Session 8B: Philosophy of Hope
Session 8B: Philosophy of Hope
Chair: Ed Wiltse
Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno on Hope: a Conversation
Fotini Vaki
Department of History, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece
The aim of the present paper is the elucidation of hope in the writings of Th. W. Adorno and W. Benjamin, in particular, in Negative Dialectics as well as in Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History both of which were written in the “midnight of the century” when the hope for a better world was shattered by the atrocities of fascism and Stalinism.
For both thinkers, hope is bound up with a particular view on historical time, i.e. whether time is the very condition of progress, or, on the contrary, its very opposite. Both share a profound mistrust on the Enlightenment myth of historical progress and its legacy over historical materialism, which regards the gigantic development of the productive forces as the sine qua non condition of progress, lapsing thereby, into a technological determinism. While for W. Benjamin, progress is identified with “a single catastrophe which keeps piling up wreckage upon wreckage,” for Adorno, “no universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the megaton bomb.”
However, Adorno and Benjamin differ as to whether there is any possibility of viewing and articulating hope amidst those catastrophes. Thus, Benjamin’s radical break with the Marxist evolutionary schemes of progress consists in two respects: first, in viewing progress not as a leap to the future, but, paradoxically as a return to the past. The motor force of revolution, for Benjamin, stems from the oppressed memories of suffering and struggle. Second, Benjamin claims that hope is not to be traced in the continuum of historical time but in what he calls Jetztzeit (now-time), which is a unique moment of redemption and transcendence qualitatively distinct from the conception of history as a causal connection of moments.
In opposition to the above peculiar amalgam of profane revolutionary hope and Messianism, Adorno’s writings are governed by pessimism. Adorno denies hope to history. The only subversive potential is to be found, by contrast in the most esoteric high art, i.e., the works of abstract expressionism or the plays of Samuel Beckett. Although the last sentences of Minima Moralia follow Benjamin to the extent that they endorse “the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption,” yet no social force can be identified in the world of commodity fetishism, capable of transforming and transcending the existent state of affairs.
Against all Hopes – Escaping Auschwitz and the Politics of Memory
Ruth Linn
Faculty of Education, Haifa University, Israel
On April 10, 1944, Rudolf Vrba managed to escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau with a Jewish friend, Fred Wetzler. Both had been deported from Slovakia in the spring of 1942. After a perilous 11 days’ march they made it back to their native country, Slovakia, and almost at once managed to establish contact with the leaders of the remainder of the Jewish community there (about 25,000 out of 88,000 souls). For three days the escapees conveyed in detail to the members of the Jewish Council the geographical plan of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Germans’ method of mass murder (tattooing, gassing, and cremation) and the course of events they had witnessed there from the spring of 1942.
The 30 pages Vrba-Wetzler report was the first document about the Auschwitz death camp to reach the free world and to be accepted as credible. Its authenticity broke the barrier of skepticism and apathy that had existed up to that point. It is doubtful, however, that its content reached more than a small part of the prospective victims, though Vrba’s and Wetzler’s critical and alarming assessment was in the hands of Hungarian Jewish leaders as early as April 28 or early May 1944. During May and June 1944, about 437,000 Hungarian Jews boarded in good faith the “resettlement trains” that carried them to the Auschwitz death camps, where most were immediately gassed.
Whereas the two escapees predicted extremely accurately the fate of the Hungarian Jews, what they could not have predicted was that their postwar memoirs and documented report would be kept from the Israeli Hebrew-reading public. The “presence” of the “absence” of the escape from Auschwitz in Israeli historiography on the one hand, and the moral visibility and sanctity of Auschwitz in the country’s hegemonic narrative on the other, remained a puzzle. In the present study, therefore, I try to delve into the mystery of Vrba’s narrative of hope and disappearance not only from Auschwitz but also from Israeli textbooks and the Israeli Holocaust narrative.
Reason and Utopia: Can Philosophy Justify Hope
Shane O’Neill
Head of School, Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland
What is the relation between social hope for a better future and philosophical theories of truth, reason or human nature? The attempt to articulate social hope through philosophical reason, and so to connect reason and utopia, has been explicit in that tradition of inquiry known as ‘critical theory’. The assumed connection in critical theory between philosophy and hope has been questioned in many ways in the recent past. One of the most important challenges has come from Richard Rorty, who believes that the best way of sustaining hope for a better future is to abandon the philosophical attempt to nail down a universal account of reason, or to secure a foundation for truth. In this paper I will interrogate Rorty’s attempt to divorce utopian hope and philosophical reason by evaluating two competing universalist perspectives that have emerged from differing strands of contemporary critical theory. Both provide grounds for defending the claim that social hope needs philosophical foundations. The first perspective is that of the philosophical anthropologist who focuses on the ‘essential’ substantive features of human experience. The second is that of the rational proceduralist who is concerned with the ‘unavoidable’ presuppositions of human reasoning. In assessing critically the relative merits of these two views, a third and better alternative emerges, one we can refer to as the perspective of the democratic critic. It is suggested that while critical theorists can and should remain resolute in articulating robust, political demands that promise to fulfil social hopes, their practical purpose, of transforming things for the better, would be helped rather than hindered were they to follow Rorty’s advice by lightening up, philosophically speaking at least.
Hope Pro/Contra Fear?
Inga Leitane
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of History and Philosophy, Universtity of Latvia, Latvia
The main idea of work is to explain origins, characteristics and significance of phenomenon of hope. Therefore I will offer insights in the main characteristics of hope in works of Ernst Bloch, Gabriel Marcel and Jozef Pieper. In accordance with philosophers, human being is capable for vital processes that makes possible the decline of fear and the dawn of hope. For existence of human being the phenomenon of hope and phenomenon of fear are both compatible and separable. Therefore the main problem which will be solved: is hope pro or contra fear? For the explaining of phenomenon of fear I will offer insight in the works of Martin Heidegger. In accordance with Ernst Bloch, hope eliminates the fear and therefore seems that hope is contra fear. From the other side, the hope can be compatible with fear as the process of gradual eliminating of fear. Therefore both fear and hope is thinkable together and offers significance one to another. The work of hope is the process of gradual elimination of fear. Hope can grow stronger if there are more fear because of elimination process, that is, work of hope. In this process had to be involved both phenomenons – fear and hope. Therefore in some aspects the hope can depend from fear and the fear can be thought as provision of emergence and decline of hope. So fear have double sided significance in the comprehension of the phenomenon of hope. Hope can be pro and contra fear, because fear provides the hope and offers significance of hope.
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