Tagliacozzo T (2014). La "costellazione" del capitalismo tra Walter Benjamin e Max Weber. In: Dario Gentili, Mauro Ponzi, Elettra Stimilli, Massimiliano Tomba, Bruno Moroncini, Clemens Carl Harle, Paolo Napoli, Massimo De Carolis, Roberto Ciccarelli, Alessandra Campo, Luca Viglialoro, Sarah Scheibenberger, Gabriele Guerra, Tamara Tagliacozzo, Massimo Palma, Giuseppe Massara. (a cura di): Dario Gentili, Mauro Ponzi, Elettra Stimilli, Il culto del capitale. Walter Benjamin: capitalismo e religione. QUODLIBET STUDIO. FILOSOFIA E POLITICA, vol. 1, p. 215-229, MACERATA:Quodlibet, ISBN: 9788874626298

The affinity of Adorno’s though with that of Benjamin and Weber and the exam of their concepts of constellation (in Weber “cosmos”) in their historical methods allow us to accost these last . Weber’s “ideal type” appears as a methodological instrument structurally similar to Benjamin’s monad. Weber, however, is more connected with the empirical historical research than with metaphisics. Similar to Benjamin and Adorno Weber uses the word Darstellung (representation) exibition of a (spatial) structure in a series of concepts of historical phenomena. The “ideal type” appears as a “cosmos of conceptual connections”, a Grenzbegriff (limit-concept), an utopian construction that orients the historical knowledge and gives “precise [linguistic and conceptual] instruments of expression”. The “ideal type”, as a “genetic concept”, is an idea that is represented by a system, a set of concepts, and is able of catching the causal connections, the origin and the development of a historical phenomenon. The affinity of Benjamin’s though with Weber’s is given in the common view of a non deterministic and progressive conception of the causal connection. The set of causes is in Weber a constellation, the idea of “capitalism” is given only at the end of the historical research, by a set of concepts driven by a regulative idea. The causal connection is in Benjamin grounded in the meeting of past and present in the monadic phenomenon, in the messianic moment of the “now of knowledge” (Jetzt der Erkennbarkeit). In the fragment Capitalism as Religion (1921) Benjamin represents his monadic idea of capitalism.3521