What's Left of Philosophy 26 | Wake Up and Choose Divine Violence: Walter Benjamin w/ Dr. Ashley Bohrer
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Dec 4, 2021 AI Snips
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Violence Is Constitutive Of Law
- Walter Benjamin locates violence as intrinsic to law, not merely external to it.
- He distinguishes mythic violence (founding/preserving law) from divine violence (destroying law).
Two Forms Of Political Violence
- Mythic violence sustains political and economic domination by presenting power as natural.
- Divine violence interrupts and aims to destroy the legal order rather than justify it.
Benjamin Helped Forge An Abolitionist
- Ashley Bohrer credits Benjamin for making her an abolitionist by revealing the state's structural commitment to violence.
- That philosophical shift let her receive abolitionist politics more readily later on.