulness , trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary (London and New York: Continuum, 2006). ML The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic , trans. Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). N Nietzsche , vol. 4, Nihilism , trans. Frank A. Capuzzi (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1991). P Pathmarks , ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). PLT Poetry, Language, Thought , trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: HarperCollins, 1971). QTC The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). TB On Time and Being , trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). WT What Is a Thing? , trans. W.B. Barton Jr. and Vera Deutsch (Chicago: Regnery, 1968). ZS Zollikon Seminars: Protocols—Conversations—Letters , ed. Medard Boss, trans. F. Mayr and R. Askay (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001).
INTRODUCTION
“Sparks Will Fly”
Andrew Benjamin and Dimitris Vardoulakis
W alter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger were almost contemporaries, born in the last decade of the nineteenth century. But their life trajectories were very different. Benjamin failed in his attempt to obtain a position at a university and subsequently concentrated on essay writing, initially in the form of reviews. When that became impossible in 1933 and Benjamin was forced to exile in Paris, he started writing for academic journals published outside Germany. Heidegger became an academic star in Germany with the publication of Being and Time (1927). The following year, he succeeded his former teacher, Edmund Husserl, as professor at Freiburg University and five years later—at the same time that Benjamin was ostracized because of his Jewish background—Heidegger was joining the Nazi Party in order to be elected Rector. The troubled years of exile ended in Benjamin’s death under unclear circumstances at the Spanish borders in 1940. Heidegger was “denazified” after World War II and allowed to return to teaching. Given their life histories, then, Benjamin, the cosmopolitan Jew, and Heidegger, who preferred his peasant hut in remote Todtnauberg to city life, seem hardly to have anything in common.
And yet, the two figures have gradually been brought closer together since the 1960s. The first move was the rediscovery of the work of Benjamin when his old friend, Theodor Adorno, started republishing his work. But the decisive move that brought Heidegger and Benjamin into contact was Hannah Arendt’s introduction to Illuminations . Arendt, who knew both men, suggested that Benjamin’s concept of truth is similar to Heidegger’s concept of aletheia . Arendt also pointed out that they both shared a concern with the destruction of tradition, and concluded that “without realizing it,” Benjamin had a lot in common with Heidegger. 1 According to Arendt, then, the two contemporary thinkers, who were quite revolutionary on their own—Benjamin as a reformer of a “crude” Marxist tradition and Heidegger as precipitating in the renewal of phenomenology and hermeneutics—and who seemed to be unaware of each others’ work, were nevertheless working on philosophical platforms that can be aligned.
Arendt’s interpretation is, however, problematized if we turn to Benjamin’s correspondence. In a letter to Gershom Scholem, dated January 20, 1930, Benjamin intimates that he has been reading Heidegger and that when the confrontation of the thinking of the two ultimately takes places “sparks will fly.” It appears then that Benjamin was aware of Heidegger’s work, and moreover he was agonistically disposed toward it.
The premise of this book is that both Hannah Arendt’s verdict and Walter Benjamin’s remark in his letter to Scholem contain an element of truth. In other words, there are indeed certain affinities between Benjamin and Heidegger. These affinities, however, not only do not obliterate their differences, but rather they highlight the points where their thought diverges. The “wager” of all the papers contained in this book is to affirm both the continuities and the discontinuities in the thought of the two thinkers.
There are a number of sites that provide fertile ground for such a confrontation to take place. Arendt was correct to recognize that the most obvious similarity between Heidegger and Benjamin was their distancing from a certain philosophical tradition that relied on a metaphysics of presence and an epistemology of representation. The first crucial site is the theory of knowledge. Peter Fenves approaches this site through Heinrich Rickert, the neo-Kantian philosopher who was the teacher of both Benjamin and Heidegger; and Gerhard Richter shows what is at stake when the theory of knowledge privileges either critique or an investigation of the various modalities of the cognition of the thing. The theory of knowledge leads back to a reconceptualization of the subject through Benjamin and Heidegger’s attempt to rethink th