Ethics and Benjamin's Angel of History

[L Spencer]

The question posed by Kenneth Mackendrick (about whether moral 
decisions are possible within unfreedom) had such a tenuos connection 
with Benjamin's commentary on the "Angelus Novus" by Paul Klee ... 

[Perhaps one could cite this as an instance of allegorization. As 
Benjamin points out, the allegorist begins by invoking a familiar 
interpretive framework but the connections drawn end up so attenuated 
that it seems that anything can stand for anything and we are left 
with increasingly mute fragments.]

... but a simple reply seems in order. The moral dimension of a 
decision taken in extremis - in unfreedom (situations of torture, 
violence, powerlessness) - is a revelation of the irradicable 
scintilla of freedom in all human action. In this sense, Sartre 
described a reality many have lived. Freedom within unfreedom, a 
particular dialectics of morality.

But through Hoelderlin, Nietzsche, Rosenzweig, to Benjamin this 
question is explored with other resonances which take in "myth", 
"tragedy", the moral meaning of silence, the notion of a moral order 
which succumbs to myth. The angel, practically ubiquitous, seems 
strangely out of place in any of this. It is worth looking at Klee's 
picture. Klee's angel is not altogether "angelic". There is no 
justification for identifying him in any sentimental way with 
"good"... Like the "justice" promised for the Last Day we are 
somewhere "beyond good and evil" and only thus is history citable in 
ALL of its moments...even the most terrible.

















l.spencer@tasc.ac.uk

Lloyd Spencer, School of Media
Trinity & All Saints University College, 
Leeds LS18 5HD, England

Tel. (0113) 2 837 186     
Fax. (0113) 2 837 200