Walter Benjamin - Thoughts on his thoughts?

[lukasecho]

I have been delving into Walter Benjamin a bit lately. Its odd going though. Its hard to really see what brings together his writings

- On Language as Such and On the Language of Man (1916)
- Critique of Violence, (1921)
- The Author as Producer (1934)
- Unpacking My Library (1931)
- Work of Art...
- etc

What do you make of Benjamin and his influence? What is is influence?

[NielsBohr]

Hi,

If that can help you, Wikipedia (in franch) tell us, that philosophy was only one of his activities - he was also historian and arts critique (and even translator) - what can explain the diversity of his books.

It explain also that he was affiliate of Frankfort's school, inspired by marxism about "social philosophy", which had - in place to justify the establishment - had to be a critic, but not anyone: a "social critic of capitalism". (Some partial philosopher.)

[hammock]

Its hard to really see what brings together his writings

The importance of Benjamin's early unpublished fragments for an understanding his wider philosophical project has been emphasised by a number of scholars in recent years. Indeed, without them it becomes difficult to understand the intellectual context and historical tradition out of which Benjamin is writing...

Benjamin suggests that the “great transformation and correction which must be performed upon the concept of experience, oriented so one-sidedly along mathematical-mechanical lines, can be attained only by relating knowledge to language, as was attempted by [J.G.] Hamann during Kant's lifetime”. ...This implies that all experience—including perception—is essentially linguistic, whilst all human language (including writing, typically associated with mere convention) is inherently expressive and creative. ...language serves as a medium of experience that binds the ostensible “subject” and “object” in a more profound, perhaps mystical, relationship of underlying kinship.

...Whilst Benjamin is not interested in returning to the pre-critical project of a rationalist deduction of experience, nor to a directly religious conception of the world, he is interested in how the scientific concept of experience that Kant is utilising distorts the structure of Kant's philosophical system, and how this might be corrected with the use of theological concepts. Epistemology must address not only “the question of the certainty of knowledge that is lasting”, but also the neglected question of “the integrity of an experience that is ephemeral”.

Benjamin's suggestion as to how this project might be formulated within the Kantian system is sketchy, but nonetheless indicates some of the preoccupying concerns of his later writings. In general, it involves the expansion of the limited spatio-temporal forms and essentially causal-mechanistic categories of Kant's philosophy through the integration of, for example, religious, historical, artistic, linguistic and psychological experiences. <#2 - Early Works: Kant and Experience, WALTER BENJAMIN; plato.stanford.edu>