Abstract
In this article, I consider the philosophical question of chance in the context of a comparative discussion of two early twentieth-century intellectuals, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) and Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), contemporaries who deliberately involved themselves in the risks of chance in the time of a hazardous historical epoch. In different ways they chose or liked to live on the edge, which invites us to consider how within that context they responded to chance in their own work. This might encourage us to think of their work not in terms of biography as narrative or the life-work made meaningful, but to consider something of the dialectical relation between the two as the irruption of chance moves in and out of their lives, their writing, the roles that it plays there and in our reading of them, starting with chance’s most intimate, intimidating and ineffaceable effect, the destruction of meaning itself. The essay concludes by arguing that Benjamin conceived the Passagen Werk as his retranslation of Proust into the realm of history, employing the method developed by Eisenstein for his film of Marx’s Capital. Wittgenstein, in turn, offers a model of how to read the Passagen Werk as if it were a film.
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Notes
See Allen (2015) for a detailed analysis of Aristotle’s account of chance.
For a highly speculative attempt to maximise the significance of the chance encounter of Hitler and Wittgenstein at school, see Kimberley Cornish’s The Jew of Linz (1998).
See Jordan (2010) for an analysis of chance in the modern British novel.
Mais la langue n'est que l'un de ces systèmes de marques qui ont tous pour propriété cette étrange tendance : accroître simultanément les réserves d'indétermination aléatoire et les pouvoirs de codage ou de surcodage, autrement dit de contrôle et d'autorégulation. Cette concurrence entre l'aléa et le code perturbe la systématicité même du système dont elle règle pourtant le jeu dans son instabilité. (Derrida, 1987–1998, pp. 354–355)
“Denn kein Gedicht gilt dem Leser, kein Bild dem Beschauer, keine Symphonie der Hörerschaft [….] Was >sagt< denn eine Dichtung? Was teilt sie mit? Sehr wenig dem, der sie versteht. Ihr Wesentliches ist nicht Mitteilung nicht Aussage.” (Benjamin, 1991, IV. i, p. 9)
Leben schien nur lebenswert, wo die Schwelle, die zwischen Wachen und Schlaf ist, in jedem ausgetreten war, wie von Tritten massenhafter hin und wider flutender Bilder, die Sprache nur sie selbst, wo Laut und Bild und Bild und Laut mit automatischer Exaktheit derart glücklich ineinandergriffen, daß für den Groschen »Sinn« kein Spalt mehr übrigblieb. (Benjamin, 1991, II. i, p. 296)
‘Was hiernach für das Verhältnis von Übersetzung und Original an Bedeutung dem Sinn verbleibt, läßt sich in einem Vergleich fassen. Wie die Tangente den Kreis flüchtig und nur in einem Punkte beruht und wie ihr wohl diese Berührung, nicht aber der Punkt, das Gesetz vorschreibt, nach dem sie weiter ins Unendliche ihre gerade Bahn zieht, so berührt die Obersetzung flüchtig und nur in dem unendlich kleinen Punkte des Sinnes das Original, um nach dem Gesetze der Treue in der Freiheit der Sprachbewegung ihre eigenste Bahn zu verfolgen’. (Benjamin, 1991, IV.i, pp. 19–20).
Spur und Aura. Die Spur ist Erscheinung einer Nähe, so fern das sein mag, was sie hinterließ. Die Aura ist Erscheinung einer Ferne, so nah das sein mag, was sie hervorruft. In der Spur werden wir der Sache habhaft; in der Aura bemächtigt sie sich unser. (Benjamin, 1991, V.i, p. 560).
Das Ideal des chockförmigen Erlebnisses ist die Katastrophe. Das wird im Spiel sehr deutlich: durch immer größere Misen, die das Verlorene retten sollen, steuert der Spieler auf den absoluten Ruin zu. (Benjamin, 1991, V.i, p. 642).
References to the English translations are to the 1991 two-volume edition. The so-called 2019 “combined edition” omits this essay and all other texts in the “Appendix” of the original translation.
Man muß sich nicht die Zeit vertreiben - muß die Zeit zu sich einladen. Sich die Zeit vertreiben (sich die Zeit austreiben, abschlagen): der Spieler. Zeit spritzt ihm aus allen Poren. - Zeit laden, wie eine Batterie Kraft lädt: der Flaneur. (Benjamin, 1991, V.i, p. 164).
Ließe nicht ein passionierender Film sich aus dem Stadtplan von Paris gewinnen? aus der Entwicklung seiner verschiedenen Gestalten in zeitlicher Abfolge? aus der Verdichtung einer jahrhundertelangen Bewegung von Straßen, Boulevards, Passagen, Plätzen im Zeitraum einer halben Stunde? Und was anderes tut der Flaneur? (Benjamin, 1991, V.i, p. 135).
Malcolm suggests that Wittgenstein’s “observation of the film was not relaxed or detached,” suggesting his total absorption in the film washing over him. Absorption and distraction are dialectically interrelated in Benjamin’s thinking, see his “Theory of distraction” (Benjamin, 2002, III, pp. 141–142; 1991, VII, pp. 678–679).
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Acknowledgements
I should like to thank Anne Duprat, Julia Jordan, and an anonymous reviewer, for their productive comments on earlier versions of this essay.
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Young, R.J.C. Winging it with Wittgenstein and Benjamin. Neohelicon (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-024-00734-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-024-00734-z