Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Editor’s Note ix
4. Editor’s Introduction: “To Read What Was Never Written” 1
5. Part One. Language
6. 1. The Thing Itself 25
7. 2. The Idea of Language 39
8. 3. Language and History: Linguistic and Historical Categories in Benjamin’s Thought 48
9. 4. Philosophy and Linguistics 62
10. 5. Kommerell, or On Gesture 77
11. Part Two. History
12. 6. Aby Warburg and the Nameless Science 87
13. 7. Tradition of the Immemorial 104
14. 8. *Se: Hegel’s Absolute and Heidegger’s Ereignis 116
15. 9. Walter Benjamin and the Demonic: Happiness and Historical Redemption 138
16. 10. The Messiah and the Sovereign: The Problem of Law in Walter Benjamin 160
17. Part Three. Potentiality
18. 11. On Potentiality 175
19. 12. The Passion of Facticity 185
20. 13. Pardes : The Writing of Potentiality 205
21. 14. Absolute Immanence 220
22. Part Four. Contingency
23. 15. Bartleby, or On Contingency 241
24. Notes 275
25. Index of Names 303
26. Crossing Aesthetics 309