Ideja proze
With the works of G. Agamben, tradition is acknowledged to have a role in the transmission of a linguistic or cultural phenomenon from the past to the present, but the transmission is no longer in the service of the return of the same but, paradoxically,
A tradition (tradizione) that requires transmission in the form of translation (traduzione) – because it comes from the past and does not speak the language of the present – cannot but have the effect of betrayal (tmdimento). This revelation of the truth through its betrayal was quite clear to T. S. Eliot's contemporary W. Benjamin: In order for a part of the past to be touched by the present moment, there must be no continuity between them. In other words, if tradition were able to make the whole present, to bring to the surface the entire submerged cultural good, the boundary between the past and the present would disappear without a trace, and with it history. Bearing in mind where exactly such an attempt to deal with the problem of human communication and history would lead, Agamben takes on the task of articulating, in parallel with his most original philosophical project – to think the existence of language as the existence of potency (D. Heller-Roazen) – the continuation of Benjamin by other means.
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