Walter Benjamin - Softcover

Nobert Bolz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573924296 ISBN 13: 9781573924290

Publisher: Humanities Press, 1991

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Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was one of the most intriguing and original Marxist cultural theorists of the twentieth-century. He made a precarious living in Berlin as a literary journalist and, partly under the influence of Ernst Bloch and Lukacs, turned toward the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. In the late 1920's, he became a close friend of Brecht, championing his revolutionary "epic theater". Driven from Germany in 1933 by the rise of Nazism, Benjamin settled in Paris where he had close associations with the surrealists. When the Nazis invaded France, Benjamin fled to the Spanish frontier where on being denied entry, he committed suicide rather than risk being delivered to the SS. Benjamin's writings are a curious mixture of esoteric, sometimes mystical Jewish thought, artistic modernism, and unorthodox Marxism. He united an apocalyptic vision of history with a concern for the material, productive basis of art. Fascinated by tradition, yet a radical spokesman for the new technological media, steeped in high German philosophy, but a champion of the proletariat, Benjamin was in turn philologist, literary critic, political commentator, and philosopher of history. Bolz and van Reijen proceed from the standpoint that Benjamin's thought was shaped by his attempt to connect extremes--to make the theological idea of salvation fruitful for political thought. Then, they go on to structure Benjamin's important clusters of themes in light of the radical consequences of this intention.

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Review

""This small book is a remarkably complete presentation of a philosophy that is very hard to present in a systematic way. . . It is doubtless one of the best introductions to the very subtle and 'dialectical' philosophy of Walter Benjamin." --Michael Lowy, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions

Synopsis

Benjamin's writings are a curious mixture of esoteric, sometimes mystical Jewish thought, artistic modernism, and unorthodox Marxism. He united an apocalyptic vision of history with a concern for the material, productive basis of art. Fascinated by tradition, yet a radical spokesman for the new technological media, steeped in high German philosophy, but a champion of the proletariat, Benjamin was in turn philologist, literary critic, political commentator, and philosopher of history. Bolz and van Reijen proceed from the standpoint that Benjamin's thought was shaped by his attempt to connect extremes - to make the theological idea of salvation fruitful for political thought. Then, they go on to structure Benjamin's important clusters of themes in light of the radical consequences of this intention.

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