Revista Volumen V - Academia Puertorriqueña de Jurisprudencia y ...

lo único que indica esta trasgresión es la trasgresión misma. El lenguaje apunta hacia latautología. Allí donde Wittgenstein desemboca en la finitud del lenguaje -y, por tanto, en unsilencio metafísico (y este silencio aún se oye en las Investigaciones)- Benjamín articula laexperiencia histórica del lenguaje y el papel que juega en la lucha contra los monstruos 28 .XIAl umbral del milenio.- La radicalización de la Ilustración, o la salida del hombre de suautoculpable minoría de edad 29 , se ofrece como aquella milenaria, melancólica, promesa deredención. El Derecho se ha limitado a transformar el mundo de diversas formas; de lo que setrata es de interpretarlo 30 .is this running up against something and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running upagainst the limits of language is ethics. I think it is definitely important to put an end to all that claptrap about ethics—whetherintuitive knowledge exists, whether value exists, whether the good is definable. In ethics we are always making an attempt to saysomething that cannot be said, something that does not and never will touch the essence of the matter. It is, a priori, certain thatwhatever definition of the good may be given—it will always be merely a misunderstanding to say that the essential thing, thatwhat is really meant, corresponds to what is expressed (Moore). But the inclination, the running up against something, indicatessomething.St. Augustine knew that already when he said: What, you swine, you want not to talk nonsense! Go ahead and talknonsense, it does not matter!” Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: conversations recorded by Friedrich Waismann; traducido alinglés por J. Schulte & B. McGuinness. Harper & Row Publisher, Great Britain (1979). pp. 68-6928Dice Benjamin: "To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it `the way it really was' (Ranke). It means toseize hold of a memory as it flashes up at the moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the pastwhich unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of thetradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attemptmust be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as theredeemer; he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the pastwho is firmly convinced that even the dead will no be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to bevictorious." Theses on the Philosophy of History, recogido en Illuminations, p. 255. Esa «articulación» es, precisamente, ellenguaje.29Así definió Kant la Ilustración en su breve ensayo ¿Qué es la Ilustración?, recogido en la Antología de A. Maestre bajo elmismo nombre (1988).30Dice Marx en su conocida undécima Tesis sobre Feuerbach: "Los filósofos se han limitado a interpretar el mundo de distintosmodos; de lo que se trata es de transformarlo". Textos Filosóficos, p.491. Este aforismo de Marx recoge de forma condensada suidea sobre la necesidad de concebir la «teoría» y la «praxis» como dos momentos indispensables de todo proceso detransformación. Para un interesante análisis de estos apuntes de Marx, desde la perspectiva de la conciencia anticipatoria, véaseDas Prinzip Hoffnung (1959) de Ernst Bloch, traducido al inglés como The Principle of Hope por N. Plaice y otros. MIT Press,Cambridge (1986), pp. 249-286. Por otro lado, discutiendo el estructuralismo del Lévi-Strauss en La structure, le signe et le jeudans le discours des sciences humaines, ha dicho Derrida sobre la «interpretación»: "There are thus two interpretations ofinterpretation, of structure, of sign, of play. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin, which escapesplay, and the order of the sign and which lives the necessity of interpretation as exile. The other, which is no longer turned towardthe origin, affirms play and tries to pass beyond man and humanism, the name of man being the name of that being who,throughout the history of metaphysics or of onto theology - in other words, throughout his entire history - has dreamed of fullpresence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of play. [...] There are more than enough indications today to suggestwe might perceive that these two interpretations of interpretation - which are absolutely irreconcilable even if we live them simultaneouslyand reconcile them in an obscure economy - together share the field which we call, in such a problematic fashion,the social sciences. For my part, although these two interpretations must acknowledge and accentuate their difference and definetheir irreducibility, I do not believe that today there is any question of choosing - in the first place because here we are in a region(let us say, provisionally, a region of historicity) where the category of choice seems particularly trivial; and, in the second,because we must first try to conceive of the common ground, and the difference of this irreducible difference. Here there is a kindof question, let us still call it historical, whose conception, formation, gestation, and labor we are only catching a glimpse oftoday. I employ these words, I admit, with a glance toward the operations of childbearing - but also with a glance toward thosewho, in a society from which I do not exclude myself, turn their eyes away when faced by the as yet unnamable which isproclaiming itself and which can do so, as is necessary whenever a birth is in the offing, only under the species of the no species,in the formless, mute, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity," traducido al inglés como Structure, Sign, and Play in theDiscourse of the Human Sciences. Recogido en Writing and Difference, pp. 292-293. Ciertamente, este escatologismo negativode Derrida corre en sentido contrario del utopianismo -en el buen sentido de la palabra- de Bloch.