The Curious Case of Baruch Spinoza in Walter Benjamin's “Toward the Critique of Violence”

Abstract

Although Baruch Spinoza was important for thinkers of his generation, Walter Benjamin seems to have completely ignored the philosopher. Spinoza's name appears just a few times in Benjamin's works, and Spinoza's thought never seems to have been relevant to him. The only place where Benjamin quotes a text of Spinoza's, albeit between the lines, is in “Toward the Critique of Violence” (1921). Still, in this essay Benjamin is far from enthusiastic about the author of the Ethics. He names Spinoza as a proponent of natural law theory, which Benjamin dismisses in his search for a criterion with which to judge Gewalt. This article seeks to investigate Benjamin's apparent hostility to Spinoza and to reexamine the relationship between the two, from both a theoretical and a political perspective.