Walter Benjamin was a 20th century German philosopher and cultural theorist. He was born in Berlin and studied philosophy in Germany and Switzerland. His career focused on literary criticism and translation. He struggled to get an academic position, and when the Nazis rose to power in 1933 he fled Germany for Paris. In 1940 he fled France for the Spanish border but was captured and killed himself rather than be turned over to the Nazis. This document contains a summary of one of Benjamin's essays from his collection Reflections, focusing on distinguishing between sanctioned and unsanctioned violence in law.
Walter Benjamin was a 20th century German philosopher and cultural theorist. He was born in Berlin and studied philosophy in Germany and Switzerland. His career focused on literary criticism and translation. He struggled to get an academic position, and when the Nazis rose to power in 1933 he fled Germany for Paris. In 1940 he fled France for the Spanish border but was captured and killed himself rather than be turned over to the Nazis. This document contains a summary of one of Benjamin's essays from his collection Reflections, focusing on distinguishing between sanctioned and unsanctioned violence in law.
Walter Benjamin was a 20th century German philosopher and cultural theorist. He was born in Berlin and studied philosophy in Germany and Switzerland. His career focused on literary criticism and translation. He struggled to get an academic position, and when the Nazis rose to power in 1933 he fled Germany for Paris. In 1940 he fled France for the Spanish border but was captured and killed himself rather than be turned over to the Nazis. This document contains a summary of one of Benjamin's essays from his collection Reflections, focusing on distinguishing between sanctioned and unsanctioned violence in law.
A Gennall philosophel; iVa Iter became aile l1Iost
alld cultllral theorists the twentieth century. He was born into all ill Berlin, then studied philosophy in im rl1f".Wfl 11. and Bern. criticism and translation. led doctoral ;1,",tnii'"l1 embarked all a career of liteI'm), "Goethe's Elective Affinities" r,-/it,r;"" more specifically, his unconvellfiol1a/ Drama trails., an academic career were rejected his dissertation. the Nazis came to power in 1933, Germany for Paris. ill 1940 when the Nazis France. Headillg toward he illtended to escape to the United States, but was CIIptured; on finding out that he would be turned he killed the Fmllco-Sprwish border. all art suggests /lot that art and social are il1extriCilble but also that to the extent that social life is characterized technology and class, the the to take politicn[ action cOl/sistellt with his or her artistic ideals. nlis conviction later into a offascislll and allY stance. His other works inclllde Illuminations trans., Reflections: Essays, Writings The Arcades alld Understanding Brecht (English trans., His emergent Soviet Union, written 27, are recorded in the Moscow Diaries (English trans., a visit to Moscow i111926- '111e following essay is Reflections. WALTER BEN IN The task of a of violence can be summarized as that of its relation to law and For a cause, however becomes violent, in the sense of the word, only when it bears on moral issues. The sphere of these issues is defined the concepts oflaw and justice. With regard to the first it is clear that the most l l V U ~ H P within any system \ + I is that of ends to means, further, that violence can first be the realm of means, not of ends. These with more-and For if violence is a means, a criterion for criticizing it It itself in the whether in a given case, is a end. A critique of it would then be is not so. For what such a it to be secure as a principle, all doubt, would cont<lin is not a criterion for violence itself the criterion for cases of its use. The would remain open whether violence, as a principle, could be a moral means even to ends. To resolve this a more exact criterion is needed, which would discriminate within the without for the ends they serve. The exclusion of this more IS the predomi- nant feature of a main current of legal philosophy: natnrallaw. It perceives in the use of violent means to ends no than a man sees in his to move his in the direction of a desired goal. to this view (for which the terrorism in the French Revolution provided an ideological foundation), violence is a as it were a raw material, the use of which is in no way problematical, unless force is misused for unjust ends. If, to the of slate of natural up all their violence for the sake of the state, this is done on the (which for states in his li'actatus Theologico-Politicus) that the individ- ual, before the conclusion of this rational contract, has the right to use at will the violence that is de <lS his these views have been recently rekindled Darwin's ner, regards violence as the only original means, besides natural ap- propriate to all the vital ends of nature. Darwinistic often shown how short a step it is from this of natural cruder one of legal philosophy, which holds. that the violence that is, almost also to natural ends is This thesis of natural law that violence as a natural datum is di- to that of positive which sees violence as a of If natural law can judge all law only in positive law can all law only in the criterion of legality is that of means. its ends, so its means. If justice is this both schools meet in their common basic dogma: just ends can be attained by means, justified means used for just ends. Natural law by the justness of the to "justify" the means, positive law to "guarantee" the justness of the ends through the of the means. This CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 269 antinomy would prove insoluble if the common assumption were false, if means on the one hand and just ends on the other were in irreconcilable conflict. No insight into this problem could be until the circular argument had been broken, and both of just ends and of justified means were established. The realm of ends, and therefore also the of a criterion of justness, is excluded for the time from this study. the central place is to the of the of certain means that constitute Principles of natural law cannot decide this question, but can lead to bottomless For if positive law is blind to the absoluteness of natural law is equally so to the of means. On the other the of law is basis at the outset of this study, because it undertakes a fundamental distinction between kinds of vio- lence independently of cases of their application. This distinction is between historically so-called sanctioned and unsanctioned vi- olence. If the considerations from this it cannot, of course, mean that given forms of violence are classified in terms of whether they are sanctioned or not. For in a critique of violence, a criterion for the latter in law cannot concern its uses but only its evaluation. The that concerns us is, what light is thrown on the nature of violence the fact that such a criterion or distinction can be to it at all, or, in other what of this distinction? That this distinction supplied positive law 1S based on the nature of violence, and by any will soon enough be shown, but at the same time light will be shed on the in which alone such a distinction can be made. To sum up: if the criterion established regard to its "".'UUHb' must be criticized with to its value. For this a standpoint outside legal philosO- but also outside natural law must be found. The extent to which it can be furnished a historico-philosophical view oflaw will emerge. The and illegitimate violence is not obvious. The which a distinction is drawn between violence used for and ends must be it has already been indicated that law demands of all violence a proof of its historical conditions is declared sanctioned. Since the of legal violence is most evident in a deliberate submission to its ends, a thetical distinction between kinds of violence must be based on the presence or absence of a historical acknowledgment of its ends. Ends that lack such may be called natural the other legal ends. The 270 WALTER BENJAMIN be most clearly traced sake of the pean conditions. can legal conditions. For the of these, as far as the individual as is IS Ihe not to admit the natural ends of such individuals in all those cases in which such ends in a given situation, be violence. This means: this legal tries to erect, in all areas where individual ends be pursued by legal ends that can only be realized by legal power. Indeed, it strives to limit by ends even those areas in which natural ends are admitted in principle within wide like that of education, as soon as these natural ends are with an excessive measure of violence, as in the laws to the limits of educational to It can be formulated as a maxim of present-day European that all the natural ends of individuals must collide with legal ends if or lesser degree of violence. contradiction between this and the of self-defense will be resolved in what Prom this As a not; for then violence as such would not be but thaI directed to illegal ends. It will be that a cannot be maintained if natural ends are first this is a mere consider the surprising possibility thai the law's interest in a monopoly of violence vis-a-vis individuals is not the intention of legal by that of preserving the law that violence, when not in the hands of the threatens it not by the ends that it may pursue but by its mere existence outside the law. The same more if , one reflects how often the figure of the criminal, however repellent his ends may have been, has aroused the secret admiration of the public. This cannot result from his deed, but from the violence to witness. In this case, the violence of which in all areas of activity to the individual appears really and arouses even in defeat the ",,,nn.,tI',,, of the mass against law. By what funclion violence can with reason seem so to and be so feared by it, must be evident where its even in the legal system, is This is above all the case in the class "r11O"''''>. in the form of the workers' to strike. labor is, apart from the state, entitled to exercise violence. Against this view there CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 271 is the that an omission a UVU"'_,,'''i, which a strike is, cannot be described as violence. Such a consideration doubtless made it easier for a state poser to conceive the right to strike, once this was no avoidable. But its truth is not and therefore not unrestricted. It is true that the omission of an where it amounts simply to a nonviolent, pure means. And as in the view of the state, or the a to exercise violence exercised by the strikes to strike conceded to labor is rather, to escape from a violence to this may occur from time to time and involve only a "withdrawal" or "estrangement" from the . The moment of violence, 1S introduced, in the form of into such an omission, if it takes in the context of a conscious readiness to resume the suspended action under certain circum- stances that either have whatever to do with this action or only super- modify it. Understood in this way, the to strike constitutes in the view of which is opposed to that of the state, the right to use force in attaining certain ends. The antithesis between the two emerges in all its bitterness in face of a revolutionary strike. In this, labor will to its right to strike, and the state will call this appeal an since the to strike was not "so intended," and take emergency measures. For the state retains the to declare that a simultaneous use of strike in all industries is illegal, since the I n this differen ce objective contradiction in the violence whose ends, as natural ends, it sometimes but in a crisis (the revolutionary general strike) confronts ever f'CU."UVAJL'-'U this may appear at first sight, even conduct the exercise of a right can ! violent. More VI',. ",,"P."<. under certain circumstances, be described as then may be called violent if it exerClses a in order to overthrow the system that has conferred it; when it is nevertheless to be so described if it constitutes extortion in the sense above. It therefore reveals an contradiction in the legal situation, but not a contradiction in the if under certain cir- cumstances the law meets the as perpetrators of violence, with violence. For in a strike the state fears above all else that function of violence which it is the of this study to identify as the only secure foundation of its . For if violence were, as first appears, the means to secure directly what- ever happens to be it could fulfill its end as predatory violence. It would be entirely unsuitable as a basis or a modification to, stable condi- tions. The strike that it can be so, that it is able to found and 272 WALTER BENJAMIN legal however offended the sense of may find itself It will be objected that such a function of violence is fortuitous and isolated. This can be rebutted by a consideration of military violence. The of law rests on the same objective contradic- tion in the legal situation as does that of strike that is to say, on the fact that sanction violence whose ends remain for the sanctioners natural and can therefore in a crisis come into conflict with their own or natural ends. Admittedly, violence is in the first used di- toward its ends. Yet it is very striking that even-or, conditions that know hardly the beginnings of and even in cases where the victor has established himself in invulnerable possession, a peace ceremony is necessary. In- deed, the word " in the sense in which it is the correlative to the word "war" (for there is also a different meaning, similarly and political, the one used by Kant in of "Eternal Peace"), denotes this a priori, necessary of all other of every victory. This sanction consists precisely in the new conditions as a new "law," quite of whether need de facto any of their continuation. If, conclusions can be drawn from military as being of all violence used for natural there is inherent in all such violence a HHuua'''ll1', character. We shall return later to the of this insight. It the above-mentioned of mod- ern law to divest the individual, at least as a that directed only to natural ends. In the the law with the threat a new IJl times. The state, '"-rur",,,,,,. even criminal this violence confronts a threat that even today, despite its as it did in primeval " .... ~ J n - it as lawmaking whenever external powers to concede them the to conduct and classes the right to strike. If in the last war the of violence was the point for a of violence in at least one thing, that violence is no longer exercised and tolerated violence was not to criticism for its lawmaking but was also perhaps more for another of its functions. For a duality in the function of violence is characteristic which could only come into being Militarism is the compulsory, universal use of violence as a means to the ends of the state. This has been scrutinized as closely as, or still more violence itself. In it violence shows itself in a function quite different from its application for natural ends. For the subordination of citizens to laws- CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 273 in the present case, to the law of general conscription-is a legal end. If that first function of violence is called the function, this second will be called lence that is not in from a effective of it is far less easy than the declamations of pacifists and activists suggest. coincides with the of all legal violence-that or executive force-and cannot be performed by any lesser program. Nor, of course-unless one is to a childish anarchism-is it achieved any constraint toward persons and "What excludes reflection on the moral and historical spheres, and thereby on any meaning in the fact that even the tive, with its doubtless incontestable minimum at all times you use both in your person and in the person of all others as an and never as a means-is in itself inadequate for such a critique. (One might, rather, doubt whether the famous demand does not con- tain too little, that is, whether it is to use, or allow to be oneself or another in any as a means. Very good for such doubt could be For if conscious of its roots, will claim to and promote the interest of mankind in the person of each incli- viduaL It sees this interest in the and of an order by fate. While this view, which claims to preserve law in its very cannot escape nevertheless all attacks that are made merely in the name of a formless "freedom;' without being able to this higher order of freedom, remain against it. And most impotent of all when, instead of attacking the root and branch, laws that the law, of course, takes under the resides in the fact that there is what belongs and in to its order. For law-preserving violence is a threatening violence. And its threat is not intended as the deterrent that uninformed liberal theorists it to be. A deterrent in the exact sense would a that contradicts the nature of a threat and is not attained by any law, since there is of its arm. This makes it all the more like which depends on whether the criminal is purpose of the of the threat will There is a useful pointer to it in the the validity of positive law has been called into question, has 274 WALTER BENJAMIN more criticism than all others. However superficial the arguments may in most cases have been, their motives were and are rooted in principle. The "nln()T1Pnrs of these critics perhaps without knowing why and probably that an attack on not measure, not laws, but law itself in its For violence crowned by IS the of law, then it may be readily supposed that where the highest vio- lence, that over life and death, occurs in the legal the origins oflaw with this is the fact that even for such crimes as the death offenses against to which it seems quite out of " Its pur- pose is not to punish the infringement of law but to establish new law. For in the exercise of violence over life and death more than in any other act, law reaffirms itself. But in this very violence rotten in law is above all to a finer because the latter knows itself to be remote from conditions in which fate have shown itself in such a sentence. Reason must, however, to approach such conditions all the more resolutely, if it is to bring to a conclusion of both lawmak- and violence. In a far more unnatural combination than in the death in a kind of mixture, these two forms of violence are in another institution of the modern state, the police. this is violence for ends (in the right of disposition), but with the simultaneous authority to decide these ends itself within wide limits the right of decree). The ignominy of such an authority, which is felt few because its ordinances suffice seldom for the crudest acts, but are therefore allowed to rampage all the more in the most vulnerable areas and thinkers, from whom the state is not pro- law-this ignominy lies in the fact that in this the separation and violence is suspended. If the first is required to prove its worth in to the restriction that it may not set itself new ends. Police violence is U U ' ' ' ' I ~ ' ' ' ~ ' ' from both conditions. It is for its characteristic function is not the promulgation of laws but the assertion of legal claims for any decree, and because it is at the of these ends. The assertion that the ends of police violence are identical or even connected to those of law is untrue. the "law" of the really marks the from impotence or because of the immanent connections within any legal system, can no longer through the the empirical ends that it desires at any to attain. Therefore the police intervene "for security reasons" in countless cases where no clear when they are not the citizen CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 275 as a brutal encumbrance a life regulated by or simply which aclmowledges in the determined by place and time a category that it a claim to critical evalua- tion, a consideration of the police institution encounters nothing essential at all. Its power is formless, like its nowhere all-pervasive, ghostly presence in the life of civilized states. And the may, in particulars, ,>'''".",,,'- appear the same, it cannot be denied that their is less . where they represent, in absolute monarchy, the power of a ruler in which legislative and executive supremacy are united, than in democracies where their elevated by no such bears witness to the greatest conceivable (lege11er'atJon of violence. All violence as a means is either or <>W_'W'p<F'r1l' to neither of these it forfeits all validity. It follows, hnw""",,,, violence as a means, even in the most favorable case, is lematic nature oflaw itself. And if the of these problems cannot be assessed with certainty at this of the investigation, law nevertheless ap- pears, fi'om what has been in so a moral light that the poses itself whether there are no other than violent means for flicting human interests. We are above all obligated to note that a totally non- violent resolution of conflicts can never lead to a contract. For the however it may have been entered into leads finally to possible violence. It confers on hoth the right to take recourse to violence in some form against the should he break the Not only that; like the outcome, the origin of every contract also toward violence. It need not he present in it as hut is represented in it insofar as the power that guarantees a contract is in turn of violent even if violence is not introduced into the contract itself. When the conscious- ness of the latent presence of violence in a legal institution the institution falls into In our They offer the '<UHUlal, woeful spectacle because scious of the revolutionary forces to which an have not remained con- owe their existence. Accord- In the last manifestation of such forces hore no fruit for violence is repIe- sented by of this violence, but cultivate in ing with situated within the of violence, no matter how it may disdain all open violence, became the effort toward is motivated not but from the because no compromise, however is COI1- character. 'It be better otherwise' is the 276 WALTER BENJAMIN feeling in every comr)romisc ClI.,IJlJlIl.olIiLJlY, the alienated as many minds from the ideal of a nonviolent resolution conflicts as were attracted to it by the war. The pacifists are con- by the Bolsheviks and a cannot be concerned with parliamentarianism. For what parliament achieves in vital affairs can only be those decrees that in their origin and outcome are by violence. Is any nonviolent resolution of conflict Without doubt. The rela- persons are full of examples of this. Nonviolent IS wherever a civilized outlook allows the means and illegal means of every kind that are all the same violent may be confronted with nonviolent ones as trust, and whatever else subjective preconditions. Their objective manifestation, however, is determined by the law (the enormous scope of which cannot be discussed that un- means are never those of direct, but always those of indirect solutions. They therefore never to the resolution of conflict between man and man, but only to matters The of nonviolent to goods. For this means opens up in the realm of human conflicts reason technique in the broadest sense of the word is their most particular area. fu exclusion of violence in cant factor: there is no sanction for lying. on earth originally such a sanction. This makes clear that there is a sphere human that is nonviolent to the extent that it is inaccessible to violence: the proper of Only late and in a peculiar process violence in the on fraud. POl' whereas the to its vic- torious power, is content to defeat lawbreaking wherever it to show itself and deception, itself no trace of power about it, was on the princi- ius civile v n' IW:t,,-, unistlmenl in Roman and confidence in its own violence, no felt itself a match for that of all others. fear of the latter and mistrust of itself indicate its declining vitality. It begins to set itself with the intention of sparing law-preserving violence more taxing man- ifestatiol1s. It turns to not out of moral considerations, but for CRITIQUE Of VIOLENCE 277 fear of the violence that it might unleash in the defrauded party. Since such fear conflicts with the violent nature of law derived from its origins, such ends are ne>"",',.,t"",,,tp to the justified means oflaw. the of its but also a diminution means. For, in fraud, law restricts the use of wholly nonviolent means because could produce reac- tive violence. This tendency oflaw has also played a in the concession of the right to strike, which contradicts the interests of the state. It grants this right because it forestalls violent actions the state is afraid to oppose. Did not resort at once to and set fire to factories? To induce men to reconcile their interests peacefully without involving the legal system, there is, in the apart from all virtues, one effective motive that often enough puts into the most reluctant hands pure instead of violent means; it is the fear of mutual that threaten to arise from violent whatever the be. Such motives are visible in countless cases of conflict of interests between persons. It is different when classes and nations are in conflict, since the higher orders that threaten to overwhelm equally victor and are hidden from the feelings of most, and from the of almost alL Space does not here me to trace such orders and the to which constitute the most means. Vlfe can therefore only to pure means in common interests motive for a politics as aUalU'5U vate persons. to those which govern peaceful intercourse between pri- As class in them strike must under certain conditions be seen as a pure means. Two different kinds the of which have already been ,-v. """''-''''', Sorel has the credit-from political, rather than consider- ations-of having first distinguished them. He contrasts them as the political and the general strike. are also antithetical in their relation to violence. Of the of the former he says: "The of state power is the basis of their in their the politi- cians (viz. the moderate socialists) are already preparing the ground for a strong centralized and disciplined power that will be impervious to criticism from the opposition, capable and of issuing its mendacious decrees." strike demonstrates how the state will lose none of its how power is transferred from the to the how the mass of producers will their masters," In contrast to this political strike (which incidentally seems to have been summed up the abortive German the general strike sets itself the sale task of state power. It "nullifies all the consequences of every possible social policy; its partisans see even the most popular reforms as bour- 278 WALTER BENJAMIN strike clearly announces its indifference toward material by its intention to abolish the state; the state group, who in all their " While the first form an external modification of as a pure means, is nonviolent. For it takes place to resume work following external concessions and this or that but in the determination to resume only a enforced the state, an that this the revolution appears as a either for the sociologists or for the elegant amateurs of this deep, moral, and genuinely revolutionary con- no on of its cata- consequences, to brand such a strike as violent. Even if it can said that the modern economy, seen as a resembles much less a that stands idle when abandoned by its stoker than a beast that goes as soon as its tamer turns his nevertheless the violence of an action no more from its effects than from its from the of its means. State power, which has eyes for opposes this kind of strike for its alleged as distinct from actually extortionate. The extent to which of the general strike as sllch is capable of diminish- Sorel has with contrast, an more immoral and cruder than the akin to a de, is the strikeby doctors, such as several German cities have seen. In this revealed at its most repellent an unscrupulous use of violence that is positively class that for years, without the slightest at "secured death its prey:' and then at the first abandoned of its own free will. More clearly than in recent class struggles, the mea ns of have developed in thousands of years of the history of ml,r)n1,<>TC in their transactions consist modifications to legal systems. they entirely on the logy of between persons, to resolve conflicts case case, the names of their states, peacefully and without contracts. A delicate task CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 279 that is more robustly but a method of solution in is above that of the referee because it is beyond all violence. Accordingly, like the intercourse of private has engendered its own forms and virtues, which were not even though they have become so. all the forms of violence by both natural law and positive problematic nature, violence. every conceivable to human not to of deliverance from the confines of all the world- historical conditions of existence obtaining lence is totally excluded in the time the question of the truth of the basic ends can be attained justified means, if vio- H"!C""'U"l1Y arises as to the by legal theory. It is at the same common to both means used for just ends. How would it if all the violence 1111DO:5ed justified means, and if at the same time a different kind of violence came into view that certainly could be either the or the unjustified means to those but was not related to them as means at all but in some different way. This would throw light 011 the curious ofa11 lems to the possibility of conclusive pronouncements on it is never reason that decides on the t,'!tp_,nl1",<,pr! violence on the former and God on the latter. And that is uncommon only because of the stubborn habit of conceiving those valid (which follows ends as ends of a possible that is, not only as generally from the nature of justice), but also of <lUl-,U'Vlh which, as could be contradicts the nature For ends that for one situation are just, acceptable, and valid, are so for no other no matter how similar it may be in other respects. The nonmediate function of violence at issue here is illustrated by everyday ence. As regards man, he is impelled anger, for PY,m1"nip to the most visible outbursts of a violence that is not related as a means to a nrp'rf);nrp end. It is not a means but a manifestation. Moreover, this violence has thoroughly tive manifestations in which it can be to criticism. These are to be found, most above all in myth. violence in its form is a mere manifestation of the Not a means to their a manifestation of their but first of all a manifestation of their existence. The of Niobe contains an of this. it appear that the action of Apollo and Artemis is 280 WALTER BENJAMIN a But their violence establishes a law far more than it for the of one already Niobe's arrogance calls down fate itself not because her arrogance offends against the law but because it challenges fate-to a in which fate must triumph, and can bring to a How little such divine violence was to the ancients the in which fate with courage, it with varying fortunes, and is not left by the legend without hope of one a new law to men. It is really this hero and the legal violence of the native to him that the tries to picture even now in admiring the miscreant. Violence therefore bursts upon Niobe from the uIlcertain, ambig- uous of fate. It is not actually destructive. it a cruel to Niobe's children, it stops short of the life of their leaves more guilty than before through the death of the children, both mute bearer of and as a boundary stone on the frontier If this immediate violence in manifestations proves indeed identical to it reflects a prob- lematic on lawmaking insofar as the latter was characterized above, in the account of military violence, as a mediate violence. At the same time this connection further to illuminate fate, which in all cases and to conclude in broad outline the critique of the latter. For the function of violence in is in the sense that lawmaking pursues as its with violence as the means, what is to be e8tab- lished as law, but at the moment of instatement does not dismiss at this very moment oflawmaking, it specifically establishes as law not an end but one and intimately bound to it, under the title of power. Lawmaking is power making, to that extent, an immedi- ate manifestation of violence. is the of all divine end power the of all mythical lawmaking. An of the latter that has immense consequences is to be found in constitutional law. For in this the establishing of frontiers, the task of after all the wars of the age, is the of all lawmaking violence. Here we see most clearly that power, more than the most extravagant m is what is guaranteed all lawmaking violence. Where frontiers are decided the is not simply annihilated; he is accorded even when the victor's in power is complete. And these are, in a demonically way, for both to the treaty it is the same line that may not be crossed. Here appears, in a primitive form, the same mythical ambiguity of laws that may not be "in- " to which Anatole France refers when he says, "Poor and rich CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 281 are forbidden to spend the night under the " It also appears that Sorel touches not merely on a cultural-historical but also on a truth in that in the all was the of the kings or the nobles-in short, of the and that, mutatis so as as it exists. For from the point of view which alone can guarantee law, there is no equality, but at the most equally great violence. The act of fixing frontiers, however, is also oflaw in another Laws and unmarked frontiers at least in unwritten laws. A man can unwittingly infringe upon them and thus incur retribution. For each intervention of law that is provoked by an offense against the unwritten and unknown law is called, in contradistinction to pun- ishment, retribution. But however unluckily it may befall its vic- its occurrence is, in the of the not but fate itself once in its deliberate Hermann Cohen, in a brief reflection on the ancients' of fate, has spoken of the "inescapable realization" that it is "fate's orders themselves that seem to cause and this offense." To this of law even the modern of a law is not nr,,,,.,c'rt>r.n communities is to be understood as a rebellion against the spirit of statutes. Far from inaugurating a purer diate violence shows itself the manifestation of imme- identical with all and the latter into of the historical function, the destruction of which thus becomes task of destruction poses again, in the last resort, the question of a pure immedi- ate violence that might be able to call a halt to mythical violence. Just as in all God opposes violence is confronted the divine. And the latter constitutes its antithesis in all violence is lawmak- ing, divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythical violence brings at once guilt and retribu- tion, divine power only if the former the latter strikes; if the the latter is lethal without blood. The of Niobe maybe as an of this U U H ~ H ' on the company of Korah. It strikes Levites, strikes them without warning, without and does not stop short of annihilation. But in annihilating it also and a connection between the lack of bloodshed and the character of this violence is unmistakable. For blood is the of mere life. The dissolution of violence stems, as cannot be shown in detail here, from the of more natural which consigns the innocent, 282 WALTER BENJAMIN and unhappy, to a retribution that "expiates" the of mere life-and doubt- less also purifies the not of guilt, but of law. For with mere life the rule of law over the living ceases. M,rthlr" violence is bloody power over mere life for its own divine violence pure power over all life for the sake of the living. The first demands sacrifice, the second accepts it. This divine power is attested not only by tradition but is also found in present-day life in at least one sanctioned manifestation. The educative power, which in its form stands outside the is one of its manifesta- tions. These are not by miracles performed by God, but by the moment in them that strikes without bloodshed and, by the absence of all lawmaking. To this extent it is to call this too, but it is so only with to goods, and suchlike, never absolutely, with to the soul of the of such an extension of pure or divine power is sure to provoke, today, the most violent and to be countered by the argu- ment that taken to its logical conclusion it confers on men even lethal power one another. however, cannot be conceded. For the I kill?" meets its irreducible answer in the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." This commandment the deed, just as God was the deed. But just as it may not be fear of that enforces obedience, the injunction becomes inapplicable, incommensurable once the deed is accom- plished. No of the deed can be derived from the commandment. And so neither the divine nor ,the for this can be known in advance. Those who base a condemnation of all violent killing of one person by another on the commandment are therefore mistaken. It exists not as a criterion but as a for the actions or commu- nities who have to wrestle themselves the of it. Thus it was understood which expressly the condemnation of in self-defense. But those thinkers who take the opposed view refer to a more distant theorem, 011 which possibly propose to base even the com- mandment itself. This is the doctrine of the of which they either or limit to human life. Their argumen- in an extreme case by the killing of the op- pressor, runs as follows: "If I do not kill I shall never establish the world domin- ion profess that existence itself." As of the intelligent terrorist. . . . however, of existence stands indeed ignoble, it shows the the reason for the commandment no in what the deed does to the but in what it does to God and the doer. The that existence stands than a existence is false and CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 283 HH.LHU'UO, if existence is to mean nothing other than mere life-and it has this in the argument referred to. It contains a mighty truth, if Of, life whose is readily analo- to that of when are referred to two distinct spheres), means the total condition that is "man"; if the proposition is in- tended to mean that the nonexistence of man is more terrible than the (admittedly subordinate) not-yet-attained condition of the just man. To this ambiguity the above owes its plausibility. Man cannot, at any be said to coincide with the mere life in no more than with any other of his conditions and not even with the of his person. However sacred man is that life in him that is identically present in earthly life, death, and afterlife), there is no sacredness in his condition, in his bodily life vulnerable to injury his fellow men. What, then, it from the life of animals and And even if these were could not be so by virtue only of being alive, in life. It might be well worthwhile to track down the origin of the dogma of the sacredness of life. Perhaps, indeed it is relatively recent, the last mistaken attempt of the weakened Western tradition to seek the saint it has lost in of all commandments murder is no counter because these are based on other ideas than the modern Finally, this idea of man's sacredness gives grounds for reflection that what is here pronounced sacred was to ancient thought the marked bearer of guilt: life itself. The of violence is the of this because only the idea of its discriminating, and decisive approach to its temporal data. A gaze directed only at what is close at hand can at most perceive a dialectical rising and falling in the lawmaking and law-preserving formations of violence. The law governing their oscillation rests on the circumstance that all in its weakens the violence onr1""{,",,, of hostile counter-violence. (Various symptoms of this have been referred to in the course of this study.) This lasts until either new forces or those earlier triumph over the hitherto found a new destined in its turn to of this maintained mythical forms of on the of law with all the forces on which it as they depend on it, finally therefore on the aboli- tion of state power, a new historical epoch is founded. If the rule of myth is broken occasionally in the age is not so remote that an attack on law is futile. But if the existence of violence outside the as pure immediate Vln>lPTlrP is this furnishes the proof 284 WALTER BENJAMIN that revolutionary the highest manifestation of unalloyed violence by man, is possible, and by what means. Less possible and also less urgent for Ull"WJV<;U violence has been realized in will be recognizable as effects, because the expiatory power of violence is not visible to men. Once all the eternal forms are open to pure divine which myth bastardized with law. It may manifest itself in a true war as in the divine of the multitude on a But all mythical, is too, is the law-preserving, administrative violence that serves it. Divine which is the sign and seal but never the means of sacred execution, may be called violence. CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE 285