Benjamin and Spinoza on time and history: some reading paths

Only recently have philosophical historiography and Benjaminian studies turned their attention to the relationship between Benjamin and Spinoza’s philosophies, with their possible links of affinity (and distance) regarding their conceptions of time and history. Here I would like to follow some reading paths recently proposed by various interpreters, and specifically those centering on Benjamin’s reflections in Toward a Critique of Violence (1920) and the Theological- Political Fragment (1921-22). This analysis reveals a different conception of historical temporality in the two philosophers, which circumvents in different ways both the unilinear, “Oedipal” and Platonic-Christian conception of time and the cyclical and recursive conception of Stoic origins, both of which are the basis of the central western vision of historicity.