UN DEMONIO VIVO: LA NO BANALIDAD DEL MAL (III)

Those who do not learn how to decipher photographs will be the illiterate of the future.

Walter Benjamin

El máximo error moderno no es anunciar que Dios murió, sino creer que el diablo ha muerto

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Primera vez aquí el 2 de octubre de 2016

Siguiendo la fe católica, hay que sostener que la voluntad de los ángeles santos está confirmada en el bien, la de los demonios, en el mal.

(Santo Tomás de Aquino, Summa, C.64.a2 (La voluntad de los demonios, ¿se obstinó o no se obstinó en el mal?))

The experience of our generation: that capitalism will not die a natural death.

Walter Benjamin

“The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room; only one activity: clearing away ...
The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates in clearing away traces of our own age ...”
― Walter Benjamin, Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings

“Pessimism all along the line. Absolutely. Mistrust in the fate of literature, mistrust in the fate of freedom, mistrust in the fate of European humanity, but three times mistrust in all reconciliation: between classes, between nations, between individuals. And unlimited trust only in IG Farben and the peaceful perfecting of the air force. But what now? What next?”
― Walter Benjamín

“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve. Not the least reason that the latter has a chance is that its opponents, in the name of progress, greet it as a historical norm. – The astonishment that the things we are experiencing in the 20th century are “still” possible is by no means philosophical. It is not the beginning of knowledge, unless it would be the knowledge that the conception of history on which it rests is untenable.”
― Walter Benjamín

"It is more arduous to honor the memory of anonymous beings than that of the renowned. The construction of history is consecrated to the memory of the nameless.”

Cuadro de Bermejo (San Miguel trinunfante sobre el demonio)

Memorial de Walter Benjamin en Portbou. (Created by Israeli artist Dani Karavan, the memorial to Walter Benjamin is on a clifftop by Portbou’s municipal cemetery. It was named “Passages” in remembrance of Benjamin’s final passage from France to Spain, as well as his enormous unfinished work Passagenwerk (Arcades Project) on 19th-century Paris.)