Daniel Pepe

Throughout his philosophical, literary, and critical works in various fields, Walter Benjamin repeatedly ties his practice of critique to the thought of redemption. In this chapter, I provide a unifying interpretation of Benjamin’s “redemptive critique.” Redemptive critique names the critical operation to restore essential content to and, thereby, redeem the possibility of experience. In this, I show Benjamin’s redemptive critique emerges from an effort to combat the destruction of experience—a fundamental metaphysical problem that grounds Benjamin’s works throughout his career. In addition, I show that Benjamin’s redemptive critique is necessarily tied to his metaphysical theory of the ideas (or constellations), especially in relationship to the idea of happiness. Redemptive critique takes on a uniquely ethical import in relation to the idea of happiness, because, there, it assumes the responsibility of the “weak messianic” power of the present.