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Loss of Experience and Experience of Loss: Remarks on the Problem of the Lost Revolution in

the Work of Benjamin and His Fellow CombatantsAuthor(s): Wolfgang Fietkau and BenjaminSource: New German Critique, No. 39, Second Special Issue on Walter Benjamin (Autumn,1986), pp. 169-178Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488124 .

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Loss

of

Experience

nd

Experience

f

Loss:

Remarks

n

the

Problem

f

theLostRevolution

in

the

Work

f

Benjamin

nd

His

Fellow

Combatants

by Wolfgang

Fietkau

That the fame

Benjamin

so

fatefully

and

(un)successfully

ran

away

from all his life has

finally caught

up

with him

post

mortem

predis-

poses

his

work,

in

the wake

of

the

complete

edition

of his collected

writings,

not

only

to

a

perspective

that should

eventually

be

freer

from

preconceptions,

but

also

to

a

neutralization that

would

seem

to

be the

shadow

side

of

every

academic

consecration.

Its

sunny

side,

however,

is the opportunity to recognize on the basis of its now unchallenged

greatness

certain inherent limitations as well. The latter

are the

con-

cern

of the

following

sketches,

which

place

certain

aspects

of his oeuvre

in a

context

that

links

Benjamin's

thinking

to that

of his

fellow

com-

batants

on

the left and the

conservative-revolutionary right.

If

it is true

that,

in

however

sublimated

a

manner,

the best

minds

of a

given

era end

up

wrestling

with

the same

problems,

it would be

worth

investigating

to

what extent

Benjamin belongs

-

by

not

belonging

-

to the

groupings

of

the left

and

the

right.

However evident

or dubious

his

participation might appear,

his

non-participation

is

in fact

no

less

striking.

To

define this

non-participation

anew

would

involve

relating

Benjamin's

intellectual

paths

to

the

positions

of that

bourgeois

social

philosopher

who was neither his

opposite

number

nor his

model,

who

was neither the

bNte

oirenor

the

bNte

lanche f

the

German

intelligentsia

and

yet

remained

its

challenging

inspiration

even where

his name

remained

unspoken:

I

am

speaking

of

the

Myth

of

Heidelberg,

Max Weber.

II.

When Max Weber raised

his

voice

in

warning against

the

revolution-

ary

posturing

in

Munich

in

1918,

he linked

his

denunciation

of

the

bloody

carnival to a

sociological analysis

of

present

and future

169



170 Loss

of

Experience

trends

under

the

headings

of mass

democracy

and

bureaucratization.

In contrast to left-wingcritical theories that postulate a polarization of

extremes

and

a breakdown of social

structures,

Weber

registers

a

con-

vergence

of

social forces toward the

center,

one

which

coincides

with

a

complication

of

the structures

at that

center.

If

the

military

defeat

of

the

Reich

eemed

to furnish

the

preconditions

for a

political

revolution,

Weber nonetheless felt

it

necessary

to

warn

against

a belief

that,

however

capable

of

moving

mountains,

was

unable

to

cope

with

ruined

finances

and

a lack of

capital.

The socialist

revolution

appears

obsolete

to

the

bourgeois sociologist

because he

no

longer discerns its objective conditions of possibility. The revolution

nevertheless

develops

a

peculiar

afterlife

of its

own,

one

that

in

several

respects

clarifies

prevalent

states

of mind in

the

1920s.

Bereft

of

its

objective possibilities,

lacking

any

prospect

of

seizing

the

masses,

who

have

long

since taken a

different

turn,

it

leads

a

posthumous

existence

in

the

realm

of

the

philosophical

daydream.

While

intellectuals

still

dream

of

revolution,

its conditions

have

quietly

slipped

away.

From

this

perspective,

as

Rene

K6nig

observed,

the

1920s

were

already

over

before

they

had

begun.

The

posthumous

existence

of

the socialist revolution

evaporates

in

Ernst Bloch's hands into a

theology

an

endangered journey,

a wan-

dering,

a

going astray,

a

search

for

the hidden

homeland;

full of

tragic

disruptions, boiling,

bursting

with

cracks,

eruptions,

lonely

promises,

intermittently

charged

with

the

conscience

of

light (Thomas Miinzer)

-

a

utopian

daydream,

soon to

be

opposed

by

a

complementary

fan-

tasy

on

the

part

of

revolutionary

conservatism.

Hadn't

Marx,

as a Leninist

avant

la

lettre,

n his confrontation

with

Proudhon,

already

let

it

be

known that in

case

the natural

develop-

ment

of

things

failed

to

materialize, violence,

that

is

to

say

the

avant-

garde, would have to create the revolution and impose a dictatorship

upon

the

proletariat?

When

Max

Weber

died

in

1920,

he

bequeathed

to

the

bourgeois

social sciences

a set

of

epistemological

equipmentwhich,

limited

alpari

to

the

everyday

of

the

demystified

world,

nevertheless

kept

track

of

actual

historical

reality.

Academic social

philosophy,

on

the other

hand,

from Sombart

to

Heidegger,

is at this

very

moment

beginning

to

assimilate

Marxism and

bears

witness

in its artificial

distortion

(Ver-

fremdung)

of

the

original

text

( fallen

state

[Verfallenheit],

inauthen-

ticity [Uneigentlichkeit]nstead of self-alienation [Selbstentfremdung])o

the

deep

sense

of

shock

with which

the

post-Wilhelminian

establish-

ment

of the

German

universities

plopped

out of the coziness

of its

bay-

window

seatwhen

confronted with

inflation,

post-war

restlessness

and

social

disorders.



Wolfgang

Fietkau

171

In

1922, Maller

van

den

Bruck

announces

the

redemptive

formula

of a revolution of

nihilism ;

in

1921, however,

Walter

Benjamin

had

likewise

espoused

the nihilism of a

proletarian

general

strike which

sets itself

the sole

task of

annihalating

the

power

of

the state.

While

the

left's

idea

of

revolution,

whether

it

refers

to

Thomas

Miin-

zer

or to

Georges

Sorel,

knows

no

alternative

to

violence,

the revolu-

tionary

conservatism

of

a

Moller

van

den

Bruck,

ErnstJiinger

or

Carl

Schmitt draws

in

turn

upon

the catholic traditionalism

-

whether

in

left-wing (Sorel)

or

right-wing(Maurras) uise

-

which had

also

reached

Germany

n

the aftermath

of

the

Dreyfus

affair.

Thus,

the

newly

imported

French notion of a conservative revolution replaces the intellectual

task which Max

Weber's death

bequeathed

to

German

sociology

as a

kind of

school

assignment:

that

of

a

conceptually

adequate

elaboration

of

the

developing capitalist

structures

in

everyday

life.

Since this French

import,

in contrast to the

original

French

provin-

cial

aristocracy

of

de

Maistre

and

Bonald,

does

not in

any

way

corre-

spond

to

the

everyday reality

of

post-Wilhelminian

Germany,

it

derives

its

existence

as a

backward-turned

utopia

from a

polemic

against

the

values

of

the

cultural

import

of

yesteryear:

the three

holy

maxims of

the French revolution.

The

thinner the surface

of

the

theory,

the

greater

the

temptation

to

make

up

for

its lack

of

historical humus

by way

of

complementary

Ger-

man fictions:

the

enlightened

Prussia,

for

example,

of an

Oswald

Spengler.

If the

revolutionary eschatology

of

the

young

Bloch,

Ben-

jamin

and

Lukaics

ooks

eastward,

the same

pattern

repeats

itself

in

the

revolutionary

conservatism

of

the

Dostoevsky

editor

Mdller

van

den

Bruck as

well

as in

the

national

Bolshevist

dreams

of

an

Ernst

Niekisch,

who

develops

the

terrifying

visions

of a Barres

or

a

Maurras

as

left

Ger-

man

fantasies

of a

nation

extending

from Vladivostok to

the

Rhein,

under German rule

of

course.

If

the

left-wing

revolution fails as

a

result

of

the

structural

transfor-

mation

of its

preconditions,

which

Weber

summarizes under

the

headings bureaucracy

and

mass-democracy,

the

right-wing

revolution

is

left

equally

in

the lurch

by

the illusoriness

of

its

premises:

the

dream

of

a

people's

revolution

as the counter-force

to the

powers

of indus-

trial alienation blossoms here under

the

impact

of a new wave

of indus-

trialization in

1923.

While

the

ideological struggles

of

the

revolutionary

left

and

right

take the ritual form of earnest intellectual duels, national socialism

begins

to

insinuate itself

into

the

historical

vacuum

by gaining

the ear

of

the middle classes

(which

were

in no

way proletarianized,

as

Kracauer or

Lederer

mistakenly

believed). Though

both revolutions

may

well

have lived

out

their after-lives

as

intellectual

phantasms

by



172 Loss

of Experience

the end

of

the

1920s,

they

had

nevertheless

supplied images

to

repub-

lican society with which it could sleep-walk its way past its problems

and

end

up

in

the

arms

of

the

Nazis.

It

is

perhaps

instructive,

and

by

no

means

accidental,

that two

of

the

most

significant

political

manifestoes

from

the

perspective

of

the com-

plementary

nature of theoretical

developments

-

Benjamin's essay

Critique

ofViolence and

Carl

Schmitt'

s

Sociology

of the

Concept

of

Sovereignty

and Political

Theology

-

appeared

in

publications

that

bear

tribute,

in more

than one

respect,

to the name of Max

Weber.

Originally

inspired

by

Emil

Lederer

and intended

for

publication

in

WeisseBldtter,Benjamin's CritiqueofViolence finallyappears(1921)

in

Vol.

47 of

that

Archivfiir

Sozialwissenschaften

und

Sozialpolitik

o

which

Max Weber's studies

on

contemporary

society

and

especially

his

essays

on the economic ethics

of world

religion

had

lent

a

special

aura.

Schmitt's

Sociology

of

the

Concept

of

Sovereignty

..

.

was

in

turn

published

in

the

second volume

of

a memorial edition

by

Melchior

Palyi

dedicated

to Max

Weber

in

1923

by

a

large

number

of his

former

colleagues

from

the archive.

IlL

If one

surveys

the various

positions

that

emerge, by way

of

a

homage,

from the

critique

of

Max

Weber,

it soon

becomes

apparent

that

the

arguments

scarcely

have

anything

to

do with

Weber's

findings,

but

are

concerned rather

with

their

implicit

axiomatic; hence,

no

doubt,

their

theological

cast both on

the

left

and

the

right.

Just

as the afterlife

of

the

revolution

acquires

a

certain

ghostliness

in

the medium of the

day-

dream,

so

the intellectual controversies that

dramatize

the

implicit

problematics

of

a

hermeneutical

sociology

(verstehendeoziologie)

nto

the

opposite

fronts of a

religious war

turn

out

to

be entirely artifical.

A.

Since

norms

and

empirical

truths

are

-

from a

scientific

per-

spective

-

validated

on

heteronomous

levels,

and

since,

further-

more,

values

cannot,

according

to

Weber,

be

validated

but

only

believed

n,

Weber's

empirical

typology assigns

the modes

of

orien-

tation

of

social

action as

well

as the modes of validation of the

categories

of

legitimacy

-

not without

some

equivocation

-

to

the subjectivesphere of modes of beliefThe beginnings of Weber's

hermeneutical

sociology

turn

out,

in

fact,

to

be rooted

in

his

prot-

estant ethic inasmuch as the notorious nominalism of his con-

cepts

and

ideal

types presupposes

that

thoroughgoing demystifi-

cation of the world under

the

aegis

of a

rationalization which

forces

the

individual,

in

his

objective

loneliness

or transcendental



Wolfgang

ietkau

173

homelessness

(Lukics),

to

derive all

objective meaning

and

coherence out of himself. To this extent, the presuppositions of

the

world-view

of

protestant

ethics

actually

reach

in

fact

into

the

subtlest ramifications

of

Weber's method

-

namely,

the

individualistic

structure

of his

definitions

of social formations:

this

determines

oth his

understanding

f the institutional

harac-

ter

Anstaltscharakter)

f

the state

derived rom chance

swell

as

the

theory

of the various

types

of domination.

It is

characteristic

f the

debate

aroundMax

Weber,

conducted

by

Lukics,

Bloch and

Benjamin,

on

the one

hand,

and

Carl

Schmitt,on theother,thattheydo notpresent hisimplicit heol-

ogy

of his

methodological (wissenschaftlich)rocedure

as a

subject

for

public

debate,

but

instead,

with the

artfulness of

philosophi-

cal

sublimation,

set

out from it in

ways

that

do

more

to

obscure

than

to

enlighten.

What

results

is

a

fundamental

re-theologizing

of the

issues,

as

if

it

really

were

a

matter

of

re-enacting

the

reli-

gious

wars that

succeeded the

Reformation.

If

Weber

had seen

one

of

the

consequences

of

the

Reformation

in

the transformation

of

every

form of

religious

ethics

into

a

personal

ethics

which,

with

the

loss

of all

transcendental

anchorage

and

a

reorientation

of

the

interest

in

salvation

from

the

next world to this

one,

promotes

the

secularization

of

the modern

world,

the

young

Luk.cs

of

the

Theory

fthe

Novel

akes the Weberian

topos

ofa

godless,

prophet-

less time

as the

occasion

for a

negative

theology

-

a charac-

terization

of

the

period

as

the era

of

complete

sinfulness.

B.

Weber

had

contested the absolute claims of

an

ethics

of

con-

science (Gesinnungsethik)y pointing, among other things, to the

irrationality

of the

world. Such an ethics

was,

he

argued,

incap-

able

of

recognizing

how a

politics

of

violence

could

generate

good

from

evil.

Weber

criticized

such an

ethics,

which

demanded

the sacrifice

either

of

the intellect or

of

experience,

for

its

inability

to tolerate

any

kind

of

modern

science based

on

empirical

ex-

perience

(Erfahrungswissenschaft).

e

had,

as

is

well

known,

finally

seen

the

advantage

of

an ethics

of

responsibility

in

the fact

that,

by

taking

the

irrationality

of the world into

account

from

the

very

outset,

it

relies

consciously

and without

any

illusions

on

violence

as a last resort, even if this involves

making

a

pact

with dia-

bolical

powers.

The

theologically

well-versed Ernst

Bloch

recognizes

in this

divorce of

conscience

from

responsibility

a

new version

of

Luther's

doctrine

of

the

two

kingdoms,

in

which,

through

the

separation



174

Loss

of

Experience

of

belief and

justification,

an inwardness

is created

whereby

it

becomes possible to make oneself at home in an unchristian

world

and leave

it to the

powers

that

be to

pursue

their

fallen,

diabolical

ways.

Thus,

where

Bloch means the

politically

re-

signed

(not

the calvinist

economist)

Weber,

he

says

Luther,

and

invokes

the

memory

of

his

revolutionary counterpart

against

the

soft

living

flesh

of

Wittenburg.

For hadn't

Thomas

Miinzer

opposed

this doctrine of

the two

kingdoms,

this

emasculation

of

the

Christian

protest against

the

world,

with

the

argument

that

the

world

wasn't

simply

to be

accepted

as

God's

creation,

as

Luther thought, or left to the devil as corrupt, or forgivingly

loved,

but

rather

to

be

changed,

so

that the

kindgom

of

God

might

be realized

on

earth? The transformation

Bloch/Miinzer

proclaims

against

Luther/Weber

occurs

as a taborite

reshaping

of

the

world

through

the active overthrow

of

the

system,

through

violence.

Luther/Weber's

renunciation

of

all

forms

of

Christian

revolutionary

violence is

for

Bloch

only

that cleverness

of

the

meek who

sanction

injustice

in

the

name

of

brotherly

love. The

demonstrability

of

belief,

and

the concomitant

ability

to

recog-

nize the

elect,

legitimates

the

circle

of

those

who are

to

exercise

violence in the name of truth and

thereby

also

justifies

the

right

to violence

of

the

good.

The other side of the

revolutionary

Blochian coin

is the

offensive

Holy

War,

the extermination

of

the

godless,

the establishment

of

a

dictatorship

of the

chosen,

in

other

words

of

an intellectual

avant-garde

destined

to

annihilate

the

many pagan

altars

of

a liberal

pluralism

of

values and

restorethe

one

(the

one

God

or

the

anabaptist

King)

in

the

place

of

the

many.

C.

Max

Weber

had based

the connection between

the

sociology

of

law and that

of

the

state

on

the

observation

that

today

the

relationship

between the

state

and

violence

is so intimate that

the

state

may

be

directly

defined

by

its

monopoly

of

legitimate

violence.

If

law

is

thereby

understood

in

sociological

terms

as

the

prevailing

legitimized

order

whose existence

is

guaranteed by

outside

force,

the

notion of

such

organized

force

already

signifies

a

historical relativization

of this

kind of

law

-

that

is,

a

sociologi-

cal limitation

of

its

sphere

of

legitimacy

-

insofar

as

it

necessarily

presupposes the organizationalunity (Verbandseinheit)nd hence

the

institutional character

(Anstaltscharakter)

f

the

modern state.

By

contrast,

Benjamin theologizes

Weber's

sociological

descrip-

tion

by abolutizing

as

mythical

the

equation

of

right

and

might

in the

implicitly

relativized

sphere

of

validity

ofWeber's

sociolog-



Wolfgang

ietkau 175

ical deduction

of

law,

in

order

then

to

proceed

to

the

theological-

anarchisticprogram of abolishing the law. Since Benjamingrants

the

same

quality

of

originary

immediacy

to the

legal

violence

he

calls

mythical

-

qua

manifestation

-

as

he

does

to

the

violence

of

the

revelation he

calls

divine,

and

nevertheless

dis-

tinguishes

the former

from

the latter as

ungodly

(justice

as the

principle

of

all

divine,

power

as the

principle

of all

mythical pur-

poses),

he

implicitly

bases

his

distinctions

on

an

opposition

be-

tween

polytheism,

that

is to

say

the

pluralism/liberalism

of the

Weberian

division

of

power,

and

the

monotheism

of

revealed

religion without, however, developing itsunderlying philosophy

of

religion.

Thus

appear

the

mythical godheads,

in

other

words the

penates

and house altars

of

a

pluralisticallydisintegrated

cosmos

of

values,

which

corresponds

to

Schelling's

and Franz

Rosenzweig's

con-

ception

of

a

negative philosophy

as

the historical

counterpart

to

the

spiritual

process

by

which

man commits

the

original

sin

of

asserting

his will: like the

grandiloquent

word Weber

himself

wants

to

be,

but

cannot

be,

the creator.

Thus,

like Bloch

in

Miin-

zer's clothing, Benjamin repeats

the

polemic against

modern

pluralism

and

Weber's

nominalistic

idiom,

a

polemic

sublimated

here

too into the

language

of

theology

and the

philosophy

of his-

tory.

And

he

too

proclaims unity

against multiplicity:

for as the

historical

equivalent

of

this

ungodly usurpation, polytheism

(lib-

eralism/pluralism) appears,

it

is

true,

as a real

process,

yet

only

as

the

impotent repetition

in

human consciousness

of

the

process

of

creation. This state

of

affairs,

which is

no

more

than

hinted at

in

the

context

of

Benjamin's critique

of

violence,

is

confirmed

in

Franz

Rosenzweig's

Star of

Redemption,

which was written

almost

simultaneously:

Here one finds the constructive counter-

part

of

a rational

philosophy

which articulates

a

philosophy

of

history

based

on

the late

Schelling,

one

capable

of

situating

its

various elements.

To

such rational

philosophy

-

the

spiritual

consciousness

represented

by, say,

the

procedures

of Weberian

methodology

-

corresponds

the

negative philosophy

Rosen-

zweig

terms heathenism.

Both

are

posited

in

the

second

part

of

Rosenzweig's system

as

creation.

D.

If

Benjamin mythologizes

the

presuppositions

ofWeber's

soci-

ology

of law

by making

the

hypostatization

of law as

violence,

right

as

might,

the

pretext

for

demanding

its historical destruc-

tion,

Carl

Schmitt confronts the Weberian

position

with

a reverse



176 Loss

of

Experience

objection

of

equal cogency.

Since the

problem

of

a Weberian

(verstehend)ociology

of law consists in

dissolving

the

empirical

validity

of norms

-

from

the

perspective

of

a science

of

experience

-

into

the

modes of belief

of

the

oppressed,

it

succumbs

-

Schmitt fears

-

to the

dissolution

of

law and

order

in

the

abitrari-

ness

of

an individualistic ethic.

In

this

sense,

the

spirit

of Weber's

sociology

of

law

was,

from

Schmitt's

perspective,

born neither

in

Israel

nor in Rome.

Carl

Schmitt

grounds

his

critique

of

the

dead

model

to whom he

dedicates

his

memorial

essay

by

invoking

Weber's

theological

model

-

the church historian Sohm

-

when in fact it is Max

Weber himself he has

in mind:

IfJesus'

church

stems,

according

to

Sohm's

teachings,

from the

beyond,

it

is

a

spiritual

entity

beyond earthly

norms,

without visible contact

with the world

and

its laws: For this reason

there is

no

visible

community

which

would

be

the

Church

of

Christ

as

such.

Communal

life under

the conditions

of

this

world is unthinkable without

legal

organiza-

tion.

If

the

church

is, however,

essentially

unworldly,

it

also

neither

needs

nor

is

capable

of

worldly organization,

but

rather

transcends any and all order of law. If the church as Corpus

Christi

signifies

the existence

of

an

other-worldly community

in

the midst

of this

world,

it would

nevertheless

remain

separate

from

it

insofar

as

the

earthly

worldiness of the world is

equated

with

what

is

visible

or

outwardly

manifest.

For the

only

organiza-

tional

principle

of the

church

is

one

charisma,

that

word of

God

which was in

the widest

sense

the

church's sole

organizational

principle.

Since

spritual

power

(Gewalt),

n the form

of

pneumatocracy

which realizes itself

through charisma,

is of a

different

order

than

worldly

power,

which

alwaysrepresents

egal

authority,

the essence

of the

law,

insofar

as it

demands

enforcement,

does

not

reside

in

such

power

but rather

in the formal structure

of its

acquisition.

Legal

power always points,

on the basis

of

certain

facts,

to the

past.

If, however,

formal

legitimation

is

the mark

of

worldly-legal

power,

it

cannot,

by

the

same

token,

be the hallmark

of other-

worldly,

divine

power.

Thus,

charismatic directives

claim

no

enduring

validity;

the

spirit

decrees

this one

day

and

that

the next.

Sohm too had been

obliged

to

recognize

that the

founding

of

the

course of history on charisma was disavowed by history itself.

Because charismatic

organization

lacks

any

outward

organizing

power,

it

must,

as

he had to concede to his

opponents, finally

entrust the life of the church

to a

pneumatic anarchism.

Thus,

Carl Schmitt can invoke

Sohm,

who established the



Wolfgang

ietkau

177

important

proposition

that

the law

depends

fundamentally

on

form (summumjus, summa injuria)and must necessarilydo so,

insofar as

it does not

explicitly

demand

enforcement but

never-

theless

seeks

its

forceful realization. For

upon entering empirical

reality,

he

concept

of

law

undergoes

modifications that

are marked

by

an

abdication

of

timeless

justice

and

a certain

degree

of

in-

determinacy

-

a

necessary

sacrifice,

inasmuch

as

a

pact

must be

sealed with

the

powers

that be. Since the form

of the

law

under-

goes

certain modifications

in

the

act

of

realizing

itself

through

its

entry

into

the

world,

the

problem

now

arises as

to who is to

be

the

carrierof the form: the problem - in the language of the politi-

cal

theology

which

Weber's

approach

to

the

sociology

of

law

both

undermines and

suspends

-

of

competence.

Since a

legal

definition,

as

a

norm for

making

decisions,

only

says

how

-

but not

by

whom

-

something

is

to

be decided

(insofar

as

anyone

can

lay

claim

to

being

substantively

in

the

right,

there can

be

no

last

instance),

the

question

of

competence

is

synonymous

with

that

of

the last

instance

-

a

question

that

can

neither

be

raised

nor

answered

by

the substantive

quality

of

a

legal stipulation.

Schmitt's solution to

this

problem is, however,

the form

of

Catholic

law,

the

postulate

of

the

visibility

of the

Catholic church. For the

Catholic

church

and

its

teachings

offer

an

example

of

typical

purity:

as the

idea

of

a

visible

church and

thus of

aJus

divinum

constitutionally

established on

earth

by

an

order

of

law

that is true

Jus

and not

an

ethic,

Schmitt

argues,

it

needed

concrete

provisions

for

questionable

cases.

Thus,

there

finally

emerges

for

Schmitt

a

clear-cut alternative

between

recog-

nizing

Catholic

doctrine,

and

with it

the

formal

character

of

the

law,

as

legitimate

or

adopting

Luther's

(i.e.

Weber's) position,

in

terms of Sohm's

assumption

that all law is to be considered

incompatible

with

a

charismatic

community.

Weber's

sociology

of

law,

especially

his doctrine of its

charismatic

origins,

threatens

its

very

foundation. For if

the

substance

of the

law

resides

in its

form,

the

latter in turn

lies

in

the

concrete decision arrived at

by

a

specific

authority.

In

view of the

autonomous

significance

of

the

decision,

the

decision-making subject, according

to

Schmitt,

acquires

an

autonomous

significance

independent

from its con-

tent;

the

life of the

law

depends

in

reality

on

who

decides.

In

this

distinction between the subjectand the content of the decision, in

the

autonomous

significance

of the

subject,

resides a

problem

of

juridical

form

that is elided when norms

are dissolved

into mere

modes of belief.

Thus,

for Schmitt as for

Benjamin,

the

connection

between

defacto

power

and

the

highest legal power emerges

as

the



178 Loss

of

Experience

fundamental

problem

of a

theory thatjettisons

all the

premises

of

Weber's

sociology

as a science of

experience

in order to under-

stand the

law

or

its

powerlessness

as

power

on

the basis

of

excep-

tions to it.

As

these sketches

show,

Weber's

critics,

whether

politically

to the

left

or the

right,

stand

on the

same

street;

it

makes no difference

whether

the

rallying

cries

are

theology

of the

revolution

(Ernst Bloch)

or

political theology.

The

fact that the street

will

soon divide

hardly

changes

the

fact that

they

share

the same

ground

for

the

respective

mustering

of their

troops.

In

this

respect,

the

theological

after-life of

a

socialist revolution that never materialized contains

dangerous

ex-

plosive

matter. The

experience

of loss led to

a loss

of

experience

because

any

disciplined

(wissenschaftlich)

ttempt

to

come to

terms

with

this loss had become obsolete

in

the

eyes

of both

supporters

and

opponents

of the

posthumous

revolution. For

the social

sciences

were after

all a

bourgeois

affair.

Translated

by

Jonathan

Monroeand

Irving

Wohlfarth

A

JOURNALOF

4:

FALL

1986:

MOTHERHOOD

AND

SEXUALITY

edited

by

Ann

Ferguson

University

f

Massachusetts,

mherst

Subsciptions:

ndividuals

20

Institutions

40

Foreign

rders

dd

$5

surface,

$10 airmail.

Editor:

Hypatia

Southern

Illinois

University

at

Edwardsville

Edwardsville,L 62026-1437

4. loss of experience and experience of loss remarks on the problem of the lost revolution in.pdf

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