Abstract
Enzo Traverso analyzes the relationship between Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt in the context of the European crisis of the 1930s. Benjamin devoted to Schmitt several passages of his book on German Trauerspiel (1928) and in 1930 wrote a letter to him, where he emphasized his affinities with the theoretician of the dictatorship and “decisionism”. The latter did not responded but conserved this letter, which was the basis of his discussions with the Jewish-German Philosopher Jakob Taubes after the II World War. Traverso underlines the impossibility of a dialogue between the revolutionary form of Jewish Messianism defended by Benjamin and the conservative form of Political Theology elaborated by Schmitt. Both shared the vision of History as a growing catastrophe and claimed the necessity of a political decision, but their therapies were radically opposed: Benjamin identified the coming of the Messianic era with the proletarian revolution, whereas Schmitt welcomed Nazism as a sort of modern Katechon (the defeater of anti-Christ in the Catholic tradition).
Keywords:
Walter Benjamin; Carl Schmitt; State of exception