RHETORIC OF NAMES AND SPRACHE IN WALTER BENJAMIN

ABSTRACT

The present work proposes to analyze the rhetoric of names in the text “On language as such and on the language of man”. Based on this, through a way of expository interpretation, we will address how Walter Benjamin’s rhetorical use of theological figures is elaborated in its conception of speech (Sprache) as lógos, the status of its unconditional character and the unspeakable. For this task, we will expose the constitutive incompatibility between the category of name (as an element of analysis of the rhetoric instance of speech) and the category of sign (which, in its instrumental characterization, is reduced to a logical-mathematical unit of analysis). The exposition of these moments will be the starting point from which we will arrive at the following final considerations: that constitutive incompatibility allows us to think about the peculiar paradoxical character on which speech is founded.

Keywords:
Sprache; Lógos; Rhetoric; Name; Sign.