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영어

The main aim of this paper is to examine and compare Apostle Paul's, Walter Benjamin's messianism and George Agamben's ‘the Contemporariness.' Agamben mentions that he was quite moved when discovering Pauline idea of messianic time in Benjamin's theses on the concept of history. In The Time That Remains, Agamben attempts to revive the messianic character of Paul's letters and to search out Paulinine messianic message from Benjamin's writings on the concept of history. Agamben finds that Paul's “typological relation” and “recapitulation,” in which all the moment of the past is recognized as the messianic now, reappear as the image of constellation in Benjamin's writings, in which the instant of the present and the instant of the past are united. Agamben also finds that his concepts of ‘impotentialities,' ‘means without ends,' and ‘profanation' share much in common with Paulian concepts of recapitulation and ‘remnant.' We see that Agamben's concept of ‘the contemporariness' can be fully grasped when viewed from Apostle Paul and Benjamin's main ideas concerning ‘the time of the now.' The contemporary, Agamben argues, is one who can perceive the darkness of the present and, at the same time, is capable of transforming it. Agamben tells that Paulian attempt to let his people know the contemporariness, that is messianic time, his being contemporary with the Messiah, becomes the exemplary gesture of the contemporariness.