Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin | |
|---|---|
 Benjamin in 1928 | |
| Born | Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin 15 July 1892 |
| Died | 26 September 1940 (aged 48) |
Cause of death | Suicide by morphine overdose |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Freiburg Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin University of Bern (PhD, 1919) University of Frankfurt am Main (Habil. cand.) |
| Richard Herbertz | |
Other advisors | Heinrich Rickert Georg Simmel |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| Continental philosophy Western Marxism Marxist hermeneutics College of Sociology | |
| Institutions | University of Frankfurt am Main |
Main interests | Literary theory, aesthetics, philosophy of technology, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of history |
Notable ideas | Auratic perception, State of exception, aestheticization of politics, dialectical image, the flâneur |
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (/ˈbɛnjəmɪn/ BEN-yə-min; German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn] ⓘ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western Marxism, and post-Kantianism, he made contributions to the philosophy of history, metaphysics, historical materialism, criticism, and aesthetics, and had an oblique but overwhelmingly influential impact on the resurrection of the Kabbalah by virtue of his life-long epistolary relationship with Gershom Scholem.
In popular culture and left-wing journalism he often appears as an exemplar whose experience is representative of the tragedy of German Jewish intellectuals under Nazi Germany.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Hannah Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked that "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction".
He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative relationships with thinkers and cultural figures such as playwright Bertolt Brecht (friend), Martin Buber (an early impresario in his career), Nazi constitutionalist Carl Schmitt (a rival), and many others. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though his friendship with her flowered in Paris after she separated from Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a critic included essays on Kafka, Baudelaire, Goethe, Kraus, Leskov, Proust, Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He translated the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died during his flight into exile at Portbou on the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Having remained in Europe until it was too late, as Cynthia Ozick puts it, Benjamin took his own life to avoid being murdered as a Jew. "Impressed and shaken by his death, the Spanish authorities allowed Benjamin's companions to continue their travel" into Spain, by which route they were able to escape the Third Reich.
Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown. Some German readers and academics encountered Benjamin after his Complete Works began to be released by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1955, but global acclaim came to him when his works were translated into English and introduced to a reading public in the Anglosphere by Arendt in 1968.