From: "T. Murphy" <tmorpheme-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: hating the modern
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 12:44:15 +0900



Hitler's thought is certainly anti-Enlightenment, but...

Benjamin's real targets in the quote are the "modern" ideologies of social
democracy and Stalinism -- those (anti-fascist) currents within marxism
which most closely identified with the Enlightenment, and so were unable to
understand the power and attractive force of fascism in a supposedly
civilized nation like Germany. The "Theses on History", from which the quote
is taken, were also written immediately after the Hitler-Stalin pact, an
event which shocked Benjamin enormously.

Someone like Norman Geras has written very well on the problems that a
specifically Jewish marxist (Ernest Mandel) had in trying to come to terms
with the Holocaust, given the strongly Enlightenment cast of his thought
about history and progress.

Basically, the issue is whether we see phenomena like racism and war as
unwelcome but entirely legitimate offspring of modern capitalist relations
or try to explain them away as throw backs to some more primitive state of
affairs. This is a major issue within marxism. There are a number of
important marxists who question seriously the extent to which marxism should
be seen as an Enlightenment philosophy. Marx was also strongly influenced by
thinkers like Carlyle, who were in the broad tradition of romantic
anti-capitalism and often explicitly anti-Enlightenment.

In general, I think you can say that the greater the reliance on
Enlightenment thought as a guide, the greater the problems in trying to
understand twentieth century catastrophes such as fascism, Stalinism, and
imperialist war.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Leah Shelleda" <shelleah-AT-ix.netcom.com>
To: <modernism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2000 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: hating the modern


> Terry wrote:
> > I would agree that Hitler is not an anti-modernist for the usual Walter
> > Benjamin reasons: "The current amazement that the things we are
experiencing
> > are 'still' possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. The
> > amazement is not the beginnning of knowledge--unless it is the knowledge
> > that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable."
> >
> If we take Marx's "monomyth", Freudian psychology (a "decadent Jewish
> philosophy"), democracy, women's rights and mass culture as aspects of
> the Enlightenment (which, for Germany, did not include Locke, Rousseau
> et cie), and Modernism, than it seems that Hitler's National Socialism
> is a reaction against the Enlightenment and Modernism, as he opposed all
> of the above,  Benjamin's wonderful quote to the contrary.
> Leah Shelleda
>