âOne is ashamed on account of oneâs languageâ (Man schĂ€mt sich seiner Sprache). In the course of Hölderlinâs novel, Hyperion, or The Hermit in Greece, Hyperionâs shame of his language is responding to a love that comes to be identified with philosophy. The performance or experience of this shame is, however, expressly poetic; philosophy is urged to converge with this poetic exercise. Without such convergence, philosophy will not be philosophy, but something else, something more forced.1
It would be misleading to identify Benjaminâs Kafka entirely with the Hyperion of Hölderlin , but Hyperionâs shame, particularly its relationship with the complementarity of philosophy and poetry, does not seem entirely removed from concerns raised in Benjaminâs writing on Kafka. Benjamin detects in Kafkaâs work a convergence of philosophy and literature, a convergence in which philosophy and literature make themselves and each other less static than would otherwise be the case. This juncture of philosophy and literature happens in a âgestureâ of shame. Such interpolation of the gestural into philosophy is often scorned. Ernst Cassirer distinguishes âsemanticâ and âmagicalâ uses of the word, and clearly identifies philosophy, reason, and progress with the former and retrograde authoritarianism of myth with the latter.2 As early as his 1916-essay on language, however, Benjamin detects in language a magical element that involves no closure or authoritarianism: this is rather a reminder of all that is not contained in the semantic and in the dubious âmagicâ of judgement (SW1, 64, 67, 70â72/ II:1, 142, 147, 152â54). Benjaminâs notion of the magical in language is also obviously distinct from a symbolism that would magically incorporate the unsayable.3 In Benjaminâs Kafka-writings, a shame becomes the gesture in which the philosophic impetus is registered in literature, much as it also becomes the literary impetus in philosophy. Without such gesture, the âphilosophicâ would not be philosophy but something more coercive, something that could occasion the very shame it is supposed to generate.
The literariness of Benjaminâs writing has led some to observe that âBenjaminâs methodâ is âin no way philosophic in the conventional sense.â This comment (made in the 1970s by Bernd Witte) on Benjaminâs manner of expression, and on the prevalence in it of literary and cultural analysis, is accompanied, however, by the verdict that Benjaminâs work is âhistorico-philosophic critique [geschichtsphilosophische Kritik]â whose âindirect methodâ of critique or criticism withdraws itself from âinterpretative analysisâ in an âesoteric,â in many respects âauthoritarian,â âlinguistic gesture [Sprachgestus].â4
Even Adorno argues that Benjamin has a tendency (reminiscent of the George-school) towards spell-binding, immobilizing âphilosophic gesturing [Gestik],â5 a tendency that can become âauthoritarianâ and is in need of a more Hegelian deployment of concept.6 In December 1934, Adorno says that his and Benjaminâs âagreementâ in the âphilosophical fundamentals [Zentren]â was never so clear to him as it was upon reading Benjaminâs Kafka-essay of 1934.7 Yet Benjaminâs Kafka-reading points to elements of a preponderant cloudiness, whereas Adorno would prefer that Benjamin undertake not a complete explanation but at least a thoroughly âdialecticalâ rendering in order to let Kafkaâs parables rain down somehow â gewissermaĂen die Parabel regnen zu lassen. A thorough theoretical articulation is the approach favoured and proposed by Adorno.8
Benjamin does not expressly disagree with Adornoâs assessment. Indeed, he provides a very conciliatory response to some of Adornoâs reservations.9 Benjaminâs approach to the philosophic, conceived apparently as an approach of the philosophic, remains nonetheless unrenounced. There is nothing, moreover, to corroborate the claim that Benjaminâs disagreement with Adorno is not about the philosophic but rather about Benjaminâs abandonment of the philosophic.10 The above objections to Benjaminâs gesture, along with Adornoâs quasi-Hegelian criticisms of Benjaminâs Kafka-readings, may be of limited relevance to the gesture discerned by Benjamin in Kafka and to the gesture of Benjaminâs reading. Unlike some of his critics, Benjamin himself does not characterize his work as gestural, but â for reasons to be elaborated in this chapter â Adorno and others might not be wrong in referring to Benjaminâs gesture. If Benjaminâs gesture is esoteric, however, it is not esoteric in ways alleged by Adorno and others. The gesture is esoteric not in the sense of binding itself with a secret that only adepts can access; neither authoritarian nor immobilizing, it offers nothing as authority and thereby maintains secret for all. This is not secret that can be rendered, but rather secret that remains secret despite attempts to render it. Hence, the need for philosophic gesture that goes beyond thorough articulation.
Benjamin does indeed enact philosophy in a manner quite distinct from much going by that name. Such enactment might even suggest that more conventional âphilosophyâ is somehow unphilosophic.11 It is unphilosophic in its lack of any literary gesture, its lack of any gesture to the non-denotative. Hannah Arendt characterizes Benjamin as poetic rather than as a philosopher.12 Notwithstanding all his occasional misgivings about Benjaminâs work, Adorno insists to Arendt that Benjaminâs significance for him has always been that âthe essence [Wesen] of Benjaminâs thinkingâ is âa philosophic thinking.â He adds: âI was never able to see his things under another point of view.â Adorno cannot but think that Benjaminâs writings âthereby alone find their entire weight.â Adorno concedes that Benjaminâs approach to philosophy is removed from âall traditional conceptions of philosophy,â and he acknowledges âthat Benjamin does not make it easy for one to adhereâ to this view of his work as philosophic.13 It is not easy to adhere to the view that Benjamin is working in philosophy, for the relevant works by him violate parameters set by so much that usually passes for philosophy. Benjamin did, of course, write poems and stories, but the debate between Arendt and Adorno concerns the writings usually regarded as exercises in philosophy and criticism. Adorno dismisses Arendtâs view that Benjamin is poetic and not a philosopher.14 Scholem similarly expresses shock to Adorno at Arendtâs implication that Benjamin is not a philosopher.15
In a way, both Adorno and Arendt are right and wrong. Benjamin does identify with philosophy as a discipline based on very explicit concern with various philosophemes â such as ethics, logic, and aesthetics.16 In this respect, Adorno is right and Arendt is wrong. Something distinctly literary enters much of Benjaminâs work, however, at least partly as a very concrete attempt to disturb any expectations of a discursively comprehensive system.17 In this sense, Arendt touches on something of relevance in Benjaminâs work. It might even be said that this literary aspect of Benjaminâs work â its gestural quality of recalling the preponderantly non-denotative â is partly what provokes quasi-Hegelian objections from Adorno . The debate about Benjamin as someone doing philosophy continues today when there are, on the one hand, attempts to weave Benjamin into the western tradition of philosophy as articulation and, on the other hand, an insistence that Benjamin abandons philosophy because it is confined to the posing of questions.18 Although he does exercise the philosophic in a manner almost entirely heterodox in relation to much, if not all, of the tradition known as western philosophy, Benjamin does not consider the emphasis on the preponderantly non-denotative to be an abandonment of philosophy. It is rather integral to the philosophic.19
Quite conceivably adapting aspects of Benjaminâs 1916-essay on language and the âEpistemo-Critical Prologueâ of Benjaminâs Trauerspiel-book (1925â28), Giorgio Agamben elaborates âthe proximity between gesture and philosophyâ by referring to âthe silence of philosophy âŠ: pure gesturality.â20 Such silence is perhaps also evoked in Benjaminâs reference to âsound filmâ as a âlimit for the world of Kafka and Chaplinâ (II:3, 1256).21 In consideration of these statements by Benjamin and Agamben , it might be proposed that philosophy and art meet in the gesture of silence. (With regard to Benjaminâs early works, this has been argued elsewhere.22) Such gesture might be said to invoke what Benjamin â in âOn the Mimetic Facultyâ (1933) â characterizes as a âmimeticâ medium that is not subordinate to sense (SW2, 722/ II:1, 213). This exercise is â in the words of â Doctrine of the Similarâ (1933) â âa critical momentâ whereby no meaning can credibly be fixed to the âmagicâ element in the mimesis (697â98/ 209â10). In a note towards his 1934-essay on Kafka , Benjamin associates the âprimacy of the gestureâ with âits incomprehen-sibility [UnverstĂ€ndlichkeit]â (II:3, 1206).23 Agambenâs short text âKafka Defended Against His Interpreters,â which seems to be a reworking of Kafkaâs account of Prometheus , also stresses a priority of the inexplicable.24 After remarks elsewhere on Benjaminâs reading of the gestural in Kafka , moreover, Agamben a...