QuestionsDoes history have a direction?The angel of history: progress seen as a storm
Does history have a direction?No direction

The angel of history: progress seen as a storm

The angel of history

Walter Benjamin 1892 · 1940Critic and philosopher: progress seen from the standpoint of the defeated, as one single catastrophe piling up.
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What it claims

There is no meaning of history as progress toward the better; history must be brushed against the grain, from the standpoint of the defeated, and the chance to interrupt the course of things must be seized.

Why

The angel of history sees one catastrophe piling up wreckage; what we call progress is the storm driving him on.

The same idea through history
Karl Marx1859Benjamin claims historical materialism, but removes from it the idea of an assured progress: in thesis XI, he blames social democracy for having believed that work and technical development would lead of themselves to liberation (see Marx's argument on social being).
In short

"The angel of history: progress seen as a storm" is an argument by Walter Benjamin (On the Concept of History (Theses), IX, VII, XIII (1940)) on the question "Does history have a direction?" (answer: no direction). Its claim: There is no meaning of history as progress toward the better; history must be brushed against the grain, from the standpoint of the defeated, and the chance to interrupt the course of things must be seized. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

On the Concept of History (Theses), IX, VII, XIII (1940)
Valid with an implicit premise

Walter Benjamin wrote these eighteen theses in spring 1940, in France, as the German army advanced; a few months earlier, the Hitler-Stalin pact had dashed his hopes. He died at the Spanish border in September, before publishing them. In thesis IX, he describes a painting by Paul Klee, "Angelus Novus", and turns it into an image of history: an angel who looks at the past as an accumulation of ruins while a storm drives him toward the future. This storm, he says, is what we call progress. Note: the text is elliptical, mixes Marxist and theological vocabulary, and was not prepared for publication; it has been interpreted in very different ways.

P1Where a chain of events appears to us, the angel of history sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet.
P2A storm blowing from Paradise drives him irresistibly into the future, to which he turns his back, while the pile of ruins grows skyward: what we call progress is this storm.
P3There is never a document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism. Today's rulers are the heirs of all who have conquered, and the historian who identifies with the victor works for the rulers.
P4The idea of a progress of the human race in history cannot be separated from the idea of its advance through a homogeneous, empty time; the critique of this advance must found the critique of the idea of progress in general.
P5 · implicit premiseIf history seen from the standpoint of the defeated is a continuous catastrophe, progress is the storm that feeds it, and it presupposes an empty, homogeneous time, then history has no direction toward the better.
Therefore there is no meaning of history as progress toward the better; history must be brushed against the grain, from the standpoint of the defeated, and the chance to interrupt the course of things must be seized.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a world where history leaves ruins and victims, culture is also barbarism, and yet the whole advances toward a real improvement, measured in life expectancy or in freedom.
Valid with P5. P5 moves from a vision (the angel) and two theses (barbarism of culture, empty time) to the denial of progress. Without it, one can grant the angel's image without concluding that progress is false: one could say the ruins are the price of a real improvement. This is a more moral than logical conclusion: it refuses to count the gain of some against the ruin of others. The theses also leave open a messianic chance of interrupting the course of things, which is not pure chance.
Analogy. A triumphal procession seen from two places. From the victors' side, you see chariots, banners, loot. From the roadside, you see the prisoners dragged behind. Benjamin says the usual history is told from the victors' pavement, and that one must look from the captives.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Hegel 1837 · attacks premise 5

Even if we regard history as a slaughter-bench on which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states and the virtue of individuals have been sacrificed, thought must ask to what final aim these enormous sacrifices were offered. To see only the ruins is to stop at lament and refuse to understand.

Benjamin replies
see the argument
Benjamin Benjamin's position, thesis VII
Benjamin answers that every cultural good inherited from the victors has an origin that cannot be considered without horror: it owes its existence to the toil of great geniuses, but also to the nameless forced labour of their contemporaries. He concludes that the materialist historian must distance himself from this tradition, and brush history against the grain.
The debate goes on (our summary) The two authors look at the same picture, that of ruins, and draw opposite conclusions: for Hegel the sacrifices have a goal that reason can recognise, for Benjamin no goal redeems them. Hegel does not say each crime was good: he wants to understand it. Benjamin does not deny all hope: he speaks of a messianic chance, but refuses that it be realised by a continuous course. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: can past sufferings be given meaning by their final result? Hegel says yes, Benjamin refuses any redemption by the future. Open point, running through twentieth-century thought.
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Steven Pinker 2018 · attacks premise 5

Figures over the last two centuries show real, measurable progress: life expectancy, literacy, wealth, health and, according to Pinker, the decline of violence have advanced almost everywhere. Reducing history to a catastrophe ignores these gains, which have saved a very large number of lives.

Benjamin replies
Benjamin Benjamin's position, thesis XIII
Benjamin describes the social democrats' idea of progress as that of a progress of humanity itself, and not only of its skills and knowledge. He notes that each of its features (progress of humanity, endless, unstoppable) is controversial, and he bases his critique on the idea of a course through empty, homogeneous time.
The debate goes on (our summary) Pinker and Benjamin are not speaking of the same thing. Pinker counts measurable gains. Benjamin distinguishes progress in skills from that of humanity itself, and refuses that the first proves the second. Each can say the other answers another question. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: do measurable gains suffice to speak of progress in history, or must one include what they cost and what they leave out? Open point.
Kant 1798 · attacks the conclusion

Experience can show a sign of moral progress: the disinterested enthusiasm of the onlookers of the French Revolution reveals, according to Kant, a disposition of the human race to the good. One cannot therefore conclude that there is only catastrophe: history contains signs that allow hope.

a defender replies
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Benjamin in the texts.
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Theodor W. Adorno defender of the argument · 1962
Summary: in his lecture "Progress" (1962), Adorno refuses to assert that humanity has already progressed, but he does not give up the idea of progress: it remains to be achieved, as resistance to the ever-present danger of relapse. His formula: "progress occurs where it ends".
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Axel Honneth 2004
Summary: in "The Irreducibility of Progress", Honneth, starting from Kant's account of the relation between morality and history, holds that the idea of historical progress is ineliminable for critical theory: without an account of the learning processes that led up to us, it cannot ground its norm.
See the rest of the debate (1)
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Amy Allen 2016
Summary: Allen argues that an account of progress as a fact, which makes European modernity the outcome of a learning process, is Eurocentric and burdens critical theory in postcolonial times. She draws from Adorno a distinction between progress as a task and progress as a fact, to keep the first idea without the second.
The debate goes on (our summary) Benjamin does not cite this passage in the Theses. Kant sees in it a "historical sign" (Geschichtszeichen): not the Revolution itself, but the sympathy it arouses in onlookers who have no stake in it. He elsewhere acknowledges the cost of the species' march for the generations (see his argument on unsocial sociability). Benjamin might accept keeping hope, but not that of a progress that fulfils itself over time. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: is hope grounded on signs of progress over time, or on the possibility of interrupting the course of things? Adorno (1962) doubts any progress already achieved but keeps the idea as a task; Honneth (2004) holds the idea of historical progress irreducible, Allen (2016) finds it Eurocentric. Open point.