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Abstract

Many commentators of the Benjaminian essay Critique of Violence seem agreed on the thesis that, for the German philosopher, violence is a means of law. Nonetheless, Kelsen’s pure theory of law acknowledges that violence and coaction are also a means for law, but for this very reason refuses any fundamental, essential, or structural relation between law and violence: a means is solely a necessary condition of something, but never its sufficient condition nor, hence, its ground. The aim of this paper is to present an interpretation of Benjamin’s text that responds to the Kelsenian objection.