Mindfulness

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Remembrance designated a historical consciousness and a form of memory, in the past will not be seen as something complete and glorified, but emphasizes its presence on the contrary. The term, previously rarely used , was taken up and redefined in the 20th century by Ernst Bloch , Walter Benjamin , Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer .

Remembrance as theological and ritualized remembrance

In Judaism , commemorating the union of the federal government, there is a need to remember that is characterized by reciprocity. Just as God remembers the people of Israel, the people of Israel must also remember him ( Isa 44:21  EU ); from this is the inner substance of the covenant between God and his people. This form theological remembrance is of Walter Benjamin and, in its tradition, by other predominantly Jewish authors as remembrance been designated:

“It is well known that the Jews were forbidden to investigate the future. The Torah and prayer, on the other hand, teach them to remember. This disenchanted the future for them, to which those who seek information from the fortune-tellers have fallen. For the Jews, however, the future did not become a homogeneous and empty time. Because in her every second was the little gate through which the Messiah could step. "

- Walter Benjamin: Historical-philosophical theses . Appendix B. In: Collected Writings . Frankfurt am Main, 1980, p. 676.

Instead of the concrete historical event, there is a “ memory figure”, constantly renewed and made present through ritual and prayer . In Christianity , for example, a comparable concept can be found in the commemoration of the Lord's Supper and in its ritualized representation during the celebration of the Eucharist.

In memory of Walter Benjamin and in the Frankfurt School

In Benjamin's late work , especially in his final work On the Concept of History , remembering becomes the central concept and plays an essential role in his philosophy of history and literary criticism , in his studies of materialism and in his sociology of modernity . He probably became aware of the term through Ernst Bloch's spirit of utopia and developed it further in the course of his translation of the writings of Marcel Proust , where he used it for his concept of the mémoire involontaire .

Benjamin contrasts the term remembrance with that of transfigured memory , as used in Hegel's philosophy of history. In contrast to remembrance, remembrance is characterized by a general irreconcilability towards the past, which is never closed, but continues to work in the present and becomes a permanent catastrophe in it. For Benjamin, history is the history of nature and suffering; at the same time, however, remembrance combines a historical materialism with a mystical messianism inherent in every single person, in that it helps the idea of ​​an intact life to survive.

Stéphane Mosès states that Benjamin takes up the Jewish category of Zekher with his concept of remembrance . This is used to describe the actualization of past events in present experience. Benjamin sees the task of remembrance in saving what has failed, in the sense that "everything that has been suppressed and forgotten in the past or that no one has taken care of is given a new chance," he puts it Mosès in his 1993 study.

The concept of remembrance as active, present-day and future-oriented remembering can also be traced back to Benjamin's extensive reading of Hölderlin ; For example, he quotes from his poem Der Herbst :

"The legends that are departing
from the earth, From the spirit that has been and returns,
they return to humanity, and
we learn a lot from the time that is hastily consumed."

- Friedrich Hölderlin: The autumn , 1837, verses 1-4.

The extensive reception of Benjamin by Adorno and Horkheimer in the dialectic of the Enlightenment also includes the concept of remembrance, which they take up as "remembrance of nature in the subject". One cannot free oneself from nature any more than from the past; therefore the only alternative is to free nature from a self-destructive concept of reason.

literature

Primary sources

  • Ernst Bloch [1918]: Through the desert. Early critical essays , 3rd edition, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​1981, ISBN 3-518-10074-2 .
  • Walter Benjamin: Appendix B, last part of Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen , in: On the critique of violence and other essays (1965), 3rd edition, afterword by Herbert Marcuse, 1st edition [reprint of the 1965 edition], Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main , 2006, ISBN 978-3-518-10103-2 , pp. 78-94, p. 94. Also contained in Walter Benjamin: Gesammelte Schriften , Volume I-2. Frankfurt am Main, 1980.
  • Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of the Enlightenment . S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, reprinted as paperback 1988, ISBN 978-3-596-27404-8 .

Research literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gershom Scholem: Walter Benjamin and his angel. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main, 1983, p. 214.
  2. ↑ On the history of the term before and with Bloch, cf. the detailed treatise in Stefano Marchesoni: Walter Benjamin's concept of remembrance . About the genesis, position and meaning of an uncommon term in Benjamin's writings , dissertation, 2013, especially pp. 9–44. The term is most frequently encountered in Chapter 5 of the early editions of Bloch's work Geist der Utopie (1918). As part of the collection of essays Through the Desert , these passages have been revised and republished. See Ernst Bloch: Through the desert. Early critical essays , 3rd edition, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, ​​1981, ISBN 3-518-10074-2 .
  3. ↑ Stéphane Mosès: Remembrance and the present. Historical consciousness in Walter Benjamin's late work. In: Anselm Haverkamp, ​​Renate Lachmann (Ed.): Memoria. Forgetting and remembering. Munich, 1993, pp. 385-405, p. 392.
  4. ↑ Johann Kreuzer: “We are also good and we are skilled at something.” Walter Benjamin's Hölderlin reading. In: Waltraud Meints, Michael Daxner, Gerhard Kraiker (Hrsg.): Raum der Freiheit. Reflections on idea and reality. Transcript, Bielefeld 2009, pp. 99-122; P. 119 f.