Messianic Time. Redemption and Memory in Walter Benjamin

t. In Walter Benjamin the epistemological structure of the “concept of history”, which presents itself in a monadic dialectical image, is characterized by a non-linear, non-progressive but intensive and ideal temporal dimension, in which the cognitive concept and the idea (of the good, of justice, of liberty) characterized by totality and eternity coincide. Here emerges the link between the theological realm—transcendental and ideal but secretly active in the immanence of redemption—and the immanent setting of the political. In fact, in a fleeting moment, the redeemed past renders the fulfilment of messianic time, the Reign of God, and provides the occasion and direction for praxis, for a revolutionary action that is messianic and theologically motivated, striving toward the construction of a classless society. Political action is rendered possible specifically by its link to the past, by the cognitive capacity of the historical materialist to recuperate forgotten moments and make them explode, and to fuel the destructive, liberatory power of the oppressed class (the subject, like the historian, of historical knowlede).