Il fantoccio e il nano. Sullo stato di eccezione in Walter Benjamin

This work concerns Walter Benjamin’s theory of state of exception in the context of his philoso-phy of history, which is expressed above all in two important essays:Über den Begriff der Ge-schichte (“On the concept of history”, 1942) and Zur Kritik der Gewalt (“Critique of violence”, 1921). This paper tries to outline the metaphysical meaningof the distinction that Benjamin made between “state of exception” (Ausnahmezustand) as a condition of political and juridical oppres-sion and the real state of exception (wirklich Ausnahmezustand), which instead Benjamin de-scribed as the revolutionary chance of the oppressed classes that we can think exclusively because of a Messianic conception of time (Jetztzeit) and history (historical materialism theologically inter-preted).Thanks to this reconstruction of Benjamin’s philosophy of history,the paper attemptsto show –al-so through a comparison with the theories of Giorgio Agamben, Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes and Lenin –whetherit is possible to think ofa philosophy oflaw as a philosophy against law.