Enchantment in Times of War: Aby Warburg, Walter Benjamin, and the Secularization Thesis

Abstract

This article reads Aby Warburg's and Walter Benjamin's work on the astrological movements of the Reformation era in dialogue with the theory of relations between the spiritual and the temporal developed in Protestant "war theology" during World War I. War theology developed themes already present in historical Protestant doctrine, notably Luther's Two Kingdoms theory (Zwei Reiche Lehre). Warburg and Benjamin were wrestling with the challenge of living at a time of great conflict in a highly sacralized——rather than secularized——world with deep roots in early modern Lutheranism. Max Weber was working out his ideas about magic, Calvinism, and secularization at the same time. The article thus also suggests the need to reassess his theses about the emergence of a secular world purged of irrationalism in dialogue with Warburg's and Benjamin's work.

Messianic Time and Monetary Value1

“…This literal assault on time enacts for Benjamin an awakening of consciousness to the historical consciousness of the time. It is also a disruption and destruction of that time-arrêter le jour (stopping the day), 14 [59][60][61]-is to stress that la situation and die Moderne fashion a particular form-of-life in which Benjamin himself felt trapped and limited. This form-of-life is an historical consciousness enclosed and enforced within a particular calendar-ized time.…”