On the Concept of History
«T HESES ON THE P HILOSOPHY OF H ISTORY »
by
Walter Benjamin
世界精神卫生日
I叶公好龙是什么意思
企业信息管理师The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play a winning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a countermove. A puppet in Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboard placed on a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this table was transparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback who was an expert chess player sat inside and guided the puppet’s hand by means of strings. One can imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called ‘historical materialism’ is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the rvices of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.
II
‘One of the most remarkable characteristics of human nature,’ writes Lotze, ‘is, alongside so much lfishness in specific instances, the freedom from envy which the prent displays toward the future.’ Reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly colored by the time to which the cour of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arou envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed,摩托车驾照科目一
among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themlves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a cret agreement between past generations and the prent one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be ttled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of that.
III
A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for hi元宵节的画怎么画
story. To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past-which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation a l'ordre du jour — and that day is Judgment Day.
IV
Seek for food and clothing first, then
the Kingdom of God shall be added unto you.
Hegel, 1807
The class struggle, which is always prent to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist. Nevertheless, it is not in the form of the spoils which fall to the victor that the latter make their prence felt in the class struggle. They manifest themlves in this struggle as courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude. They have retroactive force and will constantly call in question every victory, past and prent, of the
rulers. As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a cret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history. A historical materialist must be aware of this most incons
picuous of all transformations.
V
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be ized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never en again. ‘The truth will not run away from us’: in the historical outlook of historicism the words of Gottfried Keller mark the exact point where historical materialism cuts through historicism. For every image of the past that is not recognized by the prent as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably. (The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.)
VI
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to ize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling class. In every era the attempt must b
e made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not cead to be victorious.
VII
Consider the darkness and the great cold
In this vale which resounds with mystery.
Brecht, The Threepenny Opera
To historians who wish to relive an era, Fustel de Coulanges recommends that they blot out everything they know about the later cour of history. There is no better way of characterising the method with which historical materialism has broken. It is a process of empathy who origin is the indolence of the heart, acedia, which despairs of grasping and holding the genuine historical image as it flares up briefly. Among medieval theologians it was regarded as the root cau of sadness. Flaubert, who was familiar with it, wrote: ‘Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu être triste pour re
ssusciter Carthage.’* The nature of this sadness stands out more clearly if one asks with whom the adherents of historicism actually empathize. The answer is inevitable: with the victor. And all rulers are the heirs of tho who conquered before them. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers. Historical materialists know what that means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the prent rulers step over tho who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himlf from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.
* ‘Few will be able to guess how sad one had to be in order to resuscitate Carthage.’
甜象草VIII
The tradition of the oppresd teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are ‘still’ possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge—unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives ri to it is untenable.
IX
My wing is ready for flight,
I would like to turn back.If I stayed timeless time,
I would have little luck.
Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit,
阿q正传好词好句ich kehrte gern zurück,
denn blieb ich auch lebendige Zeit,
ich hätte wenig Glück.
Gerherd Scholem,
‘Gruss vom Angelus’
不得不用英语怎么说
A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he es one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay,
