Irreducible justice: Benjamin, Derrida, and the tension of divine violence

Abstract

This thesis examines Walter Benjamin’s concept of divine violence and Jacques Derrida’s critique of it. Benjamin understands divine violence as a force that is connected with the realization of justice by interrupting or even destroying the legal order. Derrida argues that the purity of divine violence cannot be maintained. As a result, divine violence may be confused with the violence it is supposed to interrupt, or even used to justify extreme violence. However, I argue that their disagreement presupposes a shared critical position: justice cannot be fully reduced to law. This irreducibility of justice can only be understood within a tensional relation, which I call immanent irreducibility. On this basis, I argue that divine violence, as a manifestation of justice, should be understood through the tension between its practical meaning and its critical meaning. Therefore, the tension of divine violence is not a defect to be eliminated, but a basic feature to be preserved. Finally, by turning to Franz Kafka’s works, I demonstrate that this tension can be preserved in literary form.