"Los avisadores del fuego": Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Kafka

Abstract

There were thinkers who foretold in their time the signs of the coming catastrophe. They were not prophets but fine analysts. We are referring to Rosenzweig, Benjamin and Kafka. In the "idealism" of the philosophy that comes from Jonia and reaches Jena, Rosenzweig animadverted on the tendency to a totalitarianism that potentially converted it into an "ontology of war". Benjamin brought to light the radical ambiguity within the concept of progress, so fundamental to the illustrated thought. Barbarism, in general, and fascism, in particular, are not the opposite to progress but one of its possibilities. That fatal possibility is, for the victim, the rule. Kafka traced with foresight the fascist reduction of man to bare life in the recurrent animalisation of his characters, as well as the denial of the other in those presented as victims of incommunications.