History and ruin in the work of Walter Benjamin. From Origin of German Trauerspiel to «Theses on the philosophy of history»

Abstract

This essay aims to point out the presence in Walter Benjamin’s habilitation treatise Origin of German Trauerspiel of some of the most relevant ideas which he plants in his “Theses on the philosophy of history”. To do so, we shall firstly explore Benjamin’s last work focusing on his defense of the need for the materialist historiographer to consider history from the perspective of his own present, on the vision of history as a ruinous catastrophe, an idea which Benjamin sets against historicism, and on the revolutionary potential highlighted in this understanding of the historical process. Following which, we undertake an analysis of those aspects of Benjamin’s habilitation treatise which can be illuminated by “Theses on the philosophy of history”. These include the significance gained by the notions of constellation and monad, which points to an interpretation of the Baroque shaped throughout Benjamin’s era, and the perception of history attributed to this period, which is also marked by its ruinous and catastrophic character, as revealed in his examination of Trauerspiel and the way it employs allegory.