Walter Benjamin's dazzling if discontinuous contributions to the
century's thought are no longer secrets kept only by the special
few. Still, there is a persistent tendency to think of Benjamin as
a sort of troubadour philosopher - someone less than permanently
significant because his thinking divides into eclectic periods: the
theological, the Marxist, the linguistic. In this tight,
chronological (if frequently jargon-stuffed) book, Wolin attempts a
reintegration. Granted, he argues, that Benjamin's thought -
Kabbalistic; Brechtian; with its "auras" and "ruins" - is
heterodox, even Janus-faced. Nonetheless, there is a constant turn
toward the redemptive, the Messianic. This vision of final-trump
rightness, of a singe answer, backs everything Benjamin
investigated. It allowed him to diverge from pre- and post-Marxist
Lukacs and not mistake "formed totality" (works of the artist) for
"created totality" (works of God). It led Benjamin to value
allegory over symbol - allegory being transcendent instead of
reflexive, in space more than in time. Even Benjamin's most
questionable period - the Brechtian one - fits under the
"redemptive" rubric: Benjamin became so enamored of modern
techniques-as-such (surrealism, film montage, Brechtian
interruption) that he believed the right tools would have to lead
to the right message - bad Marxism, worse naivete. But tradition
remained Benjamin's constant touchstone, Wolin maintains
convincingly - the past that puts us into place for the future,
even if that past be one of decay and desuetude. Clearly
encapsulated along the way are the great Benjamin works of
different periods: the book on German tragic drama; the essays on
Leskov and Baudelaire; "The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical
Reproduction." (There is disappointingly little, however, on
perhaps Benjamin's most fascinating writing, the great Kafka
essay.) Wolin acknowledges a major debt to Jurgen Habermas for the
idea of "redemptive criticism" apropos of Benjamin; yet, even if
not original, the analytical plenitude here is very welcome - and
still more so the serious attempt at synthesizing Benjamin's
conflicting aspects into a monumental intellect that's only now
beginning to cast long, deep shadows. (Kirkus Reviews)
Few twentieth-century thinkers have proven as influential as Walter
Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher and cultural and literary
critic. Richard Wolin's book remains among the clearest and most
insightful introductions to Benjamin's writings, offering a
philosophically rich exposition of his complex relationship to
Adorno, Brecht, Jewish Messianism, and Western Marxism. Wolin
provides nuanced interpretations of Benjamin's widely studied
writings on Baudelaire, historiography, and art in the age of
mechanical reproduction. In a new Introduction written especially
for this edition, Wolin discusses the unfinished "Arcades Project,"
as well as recent tendencies in the reception of Benjamin's work
and the relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates about
modernity and postmodernity.
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