Transcript conversation YouTube “The New World”
Introduction beneath the video-registration. Willem de Witte in conversation with professor of political philosophy and philosophical ethics Theo de Wit about Walter Benjamin’s ‘text of violence’: Zur Kritik der Gewalt.
What makes this text, written in 1921, still relevant today? In the benefits affair we saw that dogmatic, cold application of the law can force citizens into extremely uncertain and unjust positions. On the other hand, a movement like Extinction Rebellion shows us how the existing order can be challenged from a sense of injustice. Take Pim Fortuyn, take Wilders. “There has been quite a bit of messing around in the Netherlands for about twenty years.”
In Zur Kritik der Gewalt, Benjamin examines the question of how law – the law – and justice relate to each other. How they can chafe or even conflict. In line with Benjamin’s text, de Wit argues that there are no rules for justice. “A judge has to keep reinventing the law.”
Walter Benjamin (1892 – 1940) once described himself as: “rag collector”, referring to the remnants of history – often a history of suffering – that comes to us in traditions and survival. In the absence of recognition, or outright denial of this, dissatisfaction arises in society, which can result in a confrontation between enforcement and edifying violence, as with the farmers’ protests. De Wit: “Look first at the experience of previous generations, so as not to offend the future.”
A conversation about arbitrary power, our secret admiration for criminals and the sixth commandment. “It may be – put to the extreme – just to kill.”
*********
Willem de Witte: “Welcome at The New World. Deepening conversations in a time of change. My name is Willem de Witte and with me today as a guest, professor of political philosophy and philosophical ethics at Tilburg University, Theo de Wit. […] Theo, welcome, nice to have you here, to talk about a special text today. We are going to talk about, what is called, colloquially, Benjamin’s violence text, Zur Kritik der Gewalt”, a text that was written in 1921, and which I think you have also dealt with frequently in your philosophical career. Perhaps before we start talking about this text, you can share something about the author who may not be a very familiar one to many of our viewers. Who is Walter Benjamin as a Thinker, and what might people know him from? Maybe you can also say something about your personal interest in this reasoning of Walter, why you still find him such an outstandingly interesting philosopher.
Theo de Wit: “Yes, to start with the latter. A long time ago, the time I wrote my dissertation, I spent about six years researching the Weimar Republic. Historical, but also especially legal and philosophical.”
Willem de Witte: “A short-lived Republic. Existed approximately from 1919 to 1933 and was terminated by Hitler in 1933.”
Theo de Wit: “Exactly. That, of course, is to this day a kind of trauma. In the sense that we occasionally fear Weimar conditions. That of course plays out to this day. But it was also a time of tremendous experimentation, which also applies to the republic itself. In the arts, in literature, in social practices.”
Willem de Witte: “They were all trying to usher in new forms of life at that time.”
Theo de Wit: “The background, of course, was that terrible First World War. That destroyed a lot of old-fashioned, 19th-century images of progress in one fell swoop.”
Willem de Witte: “Particularly in Germany, right?”
Theo de Wit: “Yes, especially in Germany. Also elsewhere, to be honest. […] In that sense, it is an interesting era. Also to study what happens just after such a catastrophe as the first world war in a country. Also in the field of philosphy. […] You’ve actually said it already. The text we are going to talk about this afternoon is a text from 1921. So that’s not long after the end of the war at all. Also in a country that had great turbulence, at that time, from the left and from the right. So it was actually about opponents of the Weimar Republic from the left and from the right. Actually from the very beginning.”
Theo de Wit: “People on the left were also quite critical of the social democrats under Friedrich Ebert, German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the first president of Germany from 1919 (until his death in office in 1925), at the time. Who in his own way was also a supporter of the war.
Willem de Witte: “These had already split from the Social Democrats at an early stage of that war. Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, people like that. Those already split off from the Social Democrats at that early stage of that war. Approach: you support that war, we are totally against it. That also festered, of course, in that first period of the Weimar Republic? Of course, you can also see that before the end of the First World War, Germany was still basically an Empire. It was not a democracy. With that Weimar Republic, Germany also became a form of true parliamentary democracy for the first time in its history. There again, there are a lot of people and types on the right who are quite critical of that parliamentary process.”
Theo de Wit: “Correct. So, Weimar was an experiment. Benjamin was born in 1892. So he was young. He did not fight in the First World War. In fact, he more or less avoided the war. Mainly actually because of personal experiences. One of his friends had committed suicide, things like that. He came from affluent Jewish parents. Not so prosperous that he never had any financial problems. Because once he had to flee from the Nazis, he lived in Paris for a while. There he lived in great poverty.”
Willem de Witte: “He had to borrow money from friends and write very humiliating letters to close acquaintances of his. This actually plays out throughout his life.”
Theo de Wit: “Yes, that actually has been at the forefront of his life. And he didn’t get old either, 48. He dies in 1940. Quite a tragic life in that respect too. He is on the run from the Nazis, literally trying to flee through the Pyrenees towards Spain. There he risks being rounded up again to be handed over to the Gestapo. Then he overdosed on morphine. So he basically ended his life.”
Willem de Witte: “While the next day the border just reopens. The company he travelled with does move on to Spain and Benjamin himself draws the short straw. That whole bad luck motif plays on throughout his life.”
Theo de Wit: “Benjamin has written an awful lot. It was only in 1972 that the complete writings were published. So that’s many years later, 32 years. There were writings published earlier but the real collected work is only available from the 1970s onwards. In his own time, Benjamin had little success with his writings. He occasionally wrote for newspapers. He wrote essays and essays with which he did earn something, but even his dissertation was rejected. That is really quite a catastrophe for any PhD student. So Benjamin is an example of someone with a tragic life. All the more interesting that after his death, he has a huge reception to this day. In the sense of people taking an interest in certain parts of his work. That work is itself very heterogeneous. He wrote a lot about art, about language, aesthetics in general. But also some on political philosophical topics that we will actually talk about today. He is hard to fit into a box anyway.”
Willem de Witte: “Metaphysical themes like time and the nature of reality, epistemic issues, very broad.”
Theo de Wit: “Benjamin is also hard to place in terms of content. Some say he was a Marxist, but then I would say. He was, in part. A neo-Marxist, I would rather say, or even stronger. Rather, he was a kind of Jewish mystic Marxist. He didn’t fit into any scheme of diehard Marxists you had in those days. On the contrary.”
Willem de Witte: “For example, the Frankfurt School, with representatives like Adorno and Horkheimer who, of course, pick up Marx’s thinking much more explicitly, who also read it very well, by the way. Benjamin himself has a few close friends who are Marxists.” (Adorno and Horkheimer believe that in the process of “enlightenment,” modern philosophy had become over-rationalized and an instrument of technocracy.)
Theo de Wit: “For example, the Frankfurt School, with representatives like Adorno and Horkheimer who, of course, pick up Marx’s thinking much more explicitly, who also read it very well, by the way. Benjamin himself has a few close friends who are Marxists. […] Adorno was a good friend, also Bertolt Brecht. But Benjamin was a wonderfully individualistic figure who to this day is hard to fit into a movement, including in terms of content. For example, one of the things you find in Benjamin, and you can already make this quite topical, is his attention to previous lineages, and enslaved ancestors, in particular. That is a constant theme with Benjamin.”
Willem de Witte: “Beautifully said. An appeal emanates from a tradition.”
Theo de Wit: “Yes, from historic lines, from a tradition of suffering histories. There is, of course, an allegiance to Jewish tradition in that. That you have to look to your ancestors first. What was their history? Well, when we look now. If we update it anyway. Seeing what happened during the provincial elections with the Civic Farmers Party (the BBB Party), I think. One of the dimensions of what is actually happening today, that this party has won such a huge victory, also has to do with the tendency of Liberal politics, which we have had for a number of decades now, on anything to do with the past, with historical lines, with tradition with agrarian tradition, to actually consider these lines, at best, as a kind of frill. If you look at agricultural history since World War II. In a way, I am an example myself because I come from a farming family. Then you can see that that history is pretty spectacular. There is only a tenth left of the number of farms that still existed in 1950. And it has been accompanied by a huge increase in scale. These are histories that have taken quite a toll on the fact that most people who used to become farmers naturally no longer do so. The whole status and power of being a farmer has totally changed. Those histories actually for a mainly liberal government actually pretty uninteresting. If we can learn anything from the victory of the Farmer-Citizen Party (BBB Party), it is also that we should not ignore the wisdom, the experiential knowledge of farmers, who carry a whole family history with them. Then we are back to Benjamin. Besides the knowledge of experts, scientists, politicians, etc, environmentalists. All relevant. But the wisdom of experts by experience needs to be heard better, given more voice. Therein lies the connection with Benjamin. Benjamin’s impulse was actually to look at the experience of previous generations first, so as not to get caught up in the future, in all his work. […]
Here comes one of the titles he gave himself. “I don’t really have much to say,” Benjamin said once. “I’m a rag collector.” By this, of course, he means first of all to refer to the First World War. The enormous catastrophe, the enormous fragmentation, both of culture, and physically, of bodies, etc. “So I really have little to offer other than to give voice to the rags, and people who wear them.” stated Benjamin. Such was his attitude as an intellectual. So not positing something entirely new, but paying allegiance to tradition, to suffering history. That is Benjamin’s impulse.”
Willem de Witte: “Fragments of that history can be unearthed anywhere.”
Theo de Wit: “Yes, Benjamin’s interest in the past was intense, especially, for example, the 17th century as well. He has written an interesting study on the Baroque, and the German tragedy, as a kind of processing of earlier suffering. Very sharp.”
Willem de Witte: “Those are two great concepts you already mention. The reception of not just tradition, but also the “wound history” of your own ancestors. How that continues to re-emerge in an almost unconscious way. Benjamin names that as the unforgettable, just as trauma is unforgettable. You yourself are no longer aware of what happened. In your subconscious, you carry that aspect with you. So Benjamin magnifies that to people scale or society scale. A society too can carry certain wounds. A historical lore. Nice to pick up on that aspect using Benjamin’s violence text ,. But also that contrast you outline. A more lived form of experience versus a way of considering experience according to certain stratified frameworks, statistical, technocratic, functionalist, control-oriented. So we strongly encounter that distinction in what Benjamin elaborates in his violence text. Perhaps to follow your own example and suggestions about the course of our conversation a little more closely. It is, of course, already in the title of the text “Zur Kritik der Gewalt”. How thoughtful and complex Benjamin writes. We can already devote preliminary discussions to the central thesis in that title. He interprets that “Gewalt” concept in his own specific way and that “Kritik” concept in his own specific way. Perhaps we could unpack those two concepts before we delve a little deeper into the texts.”
Theo de Wit: “That’s right. The title of the text “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” is very short. In Dutch, that is translated, not incorrectly I think, “A critical consideration of violence”, by Mark Wildschut. But even that translation can also lead you astray. Because the word “Gewalt” in German has an interesting ambiguity. It is violence, as we talk about it, violence. Brutal violence, including state violence, for example, it can be. Police violence. In addition, it actually just means, power, or authority, even. As you speak of “geistige gewalt” in German. That’s just the power, authority of the church.”
Willem de Witte: “When we talk about the separation of powers, these are the powers you can think of.”
Theo de Wit: “Power in the sense of Potentia, which is Latin, the power, authority of the state. But it also has that meaning of real physical application of force. When you read the text, sometimes it is not easy either, to choose the right word meaning. Because every time there is the German word “Gewalt”. Sometimes you have to translate it with power, sometimes you have to translate it with violence. That’s one. And then the word “Kritik”. Critical consideration of violence. We might initially say. It means something like, he is against violence. He criticises violence. We might say that. Yet that is not actually what the essay is about. Rather, you might say, perhaps that is also a kind of translation, “A critical examination of violence.” in that double sense, power and/or physical violence. A critical questioning, assessment. Something like that. That’s what the word criticism means, in German. A critical evaluation of violence. This is how it could possibly be translated into fluent Dutch, that everyone understands. That’s kind of the first problem then, that the word “Gewalt” is used in different ways in that text.”
Willem de Witte: “Different overtones of that term. So Benjamin also makes grateful use of that. He’s also going to problematise the associations with that term, deploy it in an interesting way in his argument.”
Theo de Wit: “If you ask me to summarise in one sentence what the violence text is about: It’s about law and justice. How do those relate to each other? We all know. Law is not the same as justice. There is law that is nothing but the codification of injustice. Think, for instance, of the Apartheid regime. There, apartheid is simply enshrined in law. But think also, for example, of what we ourselves experienced with the benefits scandal. There, too, it has become clear that justice has been used to do and cover up injustice. Everyone understands that difference. That there is a difference between law and justice. Also, for that matter, the opposite. Now it gets even more interesting. it may also be that justice turns against law at certain times. Everyone who experiences a strong sense of injustice sooner or later faces the question. Do I settle for the means we have now? Namely, the means of justice. The means of protest, the means of possibly civil disobedience, again relevant. Or should I go further? That is a question of political passion for justice, or righteousness, perhaps another better word here. So, in other words, justice too may at certain times turn against justice, or even against the legal order as such.
Then we come close to things like revolution. A revolution is, of course, an incredibly interesting phenomenon in that respect. A revolution is basically, you want to establish a new order. to do that, you have to overthrow the old order. From the old order’s point of view, of course, that is illegality. Today, it is usually called terrorism. Even the worst despots, see any opposition as terrorism. So as a revolutionary, you are faced with the question, to how far can I go? Of course, that too is incredibly relevant. Think of Extinction Rebellion and movements like this. But even the Peasant-Citizen Movement. They too have faced the question, can we settle for purely legal means? That is a tremendous task. In the Weimar Republic, this also played out very concretely. There were simply communists who wanted to turn Weimar into a communist salvation state. We had the Russian revolution just a few years behind us. So there was a huge boost there. So this also plays a role with Benjamin. A certain interest in those more extreme forms of struggle, some of which he also supported himself. For example. Benjamin’s text of violence at one point talks about strikes and the right to strike, or even more fundamentally, a so-called proletarian general strike. That may sound a bit old-fashioned by now, but a proletarian general strike, that was actually something like a strike that is not merely aimed at earning more wages or better working conditions. No, on a new order. So hence that distinction that plays a role throughout Benjamin’s text, between so-called maintaining violence and edifying violence. Enforcing, of course, is police violence, state violence, to protect the existing order. Founding violence, the eventual foundation of a new order. All the dilemmas thereby given, with these two forms of violence that interest Benjamin in this writing.”
Willem de Witte: “You basically say, violence can only manifest itself in two ways. Either it manifests itself in the form of a founding violence that seeks to establish a new order or it is a violence that contributes to the maintenance of the existing order. But any violence that thus does not belong to the latter category, enforcing violence, law-preserving violence, must therefore also represent a form of threat to any existing legal order. Because that violence against that existing order, thus makes clear, a new order is emerging, illustrates it. So that also illustrates why, as in the case of the peasant protests, or as in the case of an Extinction Rebellion, a state has to go back to manifesting its own violence very explicitly, because it is, at least, in Benjamin’s words, actually concerned about the ability of those protesters, those revolutionaries, if you want to call them that, to establish a new order.”
Theo de Wit: “Yes, so for example, very recently. Maybe many people have seen that video from the VVD, an election commercial. What did you see there? You saw people there committing attacks or throwing stones at police cars. Things like that. Then came the message. They are going to vote. You too, right? The VVD is positioning itself here as the party of law and order. The party of enforcing force, if necessary. that is, of course, the message, which you can hardly miss. So in that sense, this Benjamin distinction is again becoming quite relevant. Look, we of course had a pretty stable liberal democracy in the Netherlands for a while. If you look at the rest of the world, in many ways the Netherlands is still a beacon of stability and peace, and even prosperity. So we also need to keep things in perspective. But at the same time, you have to say. There has been quite a lot of rumblings in the Netherlands for about 20 years, at least. […] This also makes such thinkers like Benjamin less difficult, less abstract for us when it comes to divisions between founding and maintaining violence, or even anarchic violence. Benjamin talks about that too. One finds in Benjamin’s text on violence a certain uneasiness with law as such. He is not just blindly in favour of either founding violence or enforcing violence, because, again, that can be made very clear in our own terms. We all know, of course, revolution, counter-revolution. Often it is lead for lead. Globally, too. So, the new rulers turn out to be just as bad, or even worse than the previous ones. That too is part of the wisdom of humanity. That insight.”
Willem de Witte: “So there is a kind of cycle in these two forms of violence that Benjamin illustrates. The law of conservative violence is again replaced by a new order. That one is also going to try to preserve itself again. Eternal cycle, mythical cycle, Benjamin says, of violence.”
Theo de Wit: “A kind of moving back and forth, which of course as an ordinary person, as a citizen, frankly, you can get pretty depressed about. Oh, is that world history? The new rulers are just as bad as the previous ones. Or they are at first doing something new for a while but then it’s back to the old, or worse. It is not hard to find examples of this.
In my youth, for instance, it was quite bon ton on to Nicaragua to help those peasants, those revolutionaries. Meanwhile, we know that the same rulers of those days have established a terrible dictatorship in that country. This is just an example from my own lifetime. I still knew people who went to Nicaragua with good intentions, with good passion. So Benjamin’s insight is actually a lot further along in that respect. It states: apparently edifying and conservative/enforcing violence alternate in a kind of cycle. Is there a way out of that? That, of course, is then the next question. There are passages in that text where you notice, he is looking for a way out of that cycle. Then he suddenly comes up with a whole new term that did not appear at all in the first piece. There he suddenly talks about divine violence, in the play. You then think “divine violence”? Is this where the devout Jew suddenly starts speaking? What is this? I also chewed on that text quite a bit, at that point. What does Benjamin mean?”
Willem de Witte: “Indeed, he gives no definition as such. Again, the definitions he gives are mysterious in their own way, so it remains a great mystery to many interpreters of this text as to exactly what Benjamin means.”
Theo de Wit: “When I read and reread the text. I did that several times, of course, because it is not a simple text. Let’s be honest in that. Then I eventually come to something like this. What Benjamin is actually describing is: practising justice is actually always something unique. You can only be righteous on a concrete point, on a concrete case, event.”
Willem de Witte: “You can’t really make a rule: in every single case, you can act exactly the same and you’ll be fine. On the contrary. You have to weigh up each time”
Theo de Wit: “Correct. So there is something very unique in every act of justice. As soon as you turn that into a machine, injustice actually starts rearing its head.”
Willem de Witte: “Justice is situational. So the moment you indeed actually do exactly that aspect of justice, of trying to create a universal standard that is valid everywhere and always, is exactly actually that of which Benjamin disputes the possibility? You can’t do that without falling into the same cycle of (government) violence again? And so exactly that is one of the reasons why he is also trying to say, you cannot take justice as a rule.”
Theo de Wit: “There is something very excessive about justice. Drop that word. Excessive. It is a kind of excess. An excess of justice. Law, of course, is concerned with justice. Otherwise, justice will soon be over. Without that pretence. At the same time, each act of justice is unique, situational. Something very close to that, that it is nevertheless very easy for us to understand, is that every good judge knows what this means. Because a judge is not just mechanically applying the law, looking in the law book, “What does it say there. Did this gentleman, lady do that? It says that punishment there.” No, a good judge looks at the unique case, the unique person standing there before him/her. In a sense, the judge at that point has to invent the law too. Of course, there are rules, there are frameworks. Also important. But in order to do justice, in the sense of being and remaining fair to that person standing there, a judge also has to interpret and thus, in a sense, reinvent the law.”
Willem de Witte: “He cannot derive a legal judgement as if it were a syllogism from the laws that are enshrined?”
Theo de Wit: “Exactly, no deduction. There is an element in there of what Benjamin implies in his text that doing justice is new in every new singel, individual case. That difference between law and justice. That justice is also always at odds with law in some way, which Benjamin then connects with divine. With the notion “divine violence”. I have been re-reading the text in recent days. We naturally associate that word “God” with all sorts of things. Rather, it stands for exactly that difference between law and justice. It is, as it were, the metaphor of that difference: law is not the same as justice. The cherishing of that, the precious of that, the sovereign also of that […] At the end of the text, Benjamin says : the divine violence may be called the sovereigne. He associates that with that word God. To maintain that difference also, to recognise it, every time. That also makes the text still super topical/up-to-date. Because, yes, that experience of law versus justice, who doesn’t go through that? Even in a country like the Netherlands. Not to mention people living in countries where violence is the order of the day, every day. I’m not even talking about wars right now. In that, the violence text has lost none of its relevance.”
Willem de Witte: “It might also be interesting to unpack some aspects of that divine violence that you just named in more detail. For a start, perhaps to say something about it after all. At one point, Benjamin discusses the ten commandments from the old testament.”
Theo de Wit: “He does a kind of reinterpretation of those 10 commandments. So he is saying exactly here that these are not rules that should apply the same everywhere and always. These are guidelines. So there is exactly that aspect in there. It requires constant reinterpretation of the law. Even when it comes to that famous rule “Thou shalt not kill.” the sixth commandment. Of that, he says, look, of course you can take that dogmatically. Then you consider it a kind of absolute norm. But Benjamin argues that that is not the right way of dealing with the sixth commandment. So it’s about wrestling with that command “thou shalt not kill”In some cases, that can lead to you doing kills. He leaves that possibility open. So, extremely put, it can be just to kill, good to do. That is the way Benjamin then reads such a commandment.”
Willem de Witte: “”
Theo de Wit: “”
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
Theo de Wit:
Willem de Witte:
