Discursos interrumpidos I: filosofía del arte y de la historia

by Walter Benjamin

Discursos Interrumpidos I recoge los textos de Benjamin cuyos temas se alejan de los que se han considerado dentro de la crítica literaria. Quien ya le conoce no ha de extrañar en estos ensayos su falta de dogmatismos teóricos, su inquietud, que ha sido calificada de surrealista, y su incursión en terrenos propios de la historia, la filosofía y, en este caso, la estética y la crítica de arte.

206 pages

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to 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 literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.

Reviews

[Mica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me encanta este autor, sus observaciones sobre la historia del arte me fascinan

[Jimena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Benjamin fue doctor en filosofía con nota Summa Cum Laude en 1919.
En 1934 envío una carta con su CV al Comité Danés para la Ayuda al Refugiado para ver la posibilidad de que se le otorgase una ayuda. Un CV magnífico que descubrí en este libro.
En 1940 se suicidó ante el temor a ser capturado por los nazis después de ser denegado su visado y no permitirle entrar en Port Bou, España, de camino a EEUU. Unos papeles de visado que llegaron al día siguiente.
Si te interesa la fotografía y el uso de las imágenes en la sociedad aquí puedes encontrar planteamientos realizados por este pensador: La obra de arte en la época de la reproductibilidad técnica; pequeña historia de la fotografía y Eduard Fuchs: historia y coleccionismo.

[Lola]

Increíble que tantas cosas sigan siendo aplicables al día de hoy