The Kantian foundations of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of language

Abstract

Departing from considerations about the early texts that Benjamin dedicated to the question of language – without neglecting other texts of this period –, we intend to suggest the importance that Kant’s reflection had to the formulation of his linguistic thought. In this sense, we turn mainly to the Second Part of The Critique of Judgment, in which the important concept of “Zweckmässigkeit” (“adequacy of purpose”) is developed, especially reflecting on nature’s perfection, in its teleological dimension. Benjamin reviews this concept and – elaborating a series of images about the natural dimension of language, in line with the propositions of a thinker like Humboldt – develops a philosophy of language at the same time natural and theological. After having demonstrated textually the existence of this relation between the Teleological Faculty of Judgment in Kant and the philosophy of language in the young Benjamin, we intend to suggest that this one gives in to what the philosopher of Königsberg considered the natural illusion of reason, because, in postulating a “metahistorical affinity between the languages”, based on the supersensible concept of “die reine Sprache” (“the pure language”), Benjamin approaches something that escapes the possibility of human experience and proposes dogma from this point on.