The Knowledge Foundation from an Objective Exigency of Redemption: A Systematic Line through Walter Benjamin’s Work

Abstract

In this paper I state that throughout Walter Benjamin’s writings a constant element can be found: the aim to ground knowledge on demand of redemption of the object. I show that in the four realms where the Benjaminian theory of knowledge is developed –philosophy, art criticism, translation and historical knowledge–, the principal categories of his conception stress this demand by a peculiar use of the suffix “barkeit” (–bility), present in the concepts of “solutionabiliy” of the philosophical task, the “criticizability” of the artwork, the “translatability” of language and the “now of cognizability” of the past.