ABSTRACT
The “Theses on the Philosophy of History” is often credited as Walter Benjamin's last work. It contains some of his most famous and frequently quoted passages, notably the description of the Angel of History, and provides an exemplary demonstration of his conceptual method. Yet the “Theses” end on an unexpected grace note that inflects Benjamin's ideas with a significant new meaning. In what appears to be a pendant to his main line of thought, Benjamin shifts the focus of his commentary upon History with a brief reflection upon the nature of the universe. Few have noted that the definitive statement on the constitution and function of the dialectical image in Thesis XVII, insofar as any of Benjamin's statements can be taken as definitive, is followed by a seemingly commonplace observation about the relatively recent appearance of human life on the planet. Benjamin situates human history as a microscopic blip in the geological time scale. He compresses the entirety of his philosophy of history into an easily accessible phrase that would not seem out of place in a middle school lesson on the formation of the Earth. Benjamin states:
“In relation to the history of organic life on earth,” writes a modern biologist, “the paltry fifty millennia of homo sapiens constitute something like two seconds at the close of a twenty-four-hour day. On this scale, the history of civilised mankind would fill one-fifth of the last second of the last hour.” 1
