ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to clarify the component elements in Benjamin’s theory of historical knowledge, and it defends the thesis that the salient points of connection between this theory and his conception of revolution require the differentiation of a number of concepts that Benjamin, and his most influential commentators, tend to amalgamate. This exercise of clarification is used to show that Benjamin’s theory of historical knowledge draws together the elements examined in the previous chapters: the metaphor of the dream is the frame he uses to interpret salient knowledge of the past; and it is the vivification of the experience of past meaning, modelled to an extent on the childhood wish, that is the basis for the theory’s conception of revolution. These elements are organised around a theological core, which is the marker for the characteristic singularity of the overall conception. In particular, the chapter identifies two different, indeed opposed, conceptions of redemption in Benjamin. The ‘Platonic salvation’ of phenomena in the ‘constellations of ideas’ is not the ‘redemption’ of the ‘historical object’ as the ‘nexus of meaning’ of ‘revolutionary experience.’ These two sides are irreducibly present throughout Benjamin’s writing and cause conceptual confusion.
