Literature and Theory: Siegfried Kracauer's Law, Walter Benjamin's Allegory and G. K. Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown

In this article I read Kracauer's Der Detektiv‐Roman. Ein Philoso‐phisches Fragment as a critical response to both Walter Benjamin's evaluation of allegory and to his intense messianism and the concomitant rejection of the theory and practice of law. Kracauer contrasts the detective not with a Benjaminian allegorical reader but with the priest. I shall follow up Kracauer's references to G.K. Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown and discuss the latter as the main narrative subtext for the theory advanced in Der Detektiv‐Roman. Like Kracauer, Chesterton contrasts the detective as a representative of absolutized and instrumentalized reason with the priest as representative of critical intelligence and charitable action. In his critique of modernity Chesterton focuses on charity, whereas Kracauer evaluates Jewish law. The biblical background of such contrast between the glorification of an instrumen‐talised rationality and a ceaseless questioning of the ethical validity of reason out of an awareness of human frailty unites these two differing criticisms of modern society. The intertextuality of Kracauer's Der Detektiv‐Roman and Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown points to the reciprocity between law and charity.