Diverging Correspondences Concerning the Problem of Identity:

Russell-Wittgenstein and Benjamin-Scholem

Peter Fenves

MLN, Volume 127, Number 3 , April 2012 (German Issue), pp. 542-561
(Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.1353/mln.2012.0087

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Diverging Correspondences
Concerning the Problem of Identity:
Russell-Wittgenstein and
Benjamin-Scholem

Peter Fenves

At the end of his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, having reached

the limit of what can be done by means of ordinary language, Bertrand Russell makes the following claim as he seeks to circumscribe
the field under discussion by capturing the distinction between mathematical and non-mathematical propositions: [the former] all have
the characteristic which, a moment ago, we agreed to call tautology.1
As for the precise meaning of the term tautology and thus the reason
for the semantic agreement that he made with himselfthe book was
written in an English prison, to which Russell was condemned because
he insulted the armed forces of the United Stateshe is lucidly at a
loss for words: For the moment, I do not know how to define tautology. It would be easy to offer a definition that might be satisfactory
for a while; but I know of none that I feel to be satisfactory, in spite
of feeling thoroughly familiar with the characteristic of which a definition is wanted.2 Russell agrees with himself that the term tautology

1
Bertrand Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (orig. 1919; rpt. New York:
Routledge, 1993) 204. This paper is drawn from a larger study of tautology around
the time of the First World War with sections on Benjamin, Heidegger, Rosenzweig,
and Wittgenstein.
2
Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy 205.

MLN 127 (2012): 542561 2012 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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characterizes the distinction between the two mutually exclusive types

of proposition, and he is sure that he knows what characteristic should
be captured by the term tautology, but he cannot say what the term
means except by way of the auto-tautological formula, tautology is
tautology, which is rather disappointing as far as definitions go. When
Russell speaks of mathematics, he is in the habit of making paradoxicalsounding pronouncements. Thus, he once wrote, and was frequently
quoted as saying: mathematics may be defined as the subject in which
we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are
saying is true.3 The paradoxical character of this remarkwhich was
widely discussed and found its way into the diary of a young student of
mathematics named Gerhard Scholemcan be resolved by means of
straightforward exegesis: unlike other sciences, the subject-matter of
mathematics is anything, that is to say, anything as such, or anything
in general, which means that mathematics is concerned with nothing in
particular, and it can therefore be defined as the science in which we
cannot know what we are talking about, since there is no subject there
to know.4 The earlier quoted passage, however, is less susceptible to this
kind of exegesis, above all because it is a positive statement about the
nature of mathematical propositions, not a simple assertion of their
difference from other kinds of utterances. Insofar as the statement
concerning the tautological character of mathematical propositions
does not belong to the field of mathematics, it is not itself tautological but should belong, instead, to the field of philosophy; but insofar
as the introduction to mathematical philosophy, as Russell claims in
the preface to the volumea preface that, oddly enough, solicits an
editorial note because of its opacityis never actually dealing with
a part of philosophy, except where it steps outside its province, then
either the proposition quoted at the beginning of this paper is in the
province of the field described by the introduction, in which case it
may be inside of philosophy but stands outside of the introduction,
or the proposition remains inside the introduction and is outside
of philosophy, whereupon it would presumably be a mathematical
proposition after all, since the introduction to mathematical philosophy

3
Bertrand Russell, Mathematics and the Metaphysicians (1901), reprinted in Logicism
and the Philosophy of Language, ed. Arthur Sullivan (Petersburgh, Ontario: Broadview
Press) 221.
4
For Scholems discussion of Russells remark, see his Tagebcher, nebst Aufstzen und
Entwrfen bis 1923, ed. Karlfried Grnder, Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink, and Friedrich
Niewhner with help from Karl Grzinger, 2 vols. (Jdischer Verlag: Frankfurt am
Main, 19952000) II: 265.

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Peter Fenves

belongs to field of mathematics and is not actually a part of philosophy.5 Little wonder, then, that Russell is inclined to say of tautology
that he is familiar with its characteristics but cannot be satisfied with
any proposition that would put this feeling into words, for the inclination toward a knowing silence responds to the convolutions of the
fields that converge around the conclusion to the introduction to
mathematical philosophy.
Only one thing is clear about the passage in question: not the
meaning of tautology, to be sure, but, rather, the source of the term.
Russell does not derive tautology from its origin in Greek grammarians
and even emphasizes this fact at the beginning of the conclusion to
his Introduction, when he claims that, up until the turn of the twentieth century, the study of mathematics involved doing mathematics,
whereas the study of logic meant learning Greek: The importance of
tautology for a definition of mathematics, Russell writes in a footnote
accompanying the passage under discussion, was pointed out to me by
my former pupil Wittgenstein, who was working on the problem.6 At
this point, though, obscurity returns as a consequence of the war, itself
unnamed, which sets the conditions under which teacher and student
are separated, one in prison, the other in the army of the opposing
powers: I do not know whether he solved [the problem], or even
whether he is alive or dead.7 To paraphrase a famous line attributed to
Kafka: the problem may have been solvedbut not to our knowledge.
And the problem is not limited to mathematics. Indeed, it is primarily
a problem of logic, for, in Russells view, there is no clear line where
logic stops and mathematics begins. And since recent logic begins
with an analysis of the proposition, the problem could be called that
of the proposition per se, if only the term proposition, understood as
the complete logical unit, were fully distinguishable from its linguistic
counterpart. The problem, then, is also that of language, or the relation between language and logos, where the two terms both mean
and do not mean the same thing. And as it happens, Wittgenstein is
not the only student during the First World War who saw either in
the term tautology or in certain tautological formulations the starting
point for a solution to the problem under consideration; the same is
true of Walter Benjamin, especially in correspondence with Gerhard
Scholem. And others could be added to this list, especially Heidegger
5
The quotation can be found in the non-paginated Preface to Russells Introduction
to Mathematical Philosophy.
6
Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy 205.
7
Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy 205.

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and Rosenzweig, each of whom experimented with tautological formulations in various forms of writing during the First World War. Because
of the limited scope of this paperwhich will concentrate only on a
single passage in the correspondence between Russell and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and a singular passage in the correspondence
between Benjamin and Scholem, on the othernothing will be said
of Heidegger and Rosenzweig beyond certain framing remarks; but
the mere fact that they, too, are drawn to utterances such as my life is
my life (Heidegger) and A = A / B = B (Rosenzweig) indicates the
degree to which tautological formulations, differing ever so slightly
from traditional formulas, especially the Fichtean I = I, offered the
prospect of a philosophical breakthrough of sufficient force that new
lines of inquiry could emerge, and something other than a renaissance
of German idealism in the form of either southwestern or Marburg
neo-Kantiniasm would result.
*
In preparation for the tautological utterance, my life is my life, Heidegger provides the following, highly abbreviated theory of meaning:
The meaning of a proposition [der Sinn eines Satzes] is that which is
true, what is incontrovertibly valid, which I have to recognize, to which
my thought conforms, against which my elective will stops.8 There are
a number of striking features of this passage, far too many for each of
them to be analyzed in this context, but a few are worth emphasizing.
Heidegger proposes this theory of meaning, which corresponds to
the final section of his soon-to-be-completed Habilitationsschrift, in the
pages of his hometown Catholic newspaper, the Heuberger Volksblatt,
on Sunday, January 15, 1915. The ultimate occasion for the article is
the slowing of the German military advance (the French had made
incursions into Alsace, and the eastern offense was effectively stopped
during the battle of d). The German Catholic episcopate, worried that the conflict would last longer than originally anticipated,
instituted a triduum, that is, three days of prayer for the successful
prosecution of the war, and at the end of his war-triduum article
Heidegger outlines the order of prayers, beginning with repentance
(the war and a humble spirit of penance before God).9 Heidegger
8
Martin Heidegger, Das Kriegs-Triduum in Mekirch, Heuberger Volksblatt , January
15, 1915; reprinted in Heidegger und die Anfnge seines Denkens, ed. Alfred Denker,
Hans-Helmuth Gander, and Holger Zaborowski (Freiburg, Munich: Alber, 2004) 24.
9
Heidegger und die Anfnge seines Denkens 25.

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Peter Fenves

proposes a theory of meaning in this context because the meaning of

meaning (Sinn) must be identified in preparation for the kind of
authentic self-reflection (Selbstbesinnung) that would make it possible
for his readers to recognize the cultural-historical situation in which
they findor more generally, losethemselves. By claiming that
the meaning of a proposition is what is valid (was gilt), Heidegger
alludes to the work of Heinrich Rickert and Emil Lask that guided
his 1913 doctoral dissertation on contemporary theories of judgment
and likewise informs his habilitation work on scholastic speculative
grammar. Before Heidegger draws on the work of his Doktorvater for
a theory of meaning, however, he alludes to a competing theory,
which is more closely associated with the logistics of Frege than with
the value-philosophy of Rickert: the meaning of a sentence is that
which is true (das, was wahr ist)which implies that no false proposition means anything, or more exactly, that no false proposition is a
proposition properly speaking, and only a true proposition is therefore
truly a proposition. Hence the foundational status of tautology in this
context: my life is my life. A similar tautology, in which typography
suggests a difference that cannot be expressed as such, represents the
culmination of his Habilitationsschrift: a state of affairs is always a state
of affairs [ein Sachverhalt ist immer ein Sachverhalt].10 By being true,
10
Martin Heidegger, Frhe Schriften 387; the entire section on Das Verbum (38190)
must be read in this context, since it revolves around the self-predicating proposition,
Ens est, which Heidegger alternatively translates as Das Sein ist and das Seiende ist.
Heideggers treatment of this proposition is characteristic of his inquiry as whole, and
can be briefly described along the following lines: the scholastic thinker, here identified as Duns Scotus (it was probably Thomas of Erfurt), goes a certain distance toward
uncovering the problem at hand, namely the origin of categoriality and the concomitant
source of meaning, but is eventually held in place by doctrinal constraints. In the case of
ens est, this line of argument means that, despite its disclosure of the underlying grammar or structure of the proposition, the analysis fails to penetrate the problem because
it cannot recognize the paradigmatic status of the self-predicating proposition. After
explaining that the verb does not first and foremost express a temporal relation but,
rather, relationality in general, or more exactly, real relationality, Sachverhalt in German,
which is generally translated as state of affairs, where the reality or Sach-heit of the
relation does not derive from there being something in so-called reality corresponding
to the verbal term butand here the allusions to Rickert and Lask returnin its validity, that is, its ability to accomplish the judgment and thus complete the proposition,
Heidegger writes the following: The ens and est distinguish themselves from each other
secundum rationis (384). The simple Latin phrase Heidegger cites in this context could
easily be translated as in accordance with reason, but instead of taking this expected
route, he translates secundum rationis in such a manner that it becomes untranslatable
in turn: es hat mit jedem von beiden eine andere Bewandtnis. When Benjamin first read
Heideggers Habilitationsschrift, numbered 725 on his reading list (Gesammelte Schriften,
eds. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhuser [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
19741989] VII: 447 [hereafter cited as GS]), he had only one positive comment about

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regardless of any condition other than my life be the Sachverhalt

that relates the self to itself, tautology makes or discovers genuine
sense and thereby prepares the way for authentic Be-sinnung.
A theory of meaning almost exactly the reverse of the one that finds
succinct expression in Heideggers contribution to the January 15,
1915 edition of the Heuberger Volksblatt serves as the anchoring point
for the project that Wittgenstein inherited from Russell and Frege.
The project ultimately took the form of a small book, which was published soon after the war under the bland title of Logisch-philosophische
Abhandlung and is generally known in the English-speaking world as
the Tractatus. The theory of meaning goes something like this (and I
should note that any such summary, like almost every remark about
the aim of the Tractatus as a whole, tends to be both banal and controversial): a proposition (Satz) must be capable of being either true or
false; in accordance with Russells theory of description, which asserts
that certain complexes of signs, such as the famous current king of
France, have meaning even in the absence of any object to which they
refer, Wittgenstein stipulates that the proposition be understood as
the peculiar sign-complex that retains its truth-valuednessits ability
to be either true or falseregardless of whether any of the aggregate
of elementary propositions into which it can be analyzed is either true
or false. The elemental character of elementary propositions further
requires that the truth-value of each one be independent from all the
rest. In short, no proposition must be true in order for it to have a
sense. A propositionor more exactly, a proposition in the proper
sense of the termis always comparable with reality, specifically as
its picture or model, Bild or Modell, where reality is understood as
the standing or non-standing (bestehen or nicht-bestehen) of a certain
states of affairs (Sachverhalten). All of this implies that a tautological proposition, which is true under all conditions and which can be

what he considered an academic scandal: it contains a few good translations. And this
brief passage is presumably one of them. As Heidegger translates the term through
which the scholastic thinker sought to secure the rational status of the difference
between ens and est, the difference becomes the matter of complementary twists in
their stances, to the extent that Bewandtnis, derived from bewenden, points in this direction. Heidegger then proceeds as follows: If one wanted to apply the interpretation of
the judgment ens est to every judgment, then one would say that the function of form
is suited to the verb [. . .] : a stance [eine Bewandtnis] is always a stance for something,
twisted around something; a state of affairs is always a state of affairs [ein Sachverhalt ist
immer ein Sachverhalt] (387). This tautology is Heideggers last word on the subject,
the thesis underlying his qualifying thesis, for it locates the precise point where the
theory of meaning, the Bedeutungslehre, gets stuck in doctrine.

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inferred from every true proposition, cannot be a true proposition.

And yet, for Wittgenstein, a tautology is not simply a non- or fake
proposition but is, rather, one of its two extreme cases, the other being
contradiction, and both extremes show their incomparability with
reality as such. They are, as it were, the image of what is not an image
but must not then be mistaken for an illusory or misleading image.
In this regard, the fact that tautology is without sense represents a
positive characteristic, which solicits a comparison of a different kind:
whereas propositions in the strict sense are comparable with the world,
a tautology is comparable to an arithmetical sign, specifically the zero.
As with any comparison, there is a corresponding difference, in this
case: equations where zero is properly used correspond to thoughts,
whereas tautologies are fundamentally thoughtless, since thought
(der Gedanke) is itself understood as the proposition full of meaning
(der sinnvolle Satz).11
Instead of entering into the thicket of the Tractatus, however, I want
to turn briefly toward the tautology-like remark from which it derives
and then more extensively examine the source of the curious passage
from Russells Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy with which this
essay begins. The remark that generates the logical-philosophical
project that resulted in the Tractatus is probably the following: It is
to be remembered that names are not things. A is the same letter
as A. This has the most important consequences for every symbolic
language.12 The point of this remark, drawn from some notes Wittgenstein reluctantly prepared for his Cambridge professors in 1913, is that
Russells theory of types is fundamentally misguided. Russell devised
this theory in response to the recognition that the paradox associated
with his name fatally damaged the logical-mathematical program
that he and Whitehead sought to accomplish in the volumes of their
Principia Mathematica. The theory of types hinges on a prohibition:
there are to be no impredicative definitions, where impredicative
is defined as a predicate that includes itself as a member of the class
it defines. To this, in brief, Wittgenstein responded with the remark
that A is the same letter as A, where a name, including A, is not
a thing but rather a class, and the sameness of A, consistently applied
such that A cannot be predicated of itself, makes the theory of types
11
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus/Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), proposition 4; the paragraph allude to
propositions 2.12, 4.01, and 4.11)
12
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 19141916, 2nd ed., ed. G. H. von Wright and G.
E. M. Anscombe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979) 102.

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superfluous inasmuch as the symbolism precludes the introduction

of impredicatives. Instead of adding ad hoc rules, so the remark from
1913 suggests, a proper logical-philosophical procedure consists in
devising a symbolism that discloses the differences that cannot be
properly said. And as for the ultimate source of the passage from the
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy with which this paper began,
it probably derives from an extraordinary letter Wittgenstein wrote
to Russell at the end of 1913, when he was seeking solitude on the
Norwegian coast. As a postscript to the letter, just before he signs off
with a remark about his impending insanity, Wittgenstein identifies
precisely where Russell is right, and where he nevertheless goes wrong:
your Theory of Description is undoubtedly entirely right, even if the
primitive signs [Urzeichen] are completely different than you think.13
With similar self-assurance Wittgenstein begins the letter with the
claim that Russell will later repeat, in slightly modified form, while in
prison: all propositions of logic are universalizations of tautologies,
and all universalizations of tautologies are propositions of logic (L 39).
Nothing else in Wittgensteins letter to Russell is so clear, however,
including the term tautology: What tautologies actually are: this I
cannot yet clearly say; but I want to try to explain it approximately
[ungefhr]. It is the peculiar (and most important) characteristic of
non-logical propositions that one cannot recognize their truth in [am]
the proposition-sign itself. When I say, for instance, Meier is stupid,
you cannot say whether this proposition is true or false by looking at
it. The propositions of logic, and they alone, have the property that
their truth viz. falsehood expresses itself in their signs. I have not yet
succeeded in finding a designation that satisfies this, but I do NOT doubt
that such a mode of designation must be capable of being found (L
39)a remarkable locution, sich finden lassen mssen, which suggests
the discovery must be possible but could, by sheer chance, or perhaps
because of an ultimate lack of philosophical resoluteness, fail to occur.
The distressing character of this situation unleashes an attack not on
poor Meier, who is perhaps a paronym for G. E. Moore, another of
Wittgensteins slow-witted Cambridge professors; rather, the attack is
directed at Russell, who fails to understand simple written instructions. Thus, Wittgenstein continues: For compound propositions
13
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore, ed. G. H. Von Wright and
B. F. McGuiness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974) 41 (hereafter cited as L). Writing from an
Austrian artillery Feldpost in October 1915 Wittgenstein indicates to Russell that he
has solved his problem, and that the solution will appear in the form of a treatise, even
if he himself does not survive the war (L 64).

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Peter Fenves

the ab notation is adequate. It is unpleasant to me that you did not

understand the sign rule in my last letter, for it bores me unspeakably
to explain it!! You can discover it yourself if you only think a little!
(L 40). In his exposition of the tautological character of logic nothing
is more unnerving than tautography: I ask you to think about the
matter yourself. It is HORRIBLE for me to repeat a writing explanation that I gave for the time only with the greatest repugnance (L 40).
Despite his distaste for writing, which expresses itself most fully in his
horror at tautography, Wittgenstein nevertheless explains himself by
sketching what he calls a sign for p p, where the equal sign, in
accordance with Freges notation, has three lines, so as to emphasize
both content-identity and equivalence.
The form of this image, with a bipolar structure and fluid connecting
lines, would eventually become familiar to readers of the Tractatus; but
in the winter of 1913, there is only an image, designated as a sign that
is isomorphic with p p, and a corresponding question, which represents the dnouement of the crucial letter in their correspondence.
After having declared, with no hesitation, that all propositions of logic
are universalizations of tautologies, Wittgenstein proceeds to define
his task as the demonstration of how precisely this universalization
can be accomplished: The great question is now, how must a system
of signs be constructed, so that every tautology can be recognized as
a tautology in one and the same way. That is the fundamental problem
of logic! (L 41). In the case of p p, the traditional term tautology
undoubtedly applies; the corresponding sign seeks to show that it is
unconditionally true, and this, in turn, can be interpreted to show
that it says nothing, that is, nothing true or false, and is therefore
a zero-like element of the symbolism, not a thought in its own right.
But with regard to the program of universalization, the term tautology
no longer has anything to do with p = p and becomes a technical
term used to describe the results of the new logical symbolism, thus
departing from traditional or standard usages of the term tautology.14
And this terminological transformation takes place because of the

14
In this regard, see the famous critique of Wittgensteins use of the term tautology
proposed by Burton Dreben and Juliet Floyd, Tautology: How Not to Use the Word,
Synthese 87 (1991): 2349. Dreben and Floyd proceed under the assumption that the
use of a word should betautologicallygoverned by its current use, which means that
any attempt on the part of a thinker to change the use of a term results in a misuse.
Derrida introduces a term that captures the function of tautology as a consequence
of Wittgensteins work: paleonym (see especially the preface to La dissmination [Paris:
Seuil, 1972], 1012).

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fundamental obscurity that Wittgenstein identifies at the center of his

letter. Bifurcated by the image, which is supposed to re-clarify what
Wittgenstein means, there is this: Identity is still, as I already said,
not at all clearan astonishing admission, which is strangely absent
from the face--face English edition published in numerous editions
of Wittgensteins Notebooks.15 As one looks at or intuits the sign of
p = p that, when universalized, will show that all logical propositions
are identical to this one and can therefore be called tautologies,
without much violence to ordinary language, one still cannot see
the identity for itself; that is, one cannot see the identity of identity,
and so it remains, on the page itself, beyond the reach of the dark
lines and thus figuratively in the dark.
*
If the basic problem of Wittgensteins philosophical-logical program
revolves around the universalization of tautology, with the aim of making all logical propositions disclose themselves as such, Benjamins can
be described, in reverse, as the identification of an absolute one. The
problem, then, is not that of finding a method to show how senseless
and thus thoughtless propositions can show that they say nothing,
but of identifying the identity relation simpliciter. Only in a single
place does Benjamin explicitly formulate this program: in a letter to
Scholem from December 1917, where he discusses for the first and
last time the notion of absolute tautology.16 The starting-point of
Benjamins remarks to Scholem is the crux of Wittgensteins letter to
Russell: Identity is still, as I already said, not at all clear. Benjamin
is struck by the same unclarity about the nature of identity. It is for
this reason that he draws up and eventually sends to Scholem a small
document under the title Theses on the Problem of Identity, and
the letter of December 1917 is an attempt to address the problem with
an even greater degree of directness. As for the line of thought that
led Benjamin to the term absolute tautology in the winter of 1917,
it can be succinctly described as follows: in Benjamins view, Theses
on the Problem of Identity resulted in a parenthesis that corrects
the final thesis, which should have been definitive.17 The goal of the

Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 19141916, 129.

Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe, ed. Christoph Gdde and Henri Lonitz (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995 ) I: 409 (hereafter cited as GB).
17
Benjamins Theses on the Problem of Identity can be found in GS VI: 2729.
15
16

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Peter Fenves

Theses is defined near the end of his essay On the Program of the
Coming Philosophy: Looking ahead, Benjamin writes, the fixing of
the concept of identity, a concept with which Kant was himself unfamiliar, has to play a large role in the transcendental logic, insofar as it
does not occur in the table of categories, yet nevertheless presumably
constitutes the highest transcendental-logical concept and is perhaps
truly suited to autonomously grounding the sphere of knowledge
beyond subject-object terminology (GS II: 167). The criticism of Kant
does not consist in the patently false statement that he was unfamiliar
with the concept of identity but that this concept was, for him, one
of reflection, which means that he was unfamiliar with its primitive
or foundational status. The task Benjamin here assigns to the coming philosophy, in turn, derives from a problem that emerges in his
earlier studies of logic and language, especially his little treatise or
short tractatus [kleine Abhandlung] (GB I: 343) on language as such
and on human language, which is suspended between two identitypropositions, one of which is tautological, the other not: The linguistic
essence of things, Benjamin writes near the beginning of his tractatus,
is their language (GS II: 142). And he proceeds to elucidate the is
in this manner: The comprehensibility of linguistic theory depends
upon bringing this proposition to a clarity that accordingly annihilates every semblance of tautology in it (GS II: 142). Soon thereafter,
however, he advances another identity-thesis, which takes the form of
a tautology: the thesis that the linguistic essence of things is identical with their spiritual essence insofar as the latter is communicable
turns into a tautology in its insofar as (GS II: 145). Both of these
identity-theses, one absolutely non-tautological, the other relatively so,
respond to the basic logico-linguistic problem that Benjamin sought
to isolate by proposing a solution to Russells paradox. Russells own
solution, as noted above, consists in forbidding impredicative terms.
Benjamins proposed solution goes even further in the same direction and, in a sense, meets up with Wittgesnteins: for Benjamin, the
point is not to remove all impredicatives but to do away with all terms
like impredicative, the meaning of which is stipulated at certain times
for certain purposes by certain agents. Whenever someone grants
meaning to a term, it cannot really mean anything. As Benjamin
writes in conjunction with his most extensive treatment of Russells
paradox, judgments of designation yield inauthentic meaning, that
is, uneigentliche Bedeutung, where the word meaning is understood to
be the impredicative par excellence, for it means meaning: Inauthentic
meaning, that is, designation, is to be distinguished from authentic

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[meaning]. S is P does not designate but rather means that S is P.

Impredicative designates the predicate of a certain judgment, unapproachable means something (GS VI: 10). A mode of meaning wholly
unapproachable by way of designation can be identified only under
the condition that the items meant by its terms say what is meant;
in other words, the so-called items are things, which communicate
themselves, and the so-called terms are their languages, each one
different from the others and all infinite in their own way, insofar as
their limits are not defined by an extra-linguistic field of application;
in still other words, things communicate their spiritual essences insofar as they are communicable. Shortly after Benjamin distinguishes
between authentic and inauthentic meaning in his attempt to solve
Russells paradox, he asks: what does identity mean [was bedeudet
Identitt] (GS VI: 10), which itself means not only, what does the
term identity mean? but also what does real identity mean? That
is: what does it mean that S is P or that the S in S is P is identical
to the S in any other proposition? And this question, too, responds
to a problem that emerged in an earlier tractatus, specifically Two
Poems of Friedrich Hlderlin, where Benjamin describes what he
calls the law of identity (GS II: 112), which governs the generation
of the limit-concept he designates as the poetized. In the limit case
of the pure poetized, where the law is fulfilled, there is identitybut
no longer any poetized, only either life or poem, which themselves
name two functional unities (GS II: 107) that are somehow related
to each other through the medium of the poetized; but as for the
nature of this identity relation, which discloses itself as such only when
the poetized, understood as a copula of sorts, finally vanishesthis
Benjamin has no name for.18
At issue in the Theses on the Problem of Identity and then again
in the letter to Scholem from December 1917 is not the poetized (das
Gedichtete) but, rather, a kindred term: the thought (das Gedachte).
The latter is difficult to capture in English, since the thought (das
Gedachte) sounds like thought (Gedanke); but the thought is precisely not a thought, much less the thought that a thinker would think.
It is, however, proximate to the poetized, as Benjamin indicates when
he uncharacteristically introduces a neologism into his letter from
December 1917 by adding to thought a degree of thickness, reminis18
A more thorough discussion of the issues raised in this paragraph can be found in
the first and fifth chapters of my book, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the
Shape of Time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).

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cent of dicht in das Gedichtete. Just as Wittgenstein would prefer to speak

with Russell about the problem of identity, so, too, Benjamin would
rather discuss the problem with Scholem than write to him about it:
In the matter of the identity problem we can decisively move forward
only in conversation, and for this reason I do not unconditionally ascribe
certainty to the following propositions. For a very long time the matter of
identity has seemed to me as follows: I would deny an identity of thinking
as of something particular, neither as an object or nor as a thought, because
I dispute the notion that a thinking is the correlate of truth. Truth is
think-ick [Die Wahrheit ist denkicht] (I must form this word because none
is at my disposal). Thinking as an absolute is perhaps only somehow an
abstraction from truth. (GB I: 409)

Unlike numerous neologisms, which can be deciphered by associating each lexeme with a standard word of a lexicon, denkicht verges on
the indecipherable. Despite the obvious importance of the wordit
is the predicate of truth, after allBenjamin never uses it again. As
a hapax legomenon, it suggests something about what it predicates:
that truth, too, is a one-time affair. In any case, beyond beginning
with denk- (think) and concluding with an -icht that is suggestive
of dicht (thick), the word also gestures toward a thicket, jungle,
or maze (Dickicht) in which one inevitably gets lost. And indeed,
because of its own philological elusiveness, denkicht itself has a dickicht
character.19 Instead of explaining to Scholem what he means by this
word, and thus perhaps giving him a guiding thread in the thicket
of truth, he outlines the condition under which tautology becomes
absolute: The assertion of the identity of thinking would be the
absolute tautology. The appearance or illusion, [Schein] of a thinking emerges only from tautologies. Truth is just as little thought
and it thinks. / a is a designates in my estimation the identity of
the thoughtat which point Benjamin, perhaps as an afterthought
about the denkicht character of truth, adds a footnote: better said (the
only correct formulation): the truth itself (GB I: 409). The argument
in the body of the letter then resumes as follows: At the same time
this proposition [a is a] designates no identity other than that of the
thought. The identity of the object, assuming there is such a thing in
a perfect manner, would have another form (GB I: 409). This leads
Benjamin to describe what he means by a concrete object, which,
19
I would like to thank Uwe Steiner and Bettina Menke for discussing with me the
peculiar nature of denkicht and, above all, for indicating that it strongly suggests an
association with dickicht.

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in turn, points toward another philosophical exercise he had sent to

Scholem, a brief phenomenological study entitled Eidos and Concept
(GS VI: 2931), which responds to an essay published in Kant-Studien
by Paul Linke, a professor of philosophy at Jena with whom Scholem
was then studying and whom he seems to have befriended. The point
of returning to Eidos and Concept in the December letter is not
so much to expand its argument as to indicate that the thought, so
construed, is not only different from the object but also from both
concept and eidos, regardless of how the latter two terms are ultimately
distinguished from each other.
All of Scholems relevant letters to Benjamin are lost, but his side
of the conversation can be partially reconstructed on the basis of his
diary entries of the period, especially the ones in which he records his
negative reaction to Benjamins Theses on the Problem of Identity.
In Scholems viewdoubtless bolstered by Linke, who dismissed Eidos
and Concept as worthlessBenjamin is a lousy phenomenologist.
To corroborate this verdict, Scholem sketches into his diary what he
calls the phenomenological doctrine of orders, which represents a
thorough refutation of Benjamins Theses. At the end of his sketch
Scholem raises a very simple objection to the last thesis, where
Benjamin distinguishes the identity of the thought from that of the
object and casts doubt on whether a is a applies to objects at all: If
I say that the thought [das Gedachte] is identical with itself (Walter),
the thought is nevertheless here an object in our sensewhere our
does not mean his and Walters but presumably only his, or perhaps
his and Linkes.20 In any case, Scholems objection is purely formal, a
matter of stipulating what the term object is supposed to mean, such
that it applies to any subject-term in a standard proposition. Under
this condition, Benjamin can be consigned to the category of Meier- or
Moore-like stupidity, for his Theses fail to recognize that thinking
includes an object component, which Husserl recently sought to identify and investigate by way of the neologism noema. Upon receiving the Theses, Scholem must have written to Benjamin in terms
such as these, instructing him in the phenomenological doctrine of
intentionality and asking whether he had ever come across Husserls
Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, where the cogito-cogitatum structure is discussed at length. And this presumably generates the passage
under examination, remarkable in its politeness, where Benjamin
amplifies the point made in the last of the Theses and concludes
Scholem, Tagebcher, II: 79.

20

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Peter Fenves

with the assurance he, Benjamin, had indeed read Philosophy as a

Rigorous Science several years earlier, noting, with less than perfect
politenessbut with none of the impatient aggressiveness of Wittgensteins letter to Russellthat Linke is not well regarded among the
phenomenologists whom he knows.
In responding to Scholems objection, then, Benjamin makes sure
of one thing: das Gedachte is not to be confused with noema, understood as a thought-object, which remains identical to itself regardless
of the modulations in intentional attitude, such as wishing, hoping,
remembering, and so forth. Instead of reiterating the distinction
between the identity of the thought and that of the object, which is
where the Theses had broken off, Benjamin advances a line of argument developed in the Program essay and elsewhere, according to
which there is no such thing as a thinker, whose thoughts could be
described as its properties or qualities. Not only is there no thinker,
moreover; there is no thinking simpliciter, which is to say, as Benjamin
writes, thinking as an absolute is also an abstraction. At this point,
even Scholem could not confuse the thought with the noema. And
this leaves the question, what, after all, is the thought? Neither a
concept nor an eidos, it also not an object of any kind, including the
cogitatum correlate of the cogito. Because the distinction between the
thought and object is irreducible and ineluctable, it is akin to the
distinction between function and object, as it is developed in the work
of another Jena professor under whom Scholem was then studying,
namely Frege, whose Begriffsschriftwhatever else may be said of it
seeks to guarantee the consistency and transparency of this distinction. And although Benjamin does not adopt the position with which
Heidegger concludes his review of recent research in logic, whereby
the adoption of mathematical symbolism and the overextension of the
concept of function represent a flight away from the genuine problem of logic, and indeed despite the fact that Benjamin had himself
experimented with the function concept in his original presentation
of the law of identity, the thought is not equivalent to the term
function. Nor is it equivalent into a term Ernst Cassirer, among
others, associates with the concept of function and that Benjamin
would later adopt for a description of the structure of truth, namely
idea. And despite all the nots that proliferate in response to the
question, what, then, is das Gedachte? it cannot itself be represented
as a species of negation, for instance, as the nothingness of being, or
the annihilation of the finite that generates reality and expresses itself
in mathematical terms as the infinitesimal. There is only one thing,

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so to speak, to which the thought is equivalent and with which the

term is therefore convertible, the one through which Benjamin corrects himself in the footnote he adds to his letter. To use a scholastic
term, much loved by Leibniz and adopted by Frege, the thought is
convertible with truth salve veritate.
This is the thesis toward which the Theses on the Problem of Identity are directed but do not themselves reach: the tautological formula,
a is a oror more exactly, / a is adesignates only the identity of
the thought and is therefore applicable to no other form of identity,
least of all to the putative self-identity of either a concrete object or
a noema. The reason for this can be approximately ascertained from
the perspective of the argument Heidegger suggests in his article in
support of the war-triduum: it is not so much that a is a is true as
that it truths itself. This is the event to which Heidegger would later
refer by way of the bisected Greek term a-letheia. The corresponding
term in Rosenzweigs emerging lexicon is Be-whren.21 In Heideggers
wartime terminology, which is doubtless more accessible than Benjamins, since it was devised for the purpose of popularization, sense
accrues to the proposition only under the condition that it be true,
which makes it different from every everyday proposition, since
such propositions are structurally indifferent with respect to their
truth-values. The sense of the true proposition is the inner form of
thinking, or, again in Heideggers terminology, the Sinn of Besinnung,
the meaning of minding. A similar exposition can be devised from
the perspective of Wittgensteins reflections on the proposition p
p: if it must be true, its truth must be of a different order than the
truth of a genuine propositionso much so that this truth cannot
be called truth but, instead, enforces the law of silence. In the case
of Benjamin, a similar necessity expresses itself in his almost unprecedented recourse to a word of his own making, a condensed word,
in which thought, thickness, thicket, and Gedicht are fused into the
sole predicate that applies to truth. It is a purely positive predicate,
which is thick enough, as it wereor, from another vantage point,
vague enoughto absorb its opposite, so that its symbolic equivalent
would be a similarly new sign that would simply assert truth without
the detour of predication. This is perhaps the function of the peculiar

21
See, for instance, Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Welt. Gesammelte Schriften
III. Zweistromland: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, ed. Reinhold und Annemarie
Meyer (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1984) 159.

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slash in the proposition / a is a, which is recorded in both editions

of the December 1917 letter.
Regardless of whether or not the slash is a proto-element of a protosymbolism, the problem of assertion enters into Benjamins highly
condensed inquiry in relation to the singular theme of absolute
tautology, as contrasted with tautologies in the plural. The context of
Benjamins discussion of absolute tautology, is, once again, Scholems
lost letter, where he presumably recommends that Benjamin read
Philosophy as a Rigorous Science, according to which recognition
of the cogito-cogitatum correlation, in Husserls view, gives philosophy a
chance to break into the sphere of genuine science along the lines of
modern chemistry, which broke free from the profundity of alchemy
with the discovery of oxygen. But for Benjamin, there is nothing about
the cogito-cogitatum that represents a breakthrough. To the extent that
thinking thinks something and is not, as Benjamin elsewhere suggests,
a transcendental intransitive (GS VI: 43) akin to walking, which would
be its empirical counterpart, thinking is in precisely the same situation
as the things it thinks, and this situation is one in which a is a is
only imperfectly applicable. Because tautologies appear to be without
content, they produce the corresponding illusion that thinking, thus
free of the object, is identical to itself. The assertion of this identity
is different than the illusion of self-identity: it would be the absolute
tautology, if onlyhere is the decisive conditionalthe assertion were
not itself a function of thinking and, instead, originated in something
like the sheer assertiveness of truth. This assertiveness, however, can
assert itself only by way of its opposite: pure passivity, described in
the lexicon of the Critique of Pure Reason by the term receptivity,
which Kant associates with intuition, in contrast to the spontaneity of
thinking. For Kant, there can be as little thought-passivity as intuitive
spontaneity; as Benjamin densely develops the predicate denkicht,
thought-passivity, which is how truth asserts itself, acquires the name
das Gedachte, in other words, that which has been thought, without
a thinker ever having thought it.
*
With absolute tautology thus placed under a conditionand therefore no longer or not yet the absolute it would otherwise beBenjamin breaks off. The December 1917 letter to Scholem continues, but
it turns to other matters. And nowhere else does Benjamin resume
his attempt to fix the primordial concept of identity. The dissertation

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projects with which he experimented and the one he completed can

be understood as indirect advances on the problem. And so, too,
can some of the habilitation projects with which he experimented,
especially the one for which he developed a series of theses under the
title Doctrinal Propositions on Symbolism [Lehrstze ber die Symbolik]
(GS VI: 21). The symbol is characterized by nothing so much as the
identity of its constituent parts, the symbolizing and symbolized, with
no objective remainder. In purely schematic terms, the identity of the
two sides of the tautology, symbolically represented by an equal sign,
is symbolic. In this way, the problem of identity, as Wittgenstein insists,
is identical to that of proper symbolization. What tautology cannot
say, the latter shows by virtue of what it, symbolically, is. And what it
shows is that it is a symbol. As Benjamin notes in the aforementioned
Lehrstze: what the totality is: beyond identity, nothing lets itself be
said (GS VI: 22). Predication thus dries up (versiegt). To say more
of what the symbol shows than it is (the symbol it is) is to generate
imaginary objects in which the metaphysics of substance has always
found itself entangled. Nevertheless, the differences with Benjamins
preliminary Lehrstze and those of the Tractatus are more striking
than the similarities, and the same is true with regard to Heideggers
contemporaneous assault on the problem of identity. In Benjamins
case, beyond the Theses on this problem and the subsequent letter
to Scholem, everything revolves around indication, which sidesteps
the problem, instead of seeking to grasp it once and for all. To use
Benjamins own terms, drawn from a letter to Hofmannsthal, there is
no further frontal assault (GB II: 410) on the concepts at hand. The
detour through the theory of symbolism is precisely that: a detour.
And the habilitation project he eventual completes turns, of course,
toward the theory of allegory, the very name of which suggests tautology
in reverse. Just as the allo- of allegory is the opposite of the tauto- of
tautology, the open space of the agora recalled in agorein is both wider
and more narrow than the logos derived from legein.
In contrast to Benjamins Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, each of
the magna opera published in the 1920s by the other thinkers mentioned
here hereLogisch-philosophische Abhandlung, Der Stern der Erlsung,
and Sein und Zeitare frontal assaults on the concept of identity.
The common strategy under which all of them operate, despite their
diverging paths, can be aptly described by a term through which Kafka
gently chastised a novel Max Brod completed in December 1917: in
Der groe Wagnis, Brod, according to Kafka, sought to create a Hindenburg opportunity, which would allow him to break through and

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Peter Fenves

thus break free.22 Nowhere perhaps are the lineaments of this risky
Hindenburg opportunity more evident than in the notebooks of
Franz Rosenzweig, who, in the final months of 1917, wrote a long
series of remarks that begins by representing the event of revelation
in terms of the tautological formula A = A / B = B and concludes
with a sketch of the quadrangle of forces that stalled Hindenburgs
eastward advances during the battle of d, ultimately leading to the
impasse in which the German and Austrian forces found themselves:
1
4

1.) Hindenburg, 2.) Austria in August and September [1914], 3.) Common Austrian-German offensive in October [1914], 4.) d . . . . The
breakthrough is a purely tactical problem and, as such, easily recognized.
But the place of the breakthrough (not on the wings but in the center),
thus the strategy of the breakthroughhic haeret aqua.23

At the very same time as Rosenzweig sketches the quadrangle of

forces that stalled Hindenburgs advance, he sketches the triangle of
elements that is composed of coordinated yet asymmetrical sets of
tautologies, with A = A (symbol of God) at the top, B = B to the
left (symbol of the human being), and A = B to the right (symbol
of the world). This triangle becomes the nucleus of the six-pointed
star of redemption, which points directly at the center of life, thus
completing the strategic breakthrough Hindenburg failed to accom-

22
Franz Kafka and Max Brod, Eine Freundschaft, ed. Hannelore Rodlauer and Malcolm
Pasley (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 198789) II: 189.
23
Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und Sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften (Haag: Nijhoff,
1979) 123; the formula A = A /B = B can be found on the previous page.

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plish.24 In contrast to this breakthrough, the hesitant movement Benjamin undertakes in attempting to fix the problem of identity in his
Theses on the Problem of Identity and the December 1917 letter to
Scholem is best captured by the phrase Rosenzweig draws from Virgil
and applies to Hindenburg: hic haeret aqua, here the waters stall. In
absolute tautology the otherwise incessant flow of discourse finally
stalls and the expressionless takes its place.
Northwestern University

24
Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und Sein Werk 136; the letter to Rudolf Ehrenberg from
November 1917 that would be later called the Urzelle of the Stern der Erlsung.