>Social Democratic theory, and even more its practice, have been formed by a conception of progress which did not adhere to reality but made dogmatic claims. Progress as pictured in the minds of Social Democrats was, first of all, the progress of mankind itself (and not just advances in men’s ability and knowledge). Secondly, it was something boundless, in keeping with the infinite perfectibility of mankind. Thirdly, progress was regarded as irresistible, something that automatically pursued a straight or spiral course. Each of these predicates is controversial and open to criticism. However, when the chips are down, criticism must penetrate beyond these predicates and focus on something that they have in common. The concept of the historical progress of mankind cannot be sundered from the concept of its progression through a homogenous, empty time. A critique of the concept of such a progression must be the basis of any criticism of the concept of progress itself.
I want to say Social Democrats will never recover but his obsession with critiquing progress leads to ambiguity, especially with the last sentence. Wdhm by concept of historical progress vs. concept of progression through homogeneous, empty time. Is this another appeal to the authoritarian nature of historical narratology?
You're gonna have to forgive me because my english is shit for mundane tasks, let alone explaining Benjamin. But what he's arguing is that social democracy tries to generalize progress as a constant through history, when the very notion of progress is tied to a very specific material-historical condition, and that there is no REAL progress if we accept progress in the terms of capitalism. Basically, he's saying social democracy can only generate more capitalism and that reformism is generating empty time, false progress which further delays the oncoming revolution.
Jaxon James
And no, social democrats never recovered, they just closed their eyes and years and yelled while capitalism completely disassembled any possibility of a worldwide revolutionary left and things have come to the point where guys like Sanders or Corbyn, extremely moderate socdems, have become the most radical shit there is.
Ryan Ortiz
It's a sad state of affairs
>want to destroy capitalism >need to read guys like benjamin >need to go to university >spend years of life at university >realize university is capitalism
Jaxson Perry
Plz stop sharing Benjamin on here. Don't let him be defiled by the memesters and pseuds.
David Allen
/pol/ here. Want me to redpill you on this guy and the Frankfurt School?
Jack Cooper
He is saying that the idea of progress rests upon the notion of it progressing linearly through homogenous/empty time. The basis of a critique of the notion of progress must then take basis in a critique of the ground on which this conception of progress rests. History passing linearly through a homogenous, empty time.
Benjamin's whole project then is to rethink the notion of historical time. Basically then, history breaks down into dialectical images/constellations of fragmented meaning of past/present.
NOT stories/narratives because they presuppose empty/homogenous time. (And yes, then historical narrative is authoritarian).
Don't bother, we already know what you are gonna say.
>'jewish zionist/cultural marxist trying to employ occult kabbalist/masonic techniques in the project of white genocide'.
Go back to /pol/.
Leo Johnson
>she dropped
Ryder Mitchell
Honest question: why is Benjamin admired so much by some people. I actually studied a lot of his writings during my academical education. I started out considering him an interesting guy and finished considering him a neglectable, drivelling idiot. He's drivelling on a very high level imo but he's still drivelling. I know some logicians critizised him heavily for his inconsistency and contradictoriness (and I pretty much think the same about him) but his admirers praise him for the very same thing which they call his "intended incomprehensibility". Honest question: Does he have some (let's say) "objective" qualities I simply don't get or is he just some kind of an academic fad (maybe due to his biography).
Jaxson Murphy
which logicians
Logan Bailey
To be honest, I can't drop names (since I stopped dealing with him quite some time ago and I neither have copies of works dealing with him at home nor on my computer anymore). But you don't even have to ask: his writing style is a logician's nightmare - there are no conclusions, there's no reasoning, there's no logical structure at all. I actually have a bad feeling if someone says "Benjamin said this...", "The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction tells that..." because it's quite impossible to prove what Benjamin is actually saying in a logical way. It's like a dreamy, vague stream of consciousness; a little bit like Montaigne but in a more enigmatic style. I can appreciate that from an aesthetic point of view, but as someone who wants to understand things and structurs and processes I simply hate it because it doesn't help me at all.
Nathan Carter
Just another delusional commie
Michael Bailey
good post
Samuel Adams
>Want me to redpill you on this guy and the Frankfurt School? you mean the bullshit conspiracy theory about critical theory, that somehow manages to be a watered down boogieman version of critical theory?
Gavin Reyes
I can guarantee you Benjamin is not the only philosopher who turns to shit if you autistically aproach them as a logician. He's not trying to write a epistemological treatise or some shit, his goal is completely different and judging it by logical standards seems pretty dumb.
Caleb Howard
>you're an autist and a dum dum, ben is on the money :p
Nathan Brooks
>imma use this standard which has absolutely nothin to do with anything the philosopher in question is trying to do just so I can show my redpilled friends how dumb marxsist are :^)
Brandon Morris
He completely btfo'd dialectical materialist Marxists, imo (aka orthodox Marxists).
He perfectly pointed out how they're quietist fucks, intellectually lazy and expect everything to be given to them.
For all the shit /pol/ gives Benjamin and Adorno...they really strongly critiqued Marxist-Hegelian teleology and no fucking orthodox Marxist wants to deal with that. Monkeys like Slavoj still think their revolution is guaranteed.
Dylan Williams
>being logical is an "standard" kek why are marxists so fucking retarded?
Josiah Wilson
Do you not get Benjamin and Adorno?
They bitch slapped Marxists for thinking their revolution is inevitable. This is one of the biggest beliefs in Marxism and they crushed it.
Josiah Moore
Marxist here. The revolution is still inevitable no matter what your meme philosophers says. Seriously read Marx.
Brandon Richardson
It's over, kid. Time to stop LARPing as the next Che and grow up
Hudson Miller
wow you really convinced me
Chase Moore
the exact logic that prevents it from happening
I basically split from Marxism because of how stubborn and intellectually spoiled Marxists are. How they stick their head in the sand and avoid any problems with the theory. You guys are a fucking gift to capitalists and that's what Benjamin was on about.
Isaac Nguyen
tips victor history
you sure you're not a capitalist?
Asher Watson
see:
Nathan Parker
You're NOT a revolutionary warrior. Your teenage riots mean nothing
Jacob Wilson
lmao
Jose Gray
Yeah, all the Benjamin and Adorno readers better go to /pol/. Wow. I've seen it all.
James Torres
That's right: society at large laughs at you and your pretense. Not a hero, merely an annoyance
Jack Parker
lmao
Lincoln Hernandez
We can only hope one day you'll grow up and stop being a narcisistic, egomaniacal teen
Isaiah Flores
Is this how all philosophers talk? He seems to be saying nothing of importance at all.
Thomas Anderson
lmao
Brody Hill
exactly. no philosophers have been able to refute marx. they all say a lot without saying much
Adrian Turner
There's a lot of Marxists that have refuted Marx. Arrighi, Harvey, Debord, Adorno and Benjamin (of course).
You just don't read.
David Martinez
lmao
Connor Murphy
>STOP TALKING THE REVOLUTION IS HAPPENING SOON STOP TALKING THE REVOLUTION IS HAPPENING SOON RREEEEE
Julian Miller
lmao
Charles Green
> lmao
That's exactly what Benjamin characterized as quietist Marxism. You're doing it in your very post.
Jaxon Thompson
lmao
Eli Hernandez
Does anyone else find it strange that "progress" in the minds of modern liberals, is basically the opposite of eugenics? They want societies to become less intelligent, less attractive, and more diverse/chaotic. The only "progress" they are right about is environmental and their rejection of religion. But their steadfast egalitarianism feels like a race to the bottom.
Owen Davis
Not on the mind of "modern" liberals you fucking dolt, this is the basis to fucking liberalism as a whole, and not "liberalism" in the retarded american sense either, liberalism in the actual historical and academical sense.
Carter Reyes
The proponents of the American/French revolutions were egalitarians only in the legal sense (nobody is above the law). Culturally they did not consider all cultures or people as equal.
Nathan Morgan
The problem is that liberals think there's always progress being made. They don't get negative dialectics. They forgot the purpose of progress. Instead we have progress without purpose. We're regressing. This is literally what Adorno argued in Dialectic of the Enlightenment.
The cult of progress always masks a regress within it.
Ryan Gonzalez
I'm actually this guy Didn't say anything else in this thread (just in case you get confused about with whom you're dealing with). I actually have a M.A. degree in philosophy so you don't have to tell me about other philosophers. But I still don't get it. What's Benjamin's goal? I mean, maybe I'm too much of a Wittgensteinian, but I still think "What cannot be spoken about should be kept quiet". If you understand the things you're talking about you should be able to explain them - explain them in simple words and with logical consistency. But that's not what Benjamin's doing. You can argue about the experience of texts/speeches to be an end in itself (for example what Meister Eckhart did in his preachings) - but Benjamin doesn't seem to be about that, too. So... what exactly is his effing goal?
Blake Reed
Yeah bro soc-dems are so silly! Let's dismantle stable projects that actually improved the conditions for workers everywhere and try our hands at the revolution again. It will work this time, I swear!
Jayden Ross
It's basically Pauline messianism, when it comes down to it.
It's what Taub and Agamben concluded.
Evan Nguyen
The tricky thing is replying to Hegel. It's what makes Benjamin and Adorno so dense. How do you reformulate a desire for revolution without encouraging the idea that this revolution is inevitable and guaranteed to be successful.
I'll admit it's opaque as fuck, but Benjamin is after a kind of spontaneity in his notion of messianic time.
Wyatt Butler
Veeky Forums is a leftist marxist board, fuck off
Gabriel Evans
Never understood the Benjamin meme in academia. He's very popular amongst burned-out lefty boomers who traded in youthful activism for a cushy, tenured professorship. The way these types mimic Benjamin's melodramatic writing style and melancholic outlook is insufferable.
Hudson Reed
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Benjamin believe he was the reincarnation of a 17th Century Eastern European rabbi who claimed to be the Jewish messiah? I don't mean that to make him sound like a blithering lunatic, but he had some esoteric ideas.
I think he's popular with academics in the humanities primarily because of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, since it can serve as a justification for treating literature and other art in a purely political fashion.
Liam Brooks
>didn't Benjamin believe he was the reincarnation of a 17th Century Eastern European rabbi who claimed to be the Jewish messiah Can you verify this by a quote or something else, please. Just out of curiosity - I never heard of this before.
Carson Ward
Looks like I was mistaken, Benjamin didn't consider himself to be a "reincarnation", but a close Jewish friend of his, Gershom Scholem, alternated between seeing Benjamin and seeing himself as a sort of Kabbalistic recurrence of the 17th century Jewish prophet Sabbatai Zevi, who claimed to be the Jewish messiah. It looks like Benjamin was interested in the Sabbateans as well, and helped Scholem conduct research on Zevi.
I figured out where I got the "reincarnation" and "Eastern European" notions from: Walter Benjamin felt a close affinity with 18th century Polish Jewish heretic Jacob Frank, who claimed and believed he was an actual reincarnation of Sabbatai Zevi. I must have elided Jacob Frank into Walter Benjamin.
I think that a fair portion of us are neither /pol/heads nor marxists.
Ayden Russell
>judging it by logical standards seems pretty dumb.
No dumber words have ever been spoken.
Leo Powell
this
Owen Howard
Social Democracy and free market capitalism? It's all the same as far as I am concerned.
I am waiting for something world changing to occur, such as actual Communism or National Socialism etc. Democracy is overrated and leaves you choosing between the two same neo liberal demagogues every time.
Kevin Gomez
>I am waiting for something world changing to occur
