ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Benjamin's writing forms the completion of the nominal theory given by Gikatilla and Abulafia, where language is coextensive with existence, and yet objects cannot be identified with their names. The influence on Walter Benjamin of the Kabbalah has been noted, on occasion, but only a small amount of time has been spent in investigating the nature of this influence which Benjamin himself seems to have understood as crucial. Language for Benjamin is not simply a human system of signs, and the reading of nature is not a passive reception and description. The linguistic interface between elements described by Rosenzweig, Benjamin claims that all knowledge occurs as language, and the extent to which something is knowable is its language. Benjamin draws a clear distinction between the language of a thing, the mental being and the thing itself. Because the mental being of objects is not their name, language must always be something of a misreading.
