Abstract

Benjamin's "Fate and Character" announces the radical disjunction of law and justice. Bound—ever since the ancient Greeks—with myth, fate, guilt, unhappiness, misfortune, and violence, law can neither nourish nor generate justice. Modern law, its irreligiosity not a sign of Enlightenment but of the demonic, represents the afterlife of the archaic. Against Nietzsche's vision of "tragic myth," Benjamin identifies an immanent caesura in "paganism" that suspends the dominion of law, namely the moral speechlessness or infancy of the tragic hero. Yet this means treating tragedy as a transition to messianic prophecy. But what if Oedipus learned to speak?