Explosión del continuo de la historia: el "momento actual" de Walter Benjamin y la recuperación de la experiencia

Abstract

This paper analyses the concept of “nowtime” (Jetztzeit) in Walter Benjamin’s “On the concept of history.” It shows its centrality in Benjamin’s philosophy of history, by defining it in opposition to two elements of Kantian philosophy: on the one hand, “empty, homogeneous time,” on the other, the faith in the infinite, inevitable progress of a generic “mankind.” It argues that the notions of now-time and truth as flitting hark back to Benjamin’s early concern about the devaluation of experience in modern philosophy and the need to rescue the ephemeral as a decisive element in metaphysics. Rather than a historical category, now-time denotes an instance of redemption