"L'istituzione delle cose umane". Tecnica, politica e felicità in Walter Benjamin

In this essay, I propose an interpretation of Benjamin’s Politik, a philosophical project of the 1920s that was later abandoned and of which a few essays and fragments remain, through Paul Scheerbart’s science-fiction novel Lesabéndio, published in 1913. Benjamin believed that the novel’s protagonist, Lesabéndio, represented the ‘true politician’. Through an in-depth analysis of Scheerbart’s novel, it is indeed possible to address crucial questions such as the relationship between technique and politics, the temporality of political action and happiness. At the end of the article, critical insights into Benjamin’s political philosophy are offered.