Walter Benjamin Quotes
The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 473.
The President was also getting ominous news from England. See {41111}
This quotation is fascinating and illustrates the depth and complexity of the problem facing Abraham Lincoln. Howell actually used the word “evil” to describe the abolitionists and their political efforts end slavery. He and other slave holders did not see slavery and the murder, brutality, and torture that went with it as evil. After the Presidential years of James Buchanan who protected the South from slavery reform and abolition as the North was gaining political power and the abolitionists were having a greater and greater effect on public opinion in the North. While Southerners did not believe Lincoln would emancipate the slaves, they realized that the majority of the growing nation was opposed to slavery, and more and more Northern states were passing laws making any slave who sets foot in the State a free person. Slaves could not only have more reason to run away, but slave owners would not be able to get their “property” back. Lincoln would not help the South as Buchanan did, and the Southerners realized that over time, slavery would no longer be feasible or profitable. Cobb, very experienced at Washington politics, realized the changes that would come and thought that they would be “certain and speedy.”—see {620555}. Lincoln had been elected a month earlier and without Buchanan as President to protect the institution of slavery, the anti-slavery majority of the country would prevail unless the South seceded. Cobb was one of the strong advocates. 6 days later, the Georgia legislature called for a convention to debate secession. The irony was that if the South had not seceded and simply dragged its feet legislatively, it would have taken two or three decades for slavery to end. However, by seceding and initially fighting so hard and well while weak Union generals were in command, Lincoln was forced to try more drastic measures and issued the Emancipation Proclamation after only a few years. The Civil War and secession was not only a tactical and strategic error for the South, but rapidly brought about just what the Southerners were fighting to prevent.
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School, and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was also related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders.
