Walter Benjamin
Mechanical reproduction strips art of its aura, and history should be written from the side of the defeated, not the victors.
Placement
Aura, allegory and the history of the defeated: the work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility.
Key ideas
- Aura
- Angel of history
- Flâneur
Influence
Influenced by 8
Immanuel Kant
influenced by
In ‘On the Programme of the Coming Philosophy’ (1918) Benjamin kept Kant’s system as the frame but demanded a higher concept of experience that includes religious experience. W. Benjamin, “Über das Programm der kommenden Philosophie” (written 1917–18, printed 1963); SEP “Walter Benjamin”
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Karl Marx
influenced by ✓
Benjamin read the Paris arcades through Marx’s commodity fetishism as phantasmagoria (‘Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century’, 1935) and joined historical materialism with messianism (1940). W. Benjamin, “Paris, die Hauptstadt des XIX. Jahrhunderts” (exposé, 1935); “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” (1940); SEP “Walter Benjamin”
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Hermann Cohen
influenced by
Benjamin read Cohen’s Kants Theorie der Erfahrung critically with Scholem in 1918; Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky traces Cohen’s concepts as the foil of Benjamin’s early theory of knowledge. G. Scholem, Walter Benjamin – die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (1975); A. Deuber-Mankowsky, Der frühe Walter Benjamin und Hermann Cohen (2000)
Evidence: AI draft
Hermann Cohen › 1842–1918
Georg Simmel
influenced by
Benjamin noted for the Arcades Project that his concept of origin (1928) transposed Goethe’s concept of truth, as Simmel presented it (Goethe, 1913), from nature to history. W. Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk (written 1927–40, publ. 1982), convolute N; G. Simmel, Goethe (1913)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Simmel › 1858–1918
Georg Lukács
influenced by ✓
Benjamin read History and Class Consciousness (1923) on Capri in 1924 and wrote to Scholem that Lukács reached epistemological positions partly close to his own. W. Benjamin, letter to G. Scholem (Sept. 1924), in Briefe (1966); G. Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein (1923)
Georg Lukács › 1885–1971
Carl Schmitt
influenced by
Benjamin drew on Schmitt’s Political Theology (1922) for sovereignty and the state of exception in Origin of the German Trauerspiel (1928), acknowledging the debt in a letter (1930). W. Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928); letter to C. Schmitt (9 Dec. 1930); H. Bredekamp, “From Walter Benjamin to Carl Schmitt, via Thomas Hobbes”, Critical Inquiry 25 (1999)
Evidence: AI draft
Carl Schmitt › 1888–1985
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Johann Jakob Bachofen
influenced by
In ‘Johann Jakob Bachofen’ (written 1935, printed 1954) Benjamin set out Bachofen’s matriarchal prehistory and its rival readings, from Engels to Klages. W. Benjamin, “Johann Jakob Bachofen” (written 1935 in French for the Nouvelle Revue Française, printed 1954)
Evidence: AI draft
Johann Jakob Bachofen › 1815–1887
Aby Warburg
influenced by
For the melancholy section of Origin of the German Trauerspiel (1928) Benjamin drew on Warburg’s study of pagan-antique prophecy in Luther’s time (1920) and on Panofsky and Saxl. W. Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928); A. Warburg, “Heidnisch-antike Weissagung in Wort und Bild zu Luthers Zeiten” (1920); E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, Dürers „Melencolia I“ (1923)
Evidence: AI draft
Aby Warburg › 1866–1929
Influenced 4
Theodor W. Adorno
influenced ✓
Adorno’s inaugural lecture ‘The Actuality of Philosophy’ (1931) adopted the method of constellations from Benjamin’s Origin of the German Trauerspiel (1928), interpreting reality through configurations of its elements. T. W. Adorno, “Die Aktualität der Philosophie” (lecture, 1931); W. Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928); S. Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics (1977)
Theodor W. Adorno › 1903–1969
Hannah Arendt
influenced ✓
Arendt edited Benjamin’s Illuminations (1968) and in her introduction described his thinking as ‘pearl diving’ that breaks fragments of thought from the past. H. Arendt, “Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940”, introduction to W. Benjamin, Illuminations (1968); repr. in Men in Dark Times (1968)
Hannah Arendt › 1906–1975
Jean Baudrillard
influenced ✓
Baudrillard took Benjamin’s analysis of technical reproducibility (1935–36) as a step toward his order of simulacra, in which reproduction precedes any original (L’échange symbolique et la mort, 1976). J. Baudrillard, L’échange symbolique et la mort (1976); W. Benjamin, “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” (1935–36); SEP “Jean Baudrillard”
Jean Baudrillard › 1929–2007
Giorgio Agamben
influenced ✓
Agamben took Benjamin’s thesis that the state of emergency has become the rule (1940) and his ‘Critique of Violence’ (1921) as starting points of State of Exception (2003). G. Agamben, Stato di eccezione (2003); W. Benjamin, “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” (1921); “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” (1940); SEP “Walter Benjamin”
Giorgio Agamben › b. 1942
Works
The loss of the aura – and the politicization of art.
The angel of history and the storm of progress.
Position
Benjamin combined Jewish messianism, Marxism and a keen eye for the details of modern life. In his essay on the work of art he argued that technical reproduction – photography and film – destroys the “aura”, the unique here-and-now of the original, and opens art to mass politics, for better or worse. His unfinished Arcades Project read nineteenth-century Paris, its shopping arcades and the figure of the flâneur, as the dream world of capitalism. In his last theses he rejected the faith in progress: the “angel of history” sees one single catastrophe piling up wreckage. History must be rescued in moments that redeem the hopes of the defeated.
Life & context
Benjamin grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin. When the Frankfurt faculty advised him in 1925 to withdraw his habilitation thesis, he lived as a critic, essayist and translator of Proust and Baudelaire, close to Gershom Scholem, Bertolt Brecht and Adorno. From 1933 he lived in exile in Paris. Fleeing the Nazis in 1940, he took his own life at the Spanish border in Portbou.
Further main works
- The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928)
- One-Way Street (1928)
- The Arcades Project, unfinished (1927–1940)
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