신성한 유물론: 발터 벤야민의 정치신학에 대하여

Divine Materialism: On Walter Benjamin’s Political Theology

This essay argues that Benjamin’s weak messianism is connected to what he discusses in his early writings such as German Romanticism and Goethe. The category of a ‘messiah’ is significant in Benjamin’s conceptualization of political theology. His political theology aims at coming up with the resolution to progressivism which is internalized in orthodox historical materialism and setting up alternative to the teleological end of history. What he wants to do is to prove the possible history of unimproved humanity against the religion of capitalism. For Benjamin, messianism without a messiah could surmount the limit of historicism and solve out the problem of modernity. In this way, the category of divinity takes a core of his discussion on political theology--a messiah is not to determine the legislation of profane sovereign, but rather the legislation of the divine intervention into historical moments. A messiah is a revolutionary event as such and its legislation onwards. Benjamin’s concept of a messiah is the way in which decision is not the solution to the alternatives of catastrophic end of history, but rather the immanent power prompting the transition from within. From this perspective, this essay concludes that the theoretical basis for his political theology is from the way in which he defines the meaning of divinity which stems from his early discussion of German Romanticism as well as Baroque, the very aesthetic dimension of an artwork.