Notes to Walter

What Niobe challenges is not the law, but the authority or the legitimate power of Leto. Having now expounded the relation between law and violence, the question of the relationship between law and justice can be raised. Benjamin is not only speaking in metaphors when he writes: Justice is an end which in principle cannot be reached within the realm of law: What is called for is therefore a proletarian general strike that aims at the destruction of all state power. The problem, as Derrida saw, is that we can never know whether actions have been a manifestation of divine violence.

Justice is possible but not knowable through an act of divine violence, which in all respects stands in complete opposition to the mythic violence of law: In contrast to mythic violence, divine violence does not aspire to institute as law a relation of domination: How can we understand the purification of the guilty of the law by divine violence? The German rein as the English pure carries the double meaning of something clean, and something absolute and unalloyed.

Firstly, divine violence is pure meaning clean because it has not been bastardized with law; it is pure as before the fall of man; it is pure from the guilt of the law the guilt Niobe feels for the death of her children. Where mythic violence conflates means and ends, divine violence separates means and ends.

As Benjamin argues, just ends can only be decided by God, and no law can be given for justified means; what we have is only a guideline Richtschnur. A Richtschnur is an approximation used practically to build a house.

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To build a good house the masons, in general, would have to follow this Richschnur but sometimes, because of a broken ground, a good house could only be built if the Richtschnur is ignored. The commandment is not law but a guideline which in general would have to be followed for human beings to live a good life, as the masons in general have to follow it to build a good house. There might however be situations where it would have to be ignored. Neither is the commandment law in the sense that a judgment of an act that ignores the guideline can be derived from the commandment: For this reason, no law can incapsulate justice.

What are these exceptional circumstances?

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For Benjamin, the decayed mythic violence of the law of the modern state seems to make up such exceptional circumstances: The proletarian general strike and the abolishment of state power which constitutes a break with the oscillation between lawmaking and law-preserving violence will lead to a foundation of a new historical epoch neues geschichtliches Zeitalter p. Verwerflich meaning unrighteous, something that has to be condemned, comes from the verb Verwerfen, to dismiss or to abolish, which again comes from the verb werfen meaning to throw: The immediate encapsulation of the task of a critique of violence conveyed in the German title and the first couple of sentences is entirely lost in the English translation.

An etymological clarification is therefore important if we aspire to understand what a critique of violence consists of. Critique Kritik should not primarily be understood as a negative evaluation or condemnation, but in the Kantian tradition of judgement, evaluation, and examination on the basis of means provided by the critique itself. That the task of a critique of violence is to be understood as expounding the relationship of violence Gewalt to law Recht and justice Gerechtigkeit , is thus much less artificial and obscure. Two further etymological clarifications are however necessary to fully understand the task of Zur Kritik der Gewalt.

Recht, as the Latin Ius, carries the meaning of both rights and law as in the general system of laws , which is juxtaposed to specific laws, Gesetz corresponding to the Latin Lex. In English it is not immediately clear why the sphere of law and justice can be understood as the sphere of moral relations.

In Philosophie des Rechts, Sittlichkeit is the term used for the political framework of ethical life, that is, the family, civil society and the state.

Benjamin is thus not interested in force or violence of nature Naturgewalt ; but the violence present within the framework of the society, and ultimately, the state. However, as Derrida pointed out, many of these deconstruct themselves. For this reason, the two theories agree that violence as a means can be justified if it is in accordance with the law.

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Benjamin raises the following objections against this dogma: Hereby, the question of whether violence in principle can be a moral means even to a just end is made impossible to address. By insisting on critiquing violence in itself, Benjamin challenges the fundamental dogma of jurisprudence, namely, that justice can be attained if means and ends are balanced, that is, if justified means are used for just ends.

The question, thus, is how violence and law relate to one another? Benjamin argues that the intimate relationship of violence and law is twofold. Firstly, violence is the means by which law is instituted and preserved. Secondly, domination violence under the name of power Macht is the end of the law: Benjamin distinguishes between lawmaking violence rechtsetzend Gewalt and law-preserving violence rechtserhaltende Gewalt on basis of whether the end towards which violence is used as a means is historically acknowledged, i.

If violence as a means is directed towards natural ends—as in the case of interstate war where one or more states use violence to ignore historically acknowledged laws such as borders—the violence will be lawmaking. The establishment of borders after a war is a clear example of the institutionalisation of a relation of domination inherent in all lawmaking violence. This demonically ambiguous equality of the law, Benjamin writes, is analogous to that which Anatole France satirically expressed when he said: In contrast hereto, if violence as a means directed towards legal ends—exemplified by compulsory general conscription where the state forces the citizens to risk their lives to protect the state—the violence will be law-preserving.

For example, Collatio et Prologus , p. The only study I know which discusses Chatton's ideas on future contingents in any detail is Schabel [b], pp.

This reconstruction is based on Chatton's Reportatio super Sententias , Book I, distinctions 38—41, the locus primus for his treatment of the subject. In his latest extant work, Quodlibet , we find four questions on related subjects, but the discussion there focuses almost exclusively on revelation and prophecy, whereas the Reportatio texts treat the problem more broadly, focusing on the issue of divine foreknowledge and predestination.

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All normal modal logics, and hence most plausible accounts of alethic modality, include the K axiom. Holcot simply repeats Chatton's solution in Quodlibet 3. See Holcot [], pp.