Beyond Use, within Reason: Adorno, Benjamin and the Question of Theology

Beyond Use, within Reason: Adorno, Benjamin and the Question of Theology Author(s): David Kaufmann Source: New German Critique, No. 83, Special Issue on Walter Benjamin, (Spring - Summer, 2001), pp. 151-173 Published by: New German Critique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/827792 Accessed: 11/04/2008 17:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ngc. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We enable the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.org

Beyond Use, WithinReason. Adorno, Benjamin and the Question of Theology David Kaufmann

The theological mode of examinationgains its full meaning in a turn against art that is all the more destructivefor being hidden. The fundamentalmotif of these examinationsis that the theological illumination of the works provides an authentic model with which to interprettheir political aspects as much as their fashionableones, their economic determinationsas well as their metaphysicalones. One can see that this is an attitudethat sets itself against that of the historicalmaterialistswith a radicalism thatturnsthem into theiropposite. -Walter Benjamint

It is well known that in the early 1930's Gershom Scholem warned Walter Benjamin against the baleful influence of Brecht. Scholem argued that his friend was misrepresenting himself as a materialist when in fact his great talents lay in metaphysics, and more specifically, in a theologically inflected metaphysics of language.2 Scholem did not 1. Froma 1931reviewof a bookby WillyHaas:WalterBenjamin, "Theologische

Kritik,"GesammelteSchriftenvol. 3, ed. RolfTiedemannandHermannSchweppenhiuser (Frankfurt:Suhrkamp,1980) 277; Benjamin,Selected Writings1927-1934, ed. Michael Jennings(Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1999) 430. 2. Benjamin,Briefe 2, ed. GershomScholemand TheodorW. Adomo (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1966) 525-29; and Benjamin,The Correspondenceof WalterBenjamin,trans. ManfredR. JacobsonandEvelyn M. Jacobson(Chicago:U of ChicagoP, 1994) 373-81.

151

152

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology

directly dispute the validity of the insights of dialectical materialism, although his own version of political and religious anarchism- that sadly forgottentradition3- obviously played a strongpart in his objections. Rather,he was makinga claim aboutthe true bias of Benjamin's intellect. It is thereforenot surprisingthat Scholem should have been equally suspicious of Adoro. For a long time, he misrecognized Adoro's aberrantMarxisttendencies as anti-theological.In an amusing letter, Adoro reportedthat Scholem saw him as the "dangerous arch seducer"and he recordedthat in Scholem's companyhe "had the odd sensationof finding[himself]identifiedwith Brecht."4 Had Benjaminnot been so pathologicallycircumspectabout his complicated and often conflicting friendships,Scholem would have known that Adorno had expressed similar reservationsabout the Brechtian savor of Benjamin'smaterialistturn.In a letterfrom June 1934, Adorno concedes that his misgivings about Brecht have been the cause of his own protractedsilence: I hope I am not making myself guilty of unfair interferencewhen I admitthatthe whole difficultcomplex of problemsis connectedto the figureof Brechtand to the creditthatyou granthim, and that it therefore also touches the principlequestions of the materialistdialectic, such as the concept of use value, to which today I can grantas little importanceas ever.5

Like Scholem,Adornowants to recall Benjaminto what he considersto be the kernel of Benjamin'sthought,the true seed from which the Passagenwerkshouldgrow: For it seems to me that,where it concernswhat is most decisive and most important,for once and for all it has to be said out loud and the full categoricaldepthhas to be reachedwithoutbypassing theology; 3. For a preliminaryexceptionto this, see MichaelL6wy, Redemptionand Utopia, trans.Hope Heaney(Stanford:StanfordUP, 1992). 4. Adomo and Benjamin,Briefwechsel 1928-1940, ed. Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1994) 323. See also the remarkablyinaccurateEnglishversionof this and the otherlettersI cite in this articlein Adomo and Benjamin,The CompleteCorrespondence 1928-40, trans.Nicholas Walker (Cambridge:Polity, 1999) 248. (The inaccuraciesare sometimes a question of proofreading,as with this letter, which is dated incorrectly.) Adomo quoteda partof this letter(leavingout a rathernastycrackaboutHannahTillich) in his "Grussan GershomG. ScholemZum70. Geburtstag,"GesammelteSchriften20, ed. RolfTiedemann(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,1986)480-81. 5. Adomo andBenjamin,Briefwechsel73, CompleteCorrespondence53.

David Kaufmann

153

forI alsobelievethatwe, onthisdecisivelevelof Marxisttheory,help it submissively...6 all themore,theless obviouslywe appropriate Adomo thus pits theology against the temptationsof Brecht's "coarse thinking"and wants to save what is most importantand decisive in Marxismwith the aid of the kind of thoughtthat Marx, like Feuerbach beforehim, had done so muchto demystify. As it is precisely this theologicalside of Adoro's writingsthat tends to get lost in most Marxistreadingsof his work (just as his Marxism gets lost when it is straitenedinto the pieties of "post"-liberalreadings), it is of more than passing interestto try to figure out just what Benjamin, Scholemand Adomo actuallymeantby "theology,"if indeedthey all meantthe same thing.In fact, as I will show, they did not; at least not exactly. Althoughthey all make use of the categoriesof Jewish theology, they arenot all Jewishtheologians(or even necessarilyJewish). A note aboutJewish theology might be in orderhere. It is a commonplace (untrue,as it turs out) that Judaismhas no theology. Hence Gillian Rose claims in an essay on Benjamin that "there is no Judaic theology -no logos of God."7But, as David Novak has remarked,the predominantmodes of Jewish thoughtin the middle ages -rationalist accountsof the relationbetween God and Natureand Kabbalah- were very precisely attemptsto come up with the logos of God. The rise of modem science and the modem stress on humanhistory have rendered these earlier attemptsimplausible,and so since Kant, Jewish theology has had to take othertacks.8And these tacks have not always been recognizable, for, as KaufmannKohler argued, Jewish theology differs from its Christiancounterpart.As Judaismlacks dogmatics, its theology is not the systematic exposition and defense of a creed.9 What is more, as Jews reject the Incarnation,post-Talmudic(and non-Kabbalistic) Judaismtends not to speculateon God's being, but concentrateson His relationto the world and on the world itself. Scholem put the point succinctlyin a speech at the memorialfor FranzRosenzweig held at the HebrewUniversityin 1930: 6. Adomo andBenjamin,Briefwechsel74, CompleteCorrespondence53-54. 7. Gillian Rose, "WalterBenjamin- Out of the Sources of Modem Judaism," Judaismand Modernity(Oxford:Blackwell, 1993) 175-82. 8. David Novak, "ContemporaryJewish Theology,"Problems in Contemporary Jewish Theology,ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbock(Lampeter:EdwinMellen, 1991) 191-92. 9. KaufmannKohler,Jewish Theology(New York:Macmillan,1918) 1-6.

154

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology and As fortheology,thediscipline... thatdealswithman'sinnermost darkestneeds,thatseeksto barethe riddleof his concreteexistence andshowhimthedeedhemustdo in orderto uncoverthepathleading to Creator fromcreature theologyis nota scienceof theessenceof the divinitybeyondcreationbutconsistsratherof theeternalquestionsof love andwill, wisdomandability,judgmentandmercy,justiceand death,creationandredemption. Theologyhasconcretequestions.l0

Jewish theology, on this reading,will tend to stress the humanwhen it discusses first and last things.And so Adoro and Benjamincan remain fiercelytheologicalwithoutdiscussingGod directly.1 With that in mind, I will begin by lookingat Benjamin'sseminal 1934 articleon Kafkaand at the sustaineddiscussionof theology that accompanied it. This will show the points of contactand the distancebetween the seculartheologyof Adoro andBenjaminandthe moreproperlyJewish theology of Scholem.This will also allow me to argue that Adomo uses the figureof theologyto breakthe immanenceof what he calls Idealism (which includes the thoughtof both Heidegger and Brecht!) in orderto redirectphilosophy.In short,in the place of Heidegger's"fundamentalontology,"Adornowantsto establisha redemptiveontology.12 I In this first section, I will discuss the way Benjamindivorces theology from revelation,while maintainingin the tantalizinglyrecedingdistance, the critical notion of redemption.I am thus following the late Gillian Rose who has characterizedBenjamin'swork as an account of the historical predicamentof an abjectedmodernity.For Rose's Benjamin, ours is a time whose stress on an impoverishedinteriority(the resultof puritanisma la Weber,Romanlaw a la Hegel, and capitalisma 10. GershomScholem,"Rosenzweigand TheStarof Redemption,"ThePhilosophy of FranzRosenzweig,ed. PaulMendes-Flohr(Hanover:UP of New England,1988) 26. 11. See also Adorno's letterto Scholemon 4 Mar. 1951 in "Um BenjaminsWerk. Briefe an GershomScholem 1939-1955,"FrankfurterAdornoBldtterV, ed. Tiedemann editiontext + kritik,1998) 165. (Frankfurt: 12. ElsewhereI have arguedthatthe interestin the Jewishprohibitionon speaking God's name (whichplays a similarrole in Adorno'sthoughtto the equallyJewishBilderverbot)in Adomo's workof the 1950s and 1960s is partof his attemptto find appropriate figures for his critiqueof Idealist ontology. See my articles "Adomo and the Name of God,"Flashpoint 1.1 (1996): 65-70; and"RedeemingMimesis,"WhyLiteratureMatters, eds. RiidigerAhrens& LaurenzVolkmann(Heidelberg:CarlWinter, 1996) 265-80. See also my "Correlations,Constellationsandthe Truth:Adomo's Ontologyof Redemption," Philosophyand Social Criticism26.5 (2000): 62-80.

David Kaufmann

155

la Marx)is the correlativeof both the disgraceinto which revelationhas fallen and the loss of the horizonof meaningthat redemptiononce provided.13This readingallows us to see why for Benjamin,Kafka's work depicts the supposedly demystified modem world not as enlightened, but as prehistoric; that is, as pre-animistic.Modernityhas not been cleansed of mythology,as its defendersmight claim. On the contrary,it has not even achievedthe state of myth. In fact, its defendersmisunderstand the spans of time in which history should be measured.Unlike those who measuretime in decades or centuries,Kafka thinks in terms of geological ages, of vast epochs: "The period [Zeitalter] in which Kafka lives does not signal to him any progress over the primordial beginnings."14Kafka's characterslive in a primevalepoch of undifferentiated swamp life, in what the odd nineteenth-centuryphilosopher Bachofencalled the "hetaeric"(28/130). Kafka's modernitycan thereforeonly be understoodin analogy with the most primitiveexistence, before myth, before law (12/114). In this essay and in all his earlierworks, such as "On Languageas Such and the Language of Man" and the "Critiqueof Violence," Benjamin is fully antinomianin that he equatesthe law with myth. In the 1916 discussion of language,judgmentis a markof the fall into humanspeech; justice and the discriminationsthat attendon judgment do not partake of the divine which is more often than not figured by Benjamin as a form of redemptiveviolence. Given this reductionof law to the sheer superstitiousalienation of myth, does our period, which is an apparently prehistoricage, mark a regressionto a previous stage or a stasis that we have never recognized?Did we ever leave the hetaeric in the first place? Benjaminimplies that Kafka'swritingdoes not point to stasis, but to a kind of regression,for it still containsthe hope of positive historical change. Benjamin's Kafka knows that myth and something beyond myth are somehow possible, the distant promises of future epochs. While Kafka's stories teem with figures who are locked in the 13. Rose, JudaismandModernity175-210.In this essay Rose stressesthe parallelto Weber's project.For the similarityto Hegel, see her Hegel contra Sociology (London: Athlone, 1981) 149-220. 14. Benjamin,"FranzKafka: Zum zehnten Wiederkehrseines Todestages,"Benjamin iiberKafka:Texte,Briefzeugnisse,Aufzeichnungen,ed. HermannSchweppenhauser (Frankfurt:Suhrkamp,1981) 28; "FranzKafka:On the TenthAnniversaryof his Death," Illuminations,trans.HarryZohn (New York: Schocken, 1969) 130. All futurereferences to this essay will be includedparentheticallyin the text, with the page numberof the German versioncited first.

156

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology

"wombof the depths,"(29/131) and the "spell of the family,"they also contain ciphers of hope - the half-formedcreaturesBenjamin calls "assistants"or "Helpers"(14/116): "For them and their kind, for the unfinishedandthe maladroitthereis hope"(15/117). In Benjamin'sdiscussionof Kafka, it is not so much that every age dreamsthe next one (a point he makes in his abstractfor the Passagenwerk), but that every epoch redeemsthe previousone. This redemption manifestsitself in an odd way, for it seems to entaila complete,apocalypticallydestructivebreak.In the past,mythandlaw once redeemedthe preanimistic,hetaeric"Vorwelt"by smashingit to pieces. But this hope in the past does not lead Kafkato yearnfor a new mythicworld,a new law. He looks to somethingbeyond that. His Odysseus is not the Odysseus of myth,but of fairytale, of a mythwhose mystifiedand mystifyingpowers have been vanquished(15/117). In Benjamin'saccount, Kafka's halfformed Helpers' incompletionindicatesthe possibilityof a true future. Theirfluiditypartakesof a worldnot redeemedby the law, but signalsan epoch on the otherside of law. This epoch is as unformedas the Helpers themselvesand is not fully visible to the benightedpresent.To the misbegotten vision of modernity,the futurecan only be (mis)representedas destruction,as a judgmenton the guiltof theperpetuallyprehistoric. The future,a real futurethatpromisessomethingthat is trulynew, can only be tropedby the as-yet-unformedHelpersor the promise of judgmentandthe sense of guilt.I have suggestedthatBenjamin'sKafkaestablishes a constellationbetweenthe archaicandthe moder and looks at the prehistoricwithin the moder from the vantagepoint of a philosophyof historyin which positive changeis possible, if not directlyrepresentable. Hence he can posit a conditionthatseems contradictory, as Scholemwas the firstto pointout. How can therebe a pre-legal,hetaericworldthathas alreadylost the law? How can an epoch be pre-animisticand post-mythical at the same time? Beyond the fairly obvious observationthat Benjamin is using Kafkato explain(to Scholem)his own inabilityto embrace thepractice of Judaism,we can easily see the tacticallogic of Benjamin's argument.Modernity,afterthe demystificationof the world(andthe attendant evacuationof value and hence of meaning)15is as bereft as the 15. In this way, Benjamin,who studiedwith Rickert,is close to Weber, Rickert's friend.For an all-too-briefaccountof Rickertandhis place in Neo-Kantianism,see Thomas E. Willey, Back to Kant(Detroit:WayneStateUP, 1978) especially 143-51.ForBenjamin and Rickert, see Momme Brodersen, Walter Benjamin: A Biography, trans. MalcolmR. GreenandIndriaLigers(New York:Verso, 1996) 38, 52.

David Kaufmann

157

swampy Vorwelt.They standin a relationof tense analogy,not identity. If we acceptBenjamin'scontentionthatrevelationhas desertedthe modem world and with it has fled the horizonof redemption,Kafka's work can easily and fruitfullybe readas a codex of ambiguousgestures,of gesturesthatare too big, too pregnantwith possibilityfor the debilitatedenvironment which confines them (18/120). In a similar way, Kafka's Sinngeschichten,his stories about meaning and interpretation,seem to explode the confines of their meager circumstancesand grow in an attemptto reachthe enormousspacesthey indicatebut cannotattain.This readingallows Benjaminto suspectthat The Trial is nothingmore than the "unfolding"of the interpretive possibilitiesof its mostfamousparable: unfold... thewaya budbecomesa blosKafka'sparables[Parabeln] som. Thustheireffectresemblespoetry.It does not matterthathis piecesdo notexactlyfittheproseformsof theWestandstandtowards doctrinelike Aggadahto Halachah.Theyarenot analogies[Gleichnisse]butdo notwantto be takenat facevalue... Butdo we possess the doctrinethatleadsfromKafka'sanalogiesandthatwill explain K's gesturesandthe behaviorof his animals?It is notthere;at most we cansaythatthisorthatalludesto it. (20/122) Kafka's tales standin relationto the values that give them meaningin the same way that the aggadah (the narrative,explanatoryand exemplary aspect of the Talmud)stands towardsthe halachah (the doctrine of the actual law itself). Benjamintakes Bialik's famous argumentthat aggadah without halachah is ultimatelymeaninglessand radicalizesits point by reversingit. WhatKafkapresentsis preciselythis aggadah that has lost the doctrinethat used to groundit. In fact, accordingto Benjamin, Kafkawould probablyclaim that his stories are the relics of this moured-for doctrine. But Benjamin argues, on the contrary, that Kafka'sstoriesare the heraldsof a new one (20/122). Benjaminquotes Kafka's late statementthat he felt he was a failure because he could not transformpoetry into doctrine, aggadah into halachah (27/129).16 Kafka's case should be exemplary, for we can assume that everyonewho inhabitsthe archaicmodem will be caughtin the same predicament,will find him or herself lodged in the hiatus between the fading of the old doctrineand the dawning of a new one. For Benjamin,this liminal period is markedby the horrificdistortions 16. It is interestingto note that BenjaminmisquotesKafka here. Kafka wanted to createa new Kabbalah,not halachah.

158

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology

producedby forgetfulness,by both the forgettingof guilt and by the guilt of forgetfulness,that is, by forgetfulnessand by forgettingthat one has forgotten(30-2/131-34). "The most peculiarbastardin Kafka that the Prehistoric has conceived with Guilt," Benjamin tells us, is Odradek,the animatedspool in Kafka's wonderful"Caresof a Family Man." Odradekis "the form that things take in forgetfulness.They are distorted"(31/133). Forgetfulnessseems to make us forget what things actually are, presentsus with grotesques.Come the Messiah, such distortionswill disappear(32/134). The referenceto the Messiah is not a bit of Jewish window dressing, but a necessary turn, for Benjamin'snew doctrineor halachah cannot be a revision of the law. His antinomianismwill not allow that, for to institute the law would be a fall back into myth. In order to leapfrog over myth, this Messiah's relation to the law has to be construed in Pauline (or, given the subterraneanconversationwith Scholem, Sabbatian) terms.This Saviorcomes to abolish the law. In our era of waiting, in the breathingspace between the hetaericand the messianic, how do Kafka's fables clear the way for that redemption, for that new doctrine?Benjaminfinds a space in Kafka's works between Guilt (figured by the alienateddistortionof Odradek,by the swampy, undifferentiatedpromiscuityof Kafka's women) and Hope (bodied forth by the as-yet-unformedHelpers). In the pre-messianic postponementdescribedby Kafka's narratives,we find in a holy attentiveness the counterto the forgettingthat so marks Guilt. Kafka himself exemplifiedthis: If Kafka did not pray - which we do not know - still, what Malebranchecalls "thenaturalprayerof the soul,"attentiveness,was most particularlyhis. And in his attentivenesshe included,as do the saints in theirprayers,all creation[alle Kreatur].(32/134)

Study, the ever wakeful attentionof Kafka's students,marksthe struggle against forgetfulness, the oblivion of sleep (33-34/136-37). But attentivenessand study seem to entail more thanjust keeping a watchful eye on creation, for study - which will not forget - also concen-

trateson the now-defunctlaw. In a draftreview of Kafka's posthumous The Great Wall of China, Benjaminarguedthat Kafka's world is lawless and fearful. This fear, less an emotion than an organ, is an affective markerof its historicalposition between the ancient past and the

David Kaufinann

159

absolutely new, between primeval guilt and future expiation. In this state bereft of the law, the greatestform of distortioninheresin the fact that, for the fallen, the empancipatoryby nature disguises itself as atonement- freedom appearsunder the sign of law, autonomyunder the aegis of heteronomy.This condition obtains as long as what has been has not been made transparent,known and then dismissed (44-45). Given this line of thought,partof the job of attentivenessis to study the andthus standin a positionto dismiss it. old law, make it transparent For this reason,the "new advocate"in Kafka'sstoryof the same name is exemplary.Once he was Alexander'shorse,but has now gone beyond both the violence of empireand the violence of the law. Bucephalusdoes not use the law [Recht]to enact justice [Gerechtigkeit]because justice and law, in spite of their etymologicalsimilarityin German,belong to differentorders.As we have seen, Law cannotserve as the redemptionof Bucephaluscanmyth because it is myth in the first place. Furthermore, not help but remaintrue to his origins in empire,myth and law. But in this time of waiting,he enactssomethingthatis trulynew. He studiesthe law, but does not practiceit: "Thelaw [Recht]thatis no longerpracticed and is only studied,that is the gate of justice [Gerechtigkeit]"(37/139). Is Bucephalus'sstudy of the law an attemptto renderthe law transparent and thus dismissible?If so, Benjamin'sreworkingof Kafka'sparable sounds like a barelycoded apology for that strandof the scientific study of Judaism, the Wissenschaft des Judentums, that was represented by

Moritz Steinschneider,who once said "We have only one task left: to give the remainsof Judaisma decentburial."17 While there is more than a whiff of the funerealin Benjamin'sessay, he does go on to try to imagine what that apparentoxymoron, a redeemedantinomianlaw would look like. For Benjamin,myth and law are of the same substancebecause they are both "gnostic"in that they split existence between good and bad divinities. Study, which seeks to turn existence into Scripture,life into doctrine,moves in the opposite direction,beyond the fetishes of good and evil - beyond even good and bad (37/139). Benjamin'sdreamof a redeemedlaw would entail a code that takes the distinctionsout of judgmentand the judgmentout of law. Benjaminclaims to find such a law (Gesetz in this case, not Recht and therefore apparentlyof a different order) in Kafka's lovely parable 17. Scholem, "The Science of Judaism- Then and Now," The Messianic Idea in Judaism(New York:Schocken,1971) 307.

160

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology

"Sancho Pansa." In this brief commentary,Sancho, with the help of romances and stories of thieves, is able to divert his personal demon from its appointedobject, and by turningit from himself thus rendersit harmless. This demon - once it is defanged - is of course the famous

Don Quixote who provides useful conversationand great amusement until his death (38/139). Good and evil disappearalong with harm.The evil demon becomes the erring knight. Evil itself is replaced by redeemedor redemptivefoolishness. It should be clear here that Benjamin'sgreat essay on Kafka establishes its positionsby using theologicalcoordinatesthat go even beyond its dutiful quotationsof (Chasidic)legend and Talmudiclore. It orients itself squarelybetween (lost) revelationand futureredemption,though to be honest, it describes its terrainin terms of a vision of world history that is more geological thansalvational.Its theology (with its stress of the world) on collective redemptionand the messianictransformation derives fromJudaism.This is the case even for Benjamin'smore heretical claims (such as the equationof law andmyth). While Benjamin'stheologicalphysiognomymight be Jewish, it is not normativelyJewish. As my parentheticalcomments about Benjamin's relationto Judaismindicate,Benjamin'saccountof the statusof revelation, his complete rejection of the viability of even a metaphorically understoodhalachah, could not help but bring him into conflict with Scholem. Both Scholem and Benjamin were typical of their generation's rejection of what they castigated as Liberal Judaism's anemic, apologeticreductionof religionto a Kantiansystem of ethics. Nevertheless, even Benjaminat his most antinomiancould not imagine a religion based on justice without some notion of law. So the law is summonedonly to be dismissed.The oddity of the position of "Sancho Pansa"in Benjamin'sessay bears witness to his difficulty of trying to imagineScripturewithoutcommandment,revelationwithoutthe law. For Christianity,the notion of a revelationwithoutthe law is central. The advent of Christin the Paulinetraditionmeans precisely a revelation that abrogatesthe law, a revelationthat frees one from the strictures of the law. For Judaism,such an abrogationmust wait for the messianic age. "The New Advocate," then, is a picture of that age, where war will no longer be practicedand the old law will be studied but no longer practiced.The theological dangerin Benjamin'sreading of Kafkais that it foreshortensthe periodof exile, of galut, and makes it

David Kaufmann

161

seem as if the halachahwere a curse, and not the roadto redemption.It seems to mark history as a painful mistake. In his response to Benjamin, Scholem emphasizesthat the ongoing openness of judgmentand revelationare the very conditionsof possibility for human history and thatthe apparentdistanceof the law is a sign of its life, not its death.18 In a letter from August 1931, Scholem suggestedto Benjaminthat he must stress the importanceof the doctrineof law andjustice in Kafka. He claims that Kafka's work looks like "the moral reflectionof a halachist who attempts a linguistic paraphraseof a judgment of God's." Scholem continues:"Here for once the world is broughtto a language in which redemptioncannotbe anticipated"(64-65). Two points should be already apparentfrom this. God's judgment does not take place in language - hence the need for paraphraseinto language. Notice that Scholem does not call this act a translation.Moreover,this languageof paraphraseis one which does not serve as an index of necessary redemption.Judgmentis the Lord's and it is not a foregone conclusion. I assume that Scholem here is jealous to preserveGod's freedom and the true justice of His judgments.We can thus see a very important differencebetween him and Benjaminand (ultimately)Adomo. For Scholem, redemptionis a historicalpossibility and God's judgmentis a moment of true choice, a sign that the futureis open and that the moral universe is not mechanistically bound by law. For Benjamin and Adorno, as we shall see, redemptionis a question of logic, an apriori derived from the Kantianand neo-Kantianaprioriof God Himself. For them, redemptionis a necessary postulate for a form of reason that seeks to calculate the level of distortionof the fallen world. For them, Odradekis the form that things take under the historical condition of forgetting- redemptionis the logical conditionthat will show things in their true form. If Scholem wants to keep the horizon of redemption open, this is in part because he argues for the continuousopenness of revelation.This becomes clearest in his "OpenLetterto the Author of Jewish Belief in Our Time," a 1932 article in response to Schoeps's

rathercontroversial,Protestantizingpolemic for a "Biblical"Judaism. Benjaminwas quite taken with Scholem's piece (he mentions it in several letters at this time) and Scholem thought well enough of it to 18. Noteworthyhere as well is Rosenzweig's 1923 responseto Buber:"Theway to the teachingleads throughwhat is "knowable"... But the teachingitself is not knowable. It is always somethingthat is in the future.. ." FranzRosenzweig, "The Builders,"On Jewish Learning,ed. NahumGlatzer(New York:Schocken,1955) 76.

162

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology

incorporatepartsof it an essay almostthirtyyearslater.19 Scholem rejects Schoeps's attemptto bypass the tradition(best exemplified by the Talmud and the Kabbalah).He argues that to go back immediately to the Bible is a fundamentalmisunderstandingof the natureof Jewishrevelation: Revelation,and this old deep truthis given shortshriftin your writing ... Revelationwith all its uniquenessis still a medium.It is the meaningful as an absolute,as meaning-givingbut meaninglessin itself, that articulatesitself in relationshipto time, in Tradition.The word of God in its absolutesymbolic fullness would be destructiveif it could also be meaningful in an immediate (undialectical)way. Nothing . .. requiresconcretizationwhen appliedto historicaltime more than ... the word of revelation.Indeed, [the word of revelation]whose absoluteness causes its endless reflectionsin the contingenciesof fulfillment cannotbe fulfilled.The voice thatwe perceive,is the mediumin which we live, and whereit is absent,it is hollow ... 20

Scholem's recovery of the aura of revelation here depends on the notion that God's wordwas never immediatelypresent,especially not at Sinai. Rather,the absolutenessof God - a central tenet of a rabbinic Judaismthat soughtto differentiateitself fromthe immanenceof paganism and the unity of substanceimplicit in pantheism- is renderedforth in the absolutenessof the Word. This, in turn, can only be articulated through paraphraseand approximate(at best asymptotic) mediations. What is absolutecan be approachedbut never achieved, except in panlogist fantasies.Put differently:the Wordis not fully lost because it was never fully there. No, its self-enclosurerequirescommentary,discussion, questioning.The Word requiresconcretizationin humanlanguage but that concretizationis an ongoing process that does not allow for completion. In Scholem's conception, the abstractioninherent in the absolutenessof revelationis the conditionof possibility of meaning,of actionandinterpretation, and,ultimately,of Jewishhistoryitself. This understandingof Revelationtakes the pathos out of Benjamin's vision of an abjectedmodernitybecauseit shows thatvision to be based on an undialecticalnotion of revelation.Scholem makes this clear in a letterfromJuly 1934: 19. See his "Revelationand Traditionas Religious Categoriesin Judaism,"The MessianicIdea in Judaism282-303. 20. Scholem, "OffenerBrief an den Verfasser der Schrift Jiidischer Glaube in dieser Zeit,"BayerischeIsraelitischeGemeindezeitung 8.16 (1932): 243.

David Kaufmann

163

Kafka's world is the world of revelation,but of revelation seen of coursefromthatperspectivein which it is returnedto its own nothingness . . . The nonfulfillabilityof what has been revealed is the point where a correctlyunderstoodtheology . . . coincides most perfectly with that which offers the key to Kafka's work. Its problem is not, dear Walter,its absence in a preanimisticworld, but the fact that it cannotbefulfilled ... Those pupils of whom you speakat the end are not so muchthose thathave lost the Scripture... but ratherthose studentswho cannotdecipherit.21 In other words, what Benjamin takes to be the historical disgrace of revelation is nothing of the sort, but the very source of revelation's continuous relevance, its endless productivity. The crux here is that God and His Word appear in the Kabbalistic guise of the Nothing. Benjamin sees this Nothing as nothing, as an absence. But Scholem, perhaps a closer reader of Rosenzweig, does not: You ask what I understandby "the nothingness of revelation."I understandby it a state in which revelation appearsto be without meaning,in which it still assertsitself, in which it has validity,but no meaning. In which the wealth of meaningis lost and what is appearing, as if reducedto a zero point of its own content,still does not disappear(for revelationis somethingthat is appearing)- that is where its nothingnesscomes forward.22 For Scholem, Kafka's work is exemplary in that it shows revelation as it is, reduced to perhaps its purest form as form, as the ground on which meaning is constructed but which does not have meaning itself. In this letter, Scholem claims that Benjamin's inability to understand this notion of revelation is the greatest error of his approach to Kafka. In Scholem's account of Kafka, then, it is not that revelation has lost its aura, but that this sense of loss, the undeniable impossibility of fulfillment, is precisely what constitutes revelation's aura in the first place. In many ways, Scholem's critique is similar to the critique that Adorno will level at Benjamin's expose of the Passagenwerk, when he argues that Benjamin has made a fundamental error in ascribing reification to bourgeois consciousness, when in fact the Lukacsian point is 21. Scholem, ed., The Correspondenceof WalterBenjaminand GershomScholem 1932-1940, trans.GarySmith& AndreLefevere(Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1992) 126-27. 22. Scholem, ed., The Correspondenceof WalterBenjaminand GershomScholem 1932-1940 142. Translationmodified.See BenjaminiiberKafka82.

164

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology

that consciousness is actuallyproduced by reification.23In both cases, his correspondentsargue that Benjaminhas arguedundialecticallyand mistakencause for effect. In the case of the Kafkaessay, however,Adomo does not agree with Scholem. He subscribeswholeheartedlyto Benjamin'svision of historical abjection, to the full force of the secularizationhypothesis that Scholem rejected. In later years, Adoro went as far as to claim that Scholem's own workassumedsecularizationwhile denyingit: It appearstheprofoundestironythatthe conceptionof mysticismthathe terms as preciselythat urges presentsitself in historical-philosophical immigrationintotheprofanethathe hadheldto be so perniciousin us.24

But, as I shall show, for Adomo the flight into the profane promised more hope than Benjamin'sKafka essay indicates.Whereas Benjamin expressesa loosely dialecticalphilosophyof history,where hope resides in the destructiveintersticesbetweenepochs, Adomo claims a dialectical possibility of redemptionin all figures within an epoch. Adoro's chief criticismof Benjaminis always that he does not read dialectically enough. In an odd way, he sees Benjaminas too pessimistic, as misreadingthe ciphers of Kafka's work. Adorno's response to Benjamin's essay in the letter of December 17, 1934 is wonderfullyrich because it lays out in a very specific context his sense of theology, of dialectical materialismandof the sheerscope of redemption. Adoro startsby secondingBenjamin'sapproachandinsights: Do not take it as immodestif I begin by saying thatour agreementon the philosophicalcentralpoints has never yet come so perfectly to mind as here ... It also touches at the same time in a very principle sense the place of "Theology."25

He goes on to call it "inversetheology."He is carefulto distinguishit from Schoeps's "dialectical theology." Rather, he sees it lying close to

the notion of Scripturethat he finds in Benjamin'sessay. Adoro concurs with BenjaminthatKafkacouldbe best understood,not as a relic of a lost revelationbut as a prolegomenonto a future Scripture,a future metaphysics.But Adomo adds a little twist here. He slips in the notion 23. 24. 25.

AdornoandBenjamin,Briefivechsel139; CompleteCorrespondence105 Adoro, "Grussan GershomG. Scholem"481. Adomo andBenjamin,Briefivechsel90; CompleteCorrespondence66.

David Kaufmann

165

that Kafka would be best interpretedsocially - that is, I take it, sociologically - and it is here that he claims to see the Chiffernwesen, the coded nature of their theology.26 Adomo is writing quickly and passionately here, but also cannily, because he is looking towards the Passagenwerk and presumably working against Brecht. He wants to insist that the theology be read sociologically - and that the profane should be read sacredly. What is at stake becomes clear when Adorno launches into his most telling criticism of the Kafka essay. He notices that Benjamin interprets all the anecdotes, images and stories that he interpolates in his discussion except for one: the childhood picture of Kafka that stands as an epigraph to the second section of the essay: It is not by chance that of the interpretedanecdotes one - namely Kafka's childhood photograph- remains without an interpretation. Such an interpretation would howeverbe equivalentto the neutralization of the epoch in a lightningflash. Thatmeans all possible disharmonies in concreto - symptomsof archaicself-consciousness,of the incompletenessof the mythicdialecticeven here.27 If Benjamin actually interpreted the photograph he would be forced to step beyond the postponement, the hiatus between historical ages that traps Odradek in its distorted and alienated existence. To put it another way, the Helpers are not the only ones who partake of redemption. Odradek also deserves a place in the new dispensation: For it is archaicto let him springforthfrom"Prehistoryand Guilt"and not to rereadhim as just that prolegomenonthat you see throughso penetratinglyin the problemof Scripture.If he has his place with the familyman, is he not thatman's careanddanger,isn't the sublationof creaturelyrelations of guilt prefiguredin him? Isn't care - truly Heideggerput back on his feet - the cipher, indeed the most certain promiseof hope ... CertainlyOdradek,the obverseside of the object world, is the markof distortion- but as such also a motif of transcendence, namely the eliminationof boundariesand the reconciliationof the organicand the inorganic,or the sublationof death:Odradekdoes "survive."To put it differently,escape fromthe relationsof natureis promisedeven to thatlife which is traffickedas if it were a thing.28 26. Adomo and Benjamin,Briefwechsel90-91; CompleteCorrespondence66-67. 27. Adomo and Benjamin, Briefwechsel 93.; Complete Correspondence 68. Walker's translationspeaks of "Kafka's photographsof children"where the German clearlyrefersto thatpartof Benjamin'sarticlethatdescribesthe shot of Kafkaas a child. 28. Adomo andBenjamin,Briefwvechsel 92-93; CompleteCorrespondence68-69.

166

Adorno, Benjamin and the Question of Theology

Adoro accuses Benjaminof falling shortof the attentivenessof Kafka himself, of a kind of archaiccruelty.Benjamin,whose seminalessay on Goethe's Elective Affinitiesends with the claim that hope is only given for the most hopeless,is unwillingto granthope even to Odradek. It is importantto note that Adoro implies - and not that subtly, either - that Benjaminhas fallen precisely into the philosophy of history that he himself would come to criticize in his last work, the "Theses on the Conceptof History."In this view, redemptioncomes only to those lucky enough to be born at the right time, at the end of history. To counterthis verdict,Adoro wants to read the disgraceof revelation sociologically and historically.The distortionof the object world has a very precise historical determination.It is called reification, and describes the tendencyto abstracthumanlife-processesinto a series of unconnectedobjects. It is, in the classic Lukacsianversion of the theory, to mistake living process for dead thing, and humanhistory for an alien fate. It refers to a misrecognitionimposed by history, a reversal thatcan be reversedwithinhistory. Benjaminremindsus that the care of the family man which gives the title to the story is famouslyunspecified.The only thing that seems to bother the father of the house (althoughHausvater can also be rendered as warden)is that the Odradekhas no purpose.Having no purpose to wear it out, Odradekcan live forever.It can survive. Does the Hausvaterenvy Odradek'simmortality?Does he resent its lack of usefulness, its odd capacity to move and to speak while remainingwhat appearsto be a worthless spool? Adoro's crack about Heidegger will help us to see in what way Odradekfigures forth both creaturelyrelations of guilt and their overcoming. Let us understandHeideggerian care as determinedby one's recognitionthat s/he is alreadyin a world, is alreadyinvolved with the projectioninto the futureof his/her "ownmost potentialities-of-being,"and is concerned with/alongside the world.29If care signals the authenticrecognitionof one's finitude and one's embeddednesswhile markingthe world in termsof one's project, then there is a sense in which the fatherof the house exhibits care as pure ressentiment:Odradekis useless and serves only as an unpleasant reminderof mortality.Is it not also possible that even Heideggerian authenticity,with its constant reference to Dasein's own situation, is 29. MartinHeidegger,Being and Time:A Translationof Sein und Zeit, trans.Joan Stambaugh(Albany:SUNY P, 1996) 178-80.

David Kaufmann

167

subtly narcissistic, and ultimately distorting?To put it slightly differently, if "Realityis referredback to the phenomenonof care,"then reality, understood ontologically (not as mere existence but as Being understood)is referredback to Dasein's self-awareness;it is in this awareness that Being can first be understoodand that the essence of objects can be disclosed.30Understandingis thus always understanding in relationto Dasein. Caregrantsmeaning,not existence. But what if care did not refermeaningback to the fatherof the house but branched outwards towards Odradek? On the risk of making Adoro cleave too closely to Levinas, let me push this line of thinking to make a point. What if care did not stem from the projectof the finite existence but began with the (apparent)infinity of the other? It is not clear what exactly Adoro's dream of the "eliminationof the boundaries and the reconciliationbetween the organicand inorganic"actually entails and how it could lead to the sublation of death. But if we rememberthat Adorno has the problemof reificationin mind, we can say that the boundariesbetween the organic and inorganicare conceptual, are distortionsborn of commodityexchange in a modem market. To put differently,we can say that these conceptualcategories are not derived from an immutablenaturalnecessity, but ratherhave come to appearto be natural,have over time congealed into the dead "second nature" of social convention. We should therefore not assume that Adomo means that reconciliationentails an oddly mythic suspensionof mortality,but ratherthat the "meaning"of the categoriesof the organic and inorganic,animateand inanimate,living and dead can change, once they have taken their bearings from somewhereother than the reified andreifyingbourgeoissubject. If my interpretationis accurate,it will go a long way towardsexplaining a footnote that Adorno himself appendedto a passage that I have alreadyquoted: To put it differently,escape from the relationsof natureis promised even to thatlife which is traffickedas if it were a thing.

The footnotereads: here is the deepestreasonas well for my oppositionto the immediate connectionto "usevalue"in othercircumstances! 30.

Heidegger 195-96.

168

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology

Reified life is promisedliberationfrom "naturalrelations."Now, to reified life, being traffickedas a thing seems natural,just as it seems "natural" that we are the proud possessors of our own labor and can exchange it as we please. It is precisely this misrecognitionof abstract conventionas a law of naturethat Marxattemptedto demystify in Capital. In fact, in the great chapteron commodityfetishism,Marx reveals what he takes to be the fatal metalepsis of bourgeois economics: the mistakingof the commodityfor a naturalentity thatdeterminesthe laws of the market.But the commodityform, Marx argues, is derivative- it is itself an effect, not a cause. In orderto achieve his dialecticaldemystification of the worship of the false idol of the commodity,he sets up an oppositionbetween the specious naturalnessof exchange value and use value. Adorno's defense of Odradekthus poses the question about how natural"use value" actually is. Is the concept of use value itself not a productof reification,in that it first posits things, then their value in terms of humanneed? To this line of reasoning,Marxianuse value and Heideggeriancare become equallysuspectbecausethey both subordinate the object world to humanmastery,consumptionor the imposition of meaning.And underthe sign of reification,the humanworld is misconstruedas an object world, and so is liable to the same forms of domination.The distortionthatbesets Odradekbesets us all. But for Adorno,there is hope even in that. Odradek,Kafka's narrator tells us, has no purpose,has neithertelos nor use. What does this mean other than that Odradekhas no value, that it has been freed from distorted and distortingmodels of value? In Adomo's reading,worthlessness in a world governedby exchangeis a promiseof the possibility of anotherworld, one betterthaneven the ideal Kantdreamedof - a kingdom (or is it empire?)of ends, in which dignity is extended,as in the prayersof the saints,not only to people,but to all creation. II

To recap then: Adorno invokes theology, meant here as a constant referenceto redemption(and not necessarilyas a relationto revelation) to maintainan emancipatorypromiseas well as an access to the world of objects withoutfalling into the temptationof reducingall people and all things to a calculusbased on use or consumption.This "inversetheology" does not take the humanas the source of meaning, nor does it take the divine as its end. The flight of the sacred into the profane

David Kaufmann

169

seems to involve a hoveringbetween "natural"and "supernatural" interthe between twin of uncritical and materialist perils piety pretations, reduction.Adoro's criticism is aimed at all thoughtbased on scarcity (economics) or finitude (Heideggerianphenomenology).And there is a sense that his writing, both early and late, gets its charge from a deep impatience and a clear disappointment.But there is a danger here of dismissing Adorno's work as immatureand hopelessly utopian, and thus missing its real target.Why would Adorno want to maintainthat Marx and Heidegger suffer from the same philosophical limitations? How could they possibly be construedin this way? In the first pages of his early lecture"The Idea of NaturalHistory," Adornocarefullyundoespost-Husserlian philosophy.He arguesthatwhile the initial intentionof phenomenologyis the "overcomingof the subjective standpoint"and the arrivalat a "principallydifferentregionof Being, ... a transubjective, an onticregionof Being,"31it is basicallyflawed: It is now the fundamentalparadoxof all ontological questioningin contemporaryphilosophy,thatthe meanswith which it tries to win its way to transubjectiveBeing is none other than the same subjective ratiothatthe structureof Idealismhadbroughtinto being.32

If Adoro is correct in his claim that phenomenology,like Idealism, startswith the positing subject,it shouldcome as no surprisethat it falls into tautology. One can see this especially in Adorno's account of Heidegger'sdiscussionof historicity: ... a Being, that is historical,is broughtundera subjectivecategory, historicity.This historicalBeing which is understoodunderthe category of historicityis supposedto be identicalwith Historyitself. It [historicalBeing] is supposedto fall into line with the determinationsthat areimpressedon it by Historicity.The tautologyseems to me to be less a self-discoveryof the mythicaldepthsof languagethan new camouflage for the old classicalthesis of the identityof subjectandobject.33

Historyand historicitycan be conflatedonly becausethe subjectiveprinciple holds sway: historicity(subjective)and History (supposedlynonsubjective)become identicalbecause in this reworking,they both start from the same place. Adornoarguesthat the categoryof history within 31. 32. 33.

Adomo,"Die Idee derNaturgeschichte,"GesammelteSchriften1:346-47. Adomo, "Die Idee derNaturgeschichte"347. Adomo, "Die Idee derNaturgeschichte"353.

170

Adorno,Benjaminand the Questionof Theology

phenomenologywill only gain its dignitywhen it stops searchingout the possibilitiesof Being (andthe potentialitiesof Dasein) and insteadlooks to "theessent as such in its concretedetermination withinhistory."34 Adorno puts the mattermore succinctly in the critique of Kierkegaardin his first publishedbook. The names of the accused are different but the chargeis essentiallythe same: [Kierkegaard's philosophy]conteststhe identityof thoughtand being butwithoutsearchingforbeingin anyotherrealmthanthatof thought.

Kierkegaardwants to grapplehis way back to the object world, but he cannotescape from the limits of Idealistinteriority.In a similarway, he tries to redeem contingency,freedom,and the particularfrom Kantian abstractionand the great chuffing engine of Hegelian panlogism, but ends up erecting a system that gives up "philosophy'scentralclaim to of reality."36 truth- the interpretation Adomo's Thus, Kierkegaardfalls prey to the very tendencieshe tried the object world he had wanted to gain. Kierkegcombat and loses to aard's failure is perhaps more instructive than Heidegger's if only because he strugglesharderto overcomethe "enchantmentof hopeless immanence"37of a world whose intelligibilityis ultimatelyposited by the subject. Accordingto this line of argument,Heidegger's definition of "world"gives up the worldtoo quickly. Given all this, it is perhapsnot surprisingto find Adomo criticizing Marx, in an aside in the book on Kierkegaard,for his fall into Idealism througha reductivecommitmentto what we would now call "totalization." Adomo's complaintis that Marx's system can no more contain the phenomenait seeks to explain than Hegel's, and for the same reason. It tries to reduce the world to a single substance,and thus sacrifices the negation,the alteritythat drives the dialectic from the get-go. In short, it would seem that Adoro is using the dialectic to fight that most seductive of Jewish heresies, Spinozism.

In "The Idea of NaturalHistory,"Adomo describesthe mythic conception of natureas "what human history bears as fatefully obedient, foreordainedBeing, what appearsin history,what acts as substancein 354. 34. Adomo, "Die Idee derNaturgeschichte" 35. Adomo, Kierkegaard:Constructionof theAesthetic,transRobertHullot-Kentor (Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1989) 86. 36. Adoro, Kierkegaard74, 93-97. 37. Adomo, Kierkegaard83.

David Kaufmann

171

history."What stands opposed to such a conceptionis "the appearence of the qualitatively New . . . that does not play itself out in pure Iden-

tity, pure reproductionof what was always and alreadythere, but happens in the New."38Whetherone reducesthe substanceof the world to Subject or Value, the result is still mythic: the misrecognitionof the historical as inevitable and the reductionof all otheress - here seen temporallyas freedom- to merefate. How things have developed in the world of men and women is not necessarily how they are or have to be. Adoro follows Kierkegaard's attack on Hegel's preemptivetotalities. Kierkegaardsuggests that people who fall into this confusion are led to a view of history that borrows fromanddoes not advanceuponnecromancy: To want to predictthe future(prophesy)andto wantto understandthe necessity of the past are altogetheridentical,and only the prevailing fashionmakesthe one seem moreplausiblethanthe otherto a prevailing generation.39

Kierkegaard'sattackon the mythic belief in historicallaw is not very differentfrom the attackon commodityfetishismor "secondnature"as dead convention. In each case, the post-Hegelianthought is trying to awaken freedom - both as contingency and as alterity - from the spell

that immanence casts over thought.40Each one wants to demystify amorfati as a formof idolatry. "Theology"as Adoro construesit - the dialecticalovercomingof a mythic sense of subjectionto alien (and in truthmerely alienated)powers - takes the place that reasonwas supposedto fill in the thoughtof enlightenmentwriters.It reveals the falseness of superstitionand helps deliver fate into freedom.But it goes furtherthan subject-centeredreason because it does not merely emancipatehumans.By maintaininga horizon of redemptionfor all creation,by a studious attentivenessto Kreatur,"theology"breakswith the immanenceof the positing subject. It releases the objectworld fromits dependencyon the humanfor meaning. Thus, a redemptiveontology is the only possible form ontology can take in modernity.It is also the only pathto a real emancipation. 38. Adomo, "Die Idee derNaturgeschichte"346. 39. Soren Kierkegaard,PhilosophicalFragments,trans.HowardV. Hon and Edna H. Hong (Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1985) 77. 40. Steven Schwarzschild,"Adomoand Schoenbergas Jews," Yearbookof the Leo Baeck Institute35 (1990): 460.

172

Adorno, Benjamin and the Question of Theology

III In a letter of 1951, Adornodisagreedwith Scholem's claim that Benjamin's theology was "existentialor substantial."He wrote that Benjamin's thoughthere,as elsewhere,maintaineda "criticalintention:" In the tension between its ambiguous-mythicalnaturalbeing [Naturwesen] and the mythicalSelf- what he earlierwould have called the NAME - everythingthat one calls "ego,""person,""subject,""individual"radicallydissolves in this philosophy,and here actuallyis the negativemomentin the work of the conceptin Benjamin.41

According to this view, theology in Benjaminbreaksthe hold of subject-centeredreasonand the horrorsof humanhistoryby suspendingthe world between two myths - between the naturaland the supernatural. To read Benjaminthis way is to read him in terms of the study of the Trauerspielor in terms of the great essay on Kafka that we have discussed above. It is to understandthatBenjamin'swritingsfall underthe shadow of an apocalypse and a subsequentredemption.This redemption cannotbe figured(but should be - hence Adoro's brief on behalf of Odradek)apart from the destructionthat precedes it. Or perhaps it can. In his last work, the theses on the philosophyof history,Benjamin posits the weak messianismof a generation- any generation- that suspends the horrifictrain of "progress"by redeeming(and thereforefulfilling) the hopes of the past. Thus, the hopes and desires of the downtroddenserve as incomplete figures of redemption.Adoro too pursuesa similar"inversetheology."42 For him, theology means breaking throughthe limitationsof a naturalismor a materialismbased on scarcity or hunger or the sheer will to survive. As such, his vision of redemptionis more radicaleven thanBenjamin'sand hence more rigorously beyond figuration,but in a differentway. As the last aphorismin Minima Moralia shows even more clearly than the last section of the Negative Dialectics, redemptionfor Adorno is not (necessarily) to be hoped for, but it is (necessarily)to be thoughtthrough.That is to say, for Adorno, it is a regulativeconcept.It is the unacknowledgedlegislator for any (correct)accountof the world. 41. Adomo, "Um Benjamins Werk. Briefe an Gershom Scholem 1939-1955," FrankfurterAdornoBldtter5:165. 42. Adomo only accepted the descriptionof "negative theology" in an esoteric sense, thatis, in thathe objectedhavinghis termstranslateddirectlyinto theologicalcategories. See his letterto Scholemof April 13, 1952.Adomo, "UmBenjaminsWerk"167.

David Kaufmann

173

Adorno's agnosticism about the actualityof redemptionshows him, liblike Benjamin,to be the inheritorof the logic of nineteenth-century eral Judaism,even thoughAdornowas baptizedand raised a Christian. Steven Schwarzschildhas argued that the Liberal Jews of the nineteenthcenturysubstitutedthe more acceptabledreamof a messianic age - the productof progress in science and ethics - for the unacceptably nationalisticand miraculousnotion of a personalmessiah. Accordingto Schwarzschild,they therebyrenderedthe principlesof messianism and redemptionuntenable.43In this light, the self-confessed weakness of Benjamin's"weak messianism"marksan attempt,though ambiguousto overcomethe frailtyof the Liberalposition by tryingto locate in the distance a messianic agent. And in this light, Adoro's reduction of redemptionto a logical category is a rigorousworking-throughof the Liberalposition,even thoughit is a toughone to hold. In the end, we should read Adomo and Benjamin in terms of this "theology."Such termsmight mitigatetheirMarxism(althoughnot their critiquesof capitalism)as well as their putativepostmoderism. Those familiar attemptsto map them onto more comfortableterrain,though, are apologetic and might miss the scandal of Benjaminand Adomo's relevanceto us. For theirradicalismcan be called a kind of Marxismin the galut, or, in moresecularterms,of anti-capitalisthope in exile. 43. Schwarzschild,"The PersonalMessiah - Toward a Reconstructionof a Discarded Concept,"The Pursuit of the Ideal, ed. MenachemKellner (Albany: SUNY P, 1990) 15-28.