CRISIS, JUSTICE, MESSIANISM: WALTER BENJAMIN’S “CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE”
CRISIS, JUSTICE, MESSIANISM: WALTER BENJAMIN’S “CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE”

Summary/Abstract: This essay dwells on Walter Benjamin’s early and important essay “Critique of Violence” (1921). I begin by examining the significance and multivalence of crisis for Benjamin’s work. I proceed by outlining the significance Weimar crisis not only for Benjamin’s essay, but for Carl Schmitt’s work. Further, I outline the significance of an internalization of crisis by the “Critique of Violence”, particularly as regards its method of exposition. I subsequently examine Benjamin’s analysis of the significance for justice of the proletarian general strike, especially as regards its similarities and differences from Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence (1909). In the last section of the essay, which focuses on Messianism, I dwell on one of the key differences between Benjamin and Sorel, namely the importance of the theological for the former. I conclude with a brief reflection on the surprising affinities between Benjamin’s Messianism and Lenin’s uncharacteristic lapse into utopianism in State and Revolution (1917).

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