Walter Benjamin and the Post-Kantian Tradition

Phillip Homburg

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786603821
• eBook ISBN: 9781786603845
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Critical Theory

Walter Benjamin and the Post-Kantian Tradition engages with Benjamin as a theorist of a historical and philosophical problematic of modernity: a problematic that he finds manifested, in different philosophical guises, within scientific empiricism, neo-Kantianism and German Romanticism. The book takes us through these manifestations systematically and, in doing so, it demonstrates how Benjamin develops a unique form of materialist criticism from within the tension he locates within transcendent neo-Kantianism materialism and the immanent standpoints of scientific materialism and German Romanticism.

Chapter 1

Metaphysical Materialism and Its Critics

This chapter and the two that follow examine the philosophical backdrop against which Benjamin develops his form of materialism. In this chapter, I examine the development of the form of philosophical materialism that will come into contact with Kantian and neo-Kantian philosophy alongside Kant’s own engagement with materialist philosophy. I begin by examining materialism in its earliest stages in classical philosophy up to its modern form, the standpoint of metaphysical materialism. What defines philosophical materialism is that it is systematic and speculative in its approach; that is, it makes claims about the nature of reality as a whole. It either implicitly or explicitly makes claims not only about certain specific objects of investigation but also about the nature of reality itself – it contains both ontological and epistemological elements. Therefore, it is possible to say that certain approaches to the world may be materialist – say an evolutionary biologist or even a Marxian economist – but these standpoints are not really what I’m interested in here. (Although they are interesting from the perspective of this book as a whole, I will not get into that at the moment.)

Philosophical materialism represents an alternative to philosophical idealism but not necessarily a refutation of it in total, as I will show. By taking up metaphysical questions, it does not refute the existence of metaphysical or metaempirical phenomena and principles. Nor, is it more overtly scientistic than much of German Idealism. Kant and his neo-Kantian successors strongly defended the principles of the pure mathematical sciences (physics) against what they saw as degraded empiricist forms of science (such as biology and chemistry). So, the conflict between philosophical materialism and idealism occurs on the battleground of science itself, about what precisely constitutes valid knowledge of reality, nature and society. These questions can’t be dismissed by polemics against the concept of science. The thinkers I examine in this book, including Benjamin, do not oppose science in the abstract. Rather, they raise questions about method, application and our understanding of how particular scientific approaches define our understanding of reality itself. Put simply, Benjamin, following Kant, upholds an element of irreducibility against the attempt to subsume all of reality into a logical method or scientific worldview. I will now move on to examine the materialist approach to reality.

ATOMISM AND MECHANICAL MATERIALISM

In his pre-critical text, “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics,” Immanuel Kant lays out the difference between the two types of materialism: “Hylozoism invests everything with life, while materialism, when carefully considered, deprives everything of life.”¹ The distinction between hylozoism and mechanical materialism provides a good starting point for an understanding of materialism as a philosophical position because they mark its possible extremes. I begin by contextualising materialism, first, in its mechanistic atomist and, second, in its vitalistic hylozoist form. Following this, I move on to an examination of Kant’s treatment of materialism, which helps set the backdrop for the neo-Kantian critique of materialism.

Materialism, in general, can be broken down into two central ontological claims about the nature of the empirical world: first, reality is composed of matter or the interaction of physical forces; and, second, consciousness is not separate from the material world but is formed based on material processes. The essence of materialism’s conception of reality is monism: everything, including consciousness, can be reduced to what is material in nature. It should be noted here that materialism does not make a general claim about the specific nature of these processes or give an account of the composition of matter. Therefore, it is possible to conceive of material interactions mechanically or hylozoistically and remain a consistent materialist. I will now examine two extreme examples to demonstrate this possibility beginning with mechanistic materialism.

Mechanistic materialism originates in the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus.² Aristotle provides a succinct description of the two founders of atomism:

Leucippus and his associate Democritus say that the full and the empty are the elements, calling the one being and the other non-being – the full and solid being, the empty non-being (that is why they say that what is no more than what is not, because body no more is than void); and they make these the material causes of things.³

For the atomist, the object contains its essence within itself in the form of atoms rather than being formed on the basis of a single natural element such as air, fire, water and so on. These atoms form objects by joining together but never produce a single substance. Objects are composed of a variety of different atoms touching each other without every becoming a whole. For Democritus, what exists are the atom and the empty, and change occurs through the movement of atoms within a void.

Atomism runs into problems when it must account for movement and change. Aristotle explains the atomist’s account of change: “For instance, A differs from N in shape, AN from NA in arrangement and Z from N in position.”⁴ For the atomist, change occurs through the physical alteration of the combination of atoms within a void. The substructure of the object is comprised of various combinations of atoms that are eternal and unchanging, but these atoms can be moved and reconfigured externally.⁵ As Simplicius writes, quoting Aristotle, Democritus “thinks that [atoms] cling to one another and remain together until some stronger necessity arriving from the environment scatters them apart and separates them.”⁶ Objects are contingent, but the elements that make up their substructure are eternal. For the atomists, matter is essentially inert or lifeless, and its movement is regulated by purely mechanical laws external to the atoms themselves.⁷ If this were not the case, the world of appearance would be completely contingent. Therefore, along with the inertia of matter they posit its subsistence in time and space.

Aristotle is critical of the limits of the atomistic account of knowledge that posits the identity of knowledge and sensation.⁸ In Democritus’s account, sensation is essentially reduced to touch: “Democritus and most of the natural philosophers . . . proceed quite irrationally, for they represent all objects of sense as objects of Touch. Yet, if this is so, it clearly follows that each of the other senses is a mode of Touch; but one can see at a glance that this is impossible.”⁹ Objects are composed by groups of atoms joined through touch and, equally, enter into the mind by way of touch so that sight becomes a form of touching between the sensing mind and the object, albeit at the atomic level. All knowledge of objects appears based on a limited form of sensation. However, while Democritus stresses the important role of sensation, he is also emphatic in distinguishing sensation from the true knowledge of an object: “In reality we know nothing – for truth is in the depths.”¹⁰ Or, equally, “We in reality know nothing firmly but only as it changes in accordance with the condition of the body and of the things which enter it and to the things which resist it.”¹¹ Finally, combining the first and second quotes, Democritus makes a distinction between sense and understanding: “There are two forms of knowledge, one genuine and the other dark. To the dark belong all these: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The genuine separated from this.”¹² The genuine is the real knowledge of the material world, while the dark, the conventional, is sensuousness. Even though objects are constituted materially and grasped sensuously, Democritus makes a fundamental distinction between a genuine world of true knowledge and the world of sensuous convention. Or, in other words, he marks a distinction between essence as truth and appearance as mere semblance. Truth, in any meaningful sense, is permanently bracketed from the reality of sensuous appearance because it exists squarely outside of sensation. The subject has access only to sensation which, as Democritus states, is embodied and, as such, contingent and subjective. Democritus is dealing with matter ins...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Metaphysical Materialism and Its Critics
• 2 Neo-Kantianism
• 3 The Kantian Critique of Materialism
• 4 Benjamin and Neo-Kantianism
• 5 Materialism in the Young Benjamin
• 6 Benjamin’s Materialist Turn
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author