3.1.1.2 Benjamin
Benjamin’s heterodox position in reference to the School and the difficulties and harshness experienced throughout his life, as well as his death at the Spanish-French border, awakens Aranguren’s and Aguirre’s interest. In fact, Aranguren points to Aguirre as the person responsible for making Benjamin accessible to a Spanish readership (1994, 4: 474, 477; 1994, 5: 291, 319; see also 5.3.1 and appendix one).
Aranguren devotes three articles to Benjamin, “Actualidad de Walter Benjamin”, “Viajero sin equipaje”, and “Un alto en la lectura”. Here he discusses his position as the harbinger of the New Left, as well as his independent approach towards Marxism and his attitude and views so often ahead of his time on issues such as the green movement, his position on art, culture, and violence (see 1994, 4: 474-83; 1994, 5: 291). Benjamin becomes a point of reference for Aranguren’s views on art, particularly regarding the reception of mass art (see Aranguren, 1994, 5: 76, 106). Aranguren admires Benjamin as a non-orthodox member of the FS who does not leave behind a system but instead a number of anticipations, of gestated thoughts which he does not fully develop (1994, 4: 482). In fact, Aranguren describes him as excomulgado and excomunicado. With these terms, Aranguren emphasizes his condition of outcast, that is, his heterodoxy within the FS and his subsequent isolation from it (1994, 4: 481-82, 595). Both words highlight the isolation and rejection suffered as a consequence of his dissent. Furthermore, excomulgado – a deliberately religious term – reminds the reader of the then ever present power and influence on Spain of the Church, thus establishing an analogy between Benjamin and the situation of the more independent Spanish thinkers. What is more, this situation closely relates to the concept of inner exile, which once again stresses isolation in its different forms: from the self, from other possible interlocutors, from the standard accepted culture and society, and, eventually, from the nation-state (see Aranguren, 1994, 4: 426, 482, 596; 1994, 5: 127; see also Salabert, 1988; Caudet, 2005: 55). This inner exile provides an inner retreat which, in the case of Benjamin, the rest of the FS, and many Spanish thinkers of this period, eventually including Aranguren himself, is also extended to the outer world. Physical exile in one form or the other is an experience which marks the life and work of these authors, highlighting once again the close connection between them, as we shall see throughout the thesis.
3.1.1.3 Adorno and Horkheimer
Aranguren refers to Adorno, along with Marcuse, Gramsci, Korsch, Habermas, Ernst Bloch, Schaff, and Garaudy, as one of the Marxist thinkers of greatest interest of his time for tackling the moral issues of Marxism (1994, 3: 185, 203). There are multiple references to Adorno and Horkheimer scattered throughout Aranguren’s work making his awareness and
interest in their work clear60. Aranguren acknowledges Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s
pioneering role in denouncing the culture industry and the manipulation of consciousness, issues which Aranguren dwells on himself (see Aranguren, 1994, 3: 220). He reviews The Authoritarian Personality (1950) by Adorno and concisely summarizes its conclusion: “una correlación biunívoca entre liberalismo e inteligencia, fanatismo y pobreza intelectual” (1994, 4: 439). Thus, through Adorno’s work, Aranguren makes an indirect reference to the impoverishment of Spanish thought as a consequence of dictatorship. Its relevance lies in that this realization is one of the key factors that account for the evolution of Aranguren’s position in reference to the regime.
3.1.1.4 Aranguren and Marcuse
As indicated above, there is sufficient evidence to assert Aranguren’s interest in the FS and their work. The case of Marcuse is of particular interest because there are numerous parallels at a biographical and theoretical level. Biography and subjectivity play key roles in Aranguren’s thought. He makes an explicit link between intellectual production and biography, to such an extent that biography and identity become an almost subsidiary theme in his work. According to Aranguren, one’s own works are partly a biography insofar as they constitute a testimony to the self at the time of production, and for this reason they are necessarily incomplete (see 1994, 1: 25; see also 1994, 2: 563). Based on this, our relationship with our past self is described as dialectic, because it is made up of the combination of distance and rapprochement, oblivion and memory, past and present, all at the same time (see Aranguren, 1994, 1: 25). The link is such that it works both ways, for, as Aranguren explains, biography also becomes a text: “ahora bien, la vida es también un ‘texto’, texto legible, y la bibliografía inseparablemente unida en muchos de nosotros [...] a la (auto)-biografía” (1994, 4: 529; see also 570-71; 3.2.3 on talante; the key role of biography will continue to be discussed in relation to Zambrano, Aguirre, and the FS in the following chapters). Thus, a comparison between the two figures will be carried out below.
While providing an overview of their thought, the purpose of this comparison is to illustrate how Marcuse’s work strongly influences Aranguren’s and to uncover how their circumstances influence the direction of their work. In fact, there is a convergence in the interests, approach, and conclusions of both authors before they meet in the 1960s, and even more so after this date, when Aranguren deals with and develops many of the same issues to which Marcuse devotes his attention: a critique of consumerist society and the new forms of alienation it brings about (see Soldevilla, 2004: 135). Moreover, having established that one
60 For Aranguren’s references to Adorno see 1994, 2: 549, 606, 679; 1994, 3: 150; 1994, 4: 184, 439, 474, 544; 1994, 5: 221, 325, 360; 1994, 6: 209, 463, 600; to Horkheimer, see 1994, 3: 220; 1994, 4: 542.
of the paradigmatic features of neo-Marxism is the correspondence between theory and praxis, it is essential to pay close attention to the relationship between Aranguren’s biography and his work – as well as Zambrano’s and Aguirre’s – so that it can be determined whether they are the expression of a holistic project, as is the case with Critical Theorists, particularly Marcuse (see Rush, 2004: 16, 27; see also Brunkhorst, 2004: 263).
3.1.1.4.1 Early life
Aranguren is born in 1909 in an increasingly tense socio-political climate which culminates in the Semana Trágica that same year61. His family, who enjoys a comfortable financial situation, is of conservative tendencies. Consequently, Aranguren receives a traditional religious education. At the age of nine, he is sent to a Jesuit boarding school in Madrid and continues studying with the Jesuits until he leaves for University. Although this young Aranguren bears few traits of the critical political writer he would later become, the seeds for his strong religious convictions which would shape his entire existence have already been firmly planted as we shall see below (for further details of Aranguren’s biography see Pastor García, 2000: 665-76). Some eleven years earlier, in 1898, Marcuse is born in Berlin to a well-off Jewish family and raised during a period of economic prosperity. Marcuse, unlike Aranguren who often meditates on the role of his received religion, Catholicism, does not possess a special interest in further exploring and asserting his Jewish background (see Kellner, 1989: 80).
After finishing secondary school, Aranguren’s health deteriorates and University has to wait for one year, which he spends learning French in Angulème. When he finally attends University, he chooses to do his first degree in Law, which he finishes in 1931. In 1932, he decides to register at University again to study philosophy. During this time, during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship (1923-1930) and the Spanish Second Republic which follows, Aranguren is not particularly interested in the socio-political situation of the country, assuming a moderate position. Thus, it is hardly surprising that when in 1936 the Spanish Civil War breaks out, Aranguren does not manifest any special inclination for either side. However, when offered the chance to escape the conflict by going to France, he declines the offer (see Pastor García, 2000: 668). Although, a man of peace, initially more interested in books than politics, Aranguren is compelled by the circumstances to go to the front in Aragón, where he joins a regiment of artillery of the Nationals, serving as the driver of the vehicle of his battery (see Pastor García, 2000: 668)62. Once there, he soon claims to
61 In July 1909, workers’s protests in Barcelona escalate into anti-clerical riots which are suppressed by force, consequently being named the Tragic Week (see Payne, 1993: 12).
62 Later, in 1969, when looking retrospectively over his life in Memorias y esperanzas españolas, Aranguren explains that his decision to pass up the opportunity of becoming an alférez, second
suffer from tuberculosis, thus gaining military permission to go back home. Similarly, when the Great War breaks out in 1914, two weeks after Marcuse’s sixteenth birthday, Marcuse’s rather sheltered upbringing also contributes to the fact that he adopts a rather neutral attitude towards it. By the end of 1914, the Germans already suffer the material consequences of the war. In 1916, when there are little prospects of a military victory, Marcuse is summoned into the Imperial German Reichswehr and is consequently forced to conclude his Gymnasium studies. At this point – as with Aranguren – Marcuse also manifests health problems; due to his weak eyesight, he is assigned to a relatively safe position in Berlin, where he is even allowed to attend Berlin University on an irregular basis.
3.1.1.4.2 War as the catalyst for a socio-political awakening
The Great War, which lasts a total of four years, provokes a great deal of discontent. As Barry Katz explains, “it is in these circumstances that Herbert Marcuse, stationed in the political centre of the country, began to develop political consciousness” (1982: 26). Another decisive factor in awakening his political consciousness is the violence involved in war which evokes in him feelings of revulsion. This rejection of violence can also be observed in his early political behaviour. Marcuse joins the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1917, a time of crisis and fragmentation for German socialism. As Katz points out: he remained a Social Democrat until the end of the war, and although he never became a party activist, he recalled that it is at this time that he began to explore the theoretical underpinnings of the socialist opposition in the writings of Marx (1982: 28).
In 1918, in the face of the murders of the socialist Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, he withdraws from the SDP, showing his disgust towards such actions – a reaction similar to the one which prompts Blas Zambrano’s withdrawal from the socialist party (see Marcuse, 2005: 71; see also 4.2.1). It is then when Marcuse starts to study Marx, although retaining his political independence (see McCarthy, 1991: 86). Aranguren’s interest in Marxism, however, develops considerably later. As a result of his conservative background, the demonization of Marxism, and the restrictive intellectual climate instigated by Franco’s regime, Aranguren does not substantially engage with Marxism until the late 1960s. Indeed, his first publication on the subject is El marxismo como moral (1968). Although arguably late, he enters into a dialogue with Marxism which is crucial for