The Knight of Infinity and the Angel of History: A Reading of Kierkegaard and Benjamin

Abstract

This essay offers a brief comparative reading of Walter Benjamin and Søren Kierkegaard. The paper, with the use of the images of the “Angel of History” in Benjamin, and Kierkegaard's “knight(s) of infinity,” investigates both philosophers’ theological interpretations of: the world, a hidden God, and the now-time or the instant of revelation. The essay explores how God's hiddenness in Jewish mysticism as it appears in Benjamin is substantively different from the Negative theology of the “deus absconditus” that makes an appearance in Kierkegaard, and discusses the ethical/political/social implications of their theological-political positions.