Critique of Violence
Critique of Violence
Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin’s Critique of Violence (1921) analyzes the relationship between law, violence, and sovereignty, showing that violence is not external to law but central to its operation. He distinguishes between law-making violence(revolutions, conquests) and law-preserving violence (police, military, prisons), arguing that the two form a cycle where preservation leads to remaking, perpetuating systemic violence.
The essay's most provocative contribution is Benjamin's concept of "divine" or "pure" violence, which exists outside this system. Benjamin suggests the possibility of a violence that neither makes nor preserves law but rather deposes it, breaking the cycle of legal violence altogether. Benjamin's work is especially valuable for contemporary scholarship on states of exception because it predated and informed Carl Schmitt's more widely cited theories on sovereignty. The notion of “pure violence” anticipates and complicates Schmitt’s and others’ later theories of states of exception by suggesting that true exception might actually lie in moments that escape sovereign capture entirely.
His essay remains crucial for examining how emergency powers are ethically as well as legally fraught, especially amid authoritarian resurgence. By exposing the normalization of state violence, Benjamin compels scholars to interrogate the moral legitimacy of exceptional measures today.
Additional references to further explore Benjamin’s Critique of Violence include the two-part series onThe Partially Examined Life Podcast (Part One) (Part Two) that examines Benjamin’s taxonomy of violence, and theWhat’s Left of Philosophy podcast episode with Dr. Ashley Bohrer, where themes such as the relationship between law and violence, the limitations of institutional power for achieving justice, and the spiritual dimensions of Benjamin’s thought are explored with clarity and insight. For a broader historical and political perspective, see “Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Violence”, a discussion between James Martel and Brad Evans that considers the continuing relevance of Benjamin’s distinctions between mythical and divine violence and their implications for understanding secularism and fascism.
