10.4225/03/592255540e3fd Tim Finney Tim Finney Potentiality and Reconciliation: a Consideration of Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” and Adorno’s “Progress” Monash University 2017 Walter Benjamin Theodor W Adorno violence progress Philosophy 2017-05-22 03:04:50 Journal contribution https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Potentiality_and_Reconciliation_a_Consideration_of_Benjamin_s_Critique_of_Violence_and_Adorno_s_Progress_/5005178 Walter Benjamin's 1921 essay "Critique of Violence" offers a powerful and unique examination of the legal justification of violence and state power. Benjamin contends that a critique of violence requires a "philosophy of its history," and the model he offers challenges traditional approaches to the question of legal violence: instead of considering the circumstances in which violence may be justified legally, he considers the law itself as a kind of violence, and suggests that modern legal systems struggle to do justice to the violence to which they owe their existence.