Abstract
If one were to reread Marx's writings today, which would be the phase of Marx's thought that would merit special attention? In this paper, I find that one core of Marx's thoughts lies in “critique.” I would therefore like to explore the significance that this critique can have as a form of fundamental thought. With this in mind, I want to consider Adorno's and Benjamin's interpretation of Marx's thought, with particular reference to their emphasis on “history”.
Adorno characterizes Marx's thought as “a critical theory of society” and thinks that it is only understandable as “a historical theory”. Adorno's view is remarkable in that it characterizes Marx's thought as a form of “interpretation (Deutung)” of “natural history (Naturgeschichte)”. This can be seen as an attempt, on the one hand, to show that various societal realities that should have historical reality appear as something inevitable or as things which obey “the coercion of nature”, but on the other hand, to perceive such realities in the form of something natural or eternal which have become historically, therefore as things which are fundamentally contingent. Benjamin, in contrast, thinks that one core of Marx's thoughts consists in the recognition of history as a “critique” to uncover “the memory of the anonymous (das Gedächtnis der Namenlosen)”. In Benjamin's view, when history up to the present is grasped as something continuous, it is just a “continuum of the oppressors”. Benjamin defines the form of history description that liquidates “the epic element” of this continuous history as “construction”, and tries to understand an essential part of the Marx's thought as such an attempt to explode “the continuum of history” and to rescue “the tradition of the oppressed”.
In this paper, through my clarification of Adorno's and Benjamin's understanding of Marx's thought, I attempt to examine the significance of Marx's “critique” of “history” and, through it, offer a worthy topic for further discussion.
