Metaphysics of the profane : the political theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem / Eric Jacobson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jacobson, Eric, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940.

Benjamin, Walter.

Scholem, Gershom, 1897-1982.

Scholem, Gershom.

Political theology.

Messiah--Judaism.

Messiah.

Judaism and politics.

Language and languages--Philosophy.

Language and languages.

Justice (Jewish theology).

Physical Description:

xii, 337 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2003]

Summary:

Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem are regarded as two of the most famous and influential Jewish thinkers and writers of the twentieth century, and their late work is well-known. The importance of the intense intellectual partnership they forged in the years between the First World War and 1923, however, is less appreciated and understood. This is the first book to make the works of this untranslated and unpublished early period -- including Benjamin's and Scholem's ideas on messianism, language, divine justice, and the quest for a philosophy of Judaism -- accessible to a wider audience.

Contents:

Part I Messianism

1. The Messianic Idea in Walter Benjamin's Early Writings 19

The Messianic State: Does the Messiah Initiate or Consummate? 24

The Division of the Holy and Profane 31

The Messianic Intensity of Happiness 35

Tragic Devotion 38

The Worldly Restitution of Immortality 45

Nihilism 49

2. Gershom Scholem's Theological Politics 52

Tradition and Anarchism 53

Zion: Anarchist Praxis or Metaphor? 56

A Programmatic Torah 61

Revolutionary Nihilism 63

Cataclysmic Anarchism 68

Critical Anarchism 76

Part II On the Origins of Language and the True Names of Things

3. On the Origins of Language 85

Metaphor of the Divine 89

The Magic of the Inexpressible 93

Symbolic Revelation 99

Magic and the Divine Word 101

Reception As Translation 106

Misinterpreting the Sign 109

Judgment 111

Jewish Linguistic Theory and Christian Kabbalah 114

4. Gershom Scholem and the Name of God 123

Structure of Symbolic Mysticism 128

The Creating Word and Unpronounceable Name 131

Matter and Magic in the Torah and Its Letters 134

Grammarians of the Name 138

Microlinguistic Speculation 141

Metaphysics of the Divine Name 144

A Microlinguistic Science of Prophecy 147

A Messianic Conception of Language 151

Part III Justice and Redemption

5. Prophetic Justice 157

On the Origins of Evil 157

Worldly and Divine Restitution 164

Theses on the Concept of Justice 174

The Justice of Prophecy 184

6. Judgment, Violence, and Redemption 193

Judaism and Revolution 193

Violence and the Politics of Pure Means 203

The Strike As Revolutionary Means 206

Punishment and Fate 209

Pacifism, Anarchism, and Violence 210

Violence and Myth 215

Divine Postponement, Judgment, and the Question of Violence 220

The Righteous, the Pious, the Scholar 224.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [317]-329) and index.

ISBN:

0231126565

0231126573

OCLC:

50598143