Benjamin’s reflections on sovereign violence in the 17th century may be contrasted with his discussion of the revolutionary kind in his earlier ‘Critique of Violence’ (‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’, 1921), itself a response to Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence (1908).  These texts have provoked a number of responses in the context of political theology, most notably from Carl Schmitt, Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. Schmitt responded directly to Benjamin’s essay in Hamlet or Hecuba (1956). Derrida’s section on the ‘Critique of Violence’ in his Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority (1989) interrogates this evocation of a revolutionary kind of divine violence, a critical engagement which continues in Derrida’s discussion of the messianic in Spectres of Marx (1994) and ‘Marx and Sons’ (1999), and in relation to Schmitt in The Politics of Friendship (1994). These complex relations between Benjamin, Schmitt, and Derrida have become the subject of a number of studies, including Agamben’s State of Exception (2004) (Bredekamp 1999, 247–266; Liska 2009), although more careful studies have emphasized the clear divergences between Benjamin’s position and those of Derrida and of Schmitt (Tomba 2009, 131–132; Averlar 2005, 79–106; Weber 2008, 176–194). In this respect, it was not Schmitt’s political theology but the reactionary vitalism of Ludwig Klages that proved a more influential and enduring object of fascination for Benjamin (Fuld 1981; McCole 1993, 178–180, 236–246; Wolin 1994, xxxi–xxxviii; Wohlfarth 2002, 65–109; Lebovic 2013, 1–10, 79–110; Charles 2018, 52–62). 