Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption

Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism #7

by Richard Wolin

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.

Genres: Philosophy, History

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Andrew]

I like Walter Benjamin's writing, the high-water mark of 20th Century theory. I like Richard Wolin's smart and nuanced and often mordantly funny commentary on/postmortem of 20th Century theory.

This though? This sucked. I don't feel like I learned any more about Benjamin, and Wolin's erstwhile elucidations of Benjamin's influences -- Marx, Scholem, etc. -- were insufficient, to say the least, and really just felt like obfuscation. This was his first book, and so I can't judge too harshly, but yeah skip this shit.

[Gene Bales · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fairly comprehensive and detailed study of the thought of Walter Benjamin. My ability to appreciate it was limited by my lack of exposure to Benjamin's writings. Benjamin never wrote a grand synthetic philosophy a la Hegel. His work was a series of projects, usually incomplete or unfinished, which makes interpretation rather challenging. I think Richard Wolin did a good job putting it all together, but I confess it was very tough going.

[William West]

I often don't like Wolin's work, particularly his attempt to villify and disqualify Heidegger and his most sympathetic interlocuters. But here, he presents a moving and lucid interpretation of a thinker's work that often lacked lucidity.

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Benjamin is notoriously hard to get ahold of. I was hoping this book would help. It pretty much did not.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the introduction to this text to be its redemptive kernel; that is to the exclusion of the rest of the text.