Lingua traduzione comunità. Sulla filosofia del linguaggio di Walter Benjamin

Abstract

The constellation of topics on which Benjamin’s philosophy of language is founded, takes a definite shape since his early works. Using the thirty- year- old theoretical parable, we will here trace a review of the main moments of the Berliner author’s linguistic doctrine and their close connection with a set of problems concerning human sociality, the relation with the material element of nature- both of the man and of the external environment- and, in more general terms, the shaping of the world shared by the man. The aim is to show the main features of this philosophy of language and how they still act both explicitly in the latest works, triggering a critical reflection on the direct society in order to support the communist analysis of reality, and implicitly, as a productive reverse side of the immanent level. The two writings of the 30s, which we consider in conclusion of the path, confirm this interpretation. On the one side they show that the sudden historical transformations, which push Benjamin to go beyond the theoretical relations that he has previously established, do not lead him to deny the fundamental conceptual links that descend from these. On the other side they show his attempt to let the early formulations express their political potential.