Jump and Caesura of Thinking. In the Middle of Benjamin’s dialectical «Stop»

Abstract

In Das Passagen-Werk Benjamin returns to the concept of Ursprung, this time as a genuine leap of what has been, as a dialectical turnaround at the moment of the Jetztzeit of the historical materialist, an instant of legibility, but also as a stop and interruption [Stillstand] of this unfold, where the dialectical force is suspended for a moment, in the now of its cognisability. To achieve this, the Berliner has made a thoughtful, critical and forceful journey, which begins to be defined more intensely from the Epistemocritic prologue of his Trauerspiel. We will ascertain the route in both works and in the problematic constructions of their texts and previous fragments, especially in the tension of the mediation, relationship and connection between the work of art and art as a theoretical unfold; above all, the tension between the first Romantics and Goethe, in the dialectic between the pure form [Idee] and the ideal content [Ideale] of art. We will also go into the thesis On the concept of history and Central Park and some fragments on Baudelaire. Our main objective is to show the unfolding of the image [Bild] in the Benjaminian philosophical writing, in the middle [Mittel] of the extremes of idea and phenomenon, of truth and knowledge, therefore in the same conceptual construction, when naming and contemplating the historical reality, material reality, should be commented, interpreted and read in its eternal expiration [ewige Vergängnis] or sinking [Untergang], as an exhibition [Darstellung] of a historical experience configured by certain imagined constellations.