Ensayos escogidos

by Walter Benjamin, Héctor A. Murena (Traductor)

Benjamin se proyectaba a sí mismo en todos sus grandes temas, y su temperamento determinaba lo que elegía para escribir. Contrariamente a interpretar la obra de un escritor por su vida, hizo un uso selectivo de la vida en sus más profundas meditaciones sobre textos: información que revelaba al melancólico, al solitario.
[…]
Benjamin pensaba que el intelectual libre era, de todos modos, una especie moribunda hecha no menos caduca por la sociedad capitalista que por el comunismo revolucionario. En su ensayo sobre Kraus, Benjamin pregunta retóricamente: ¿Está Kraus en la frontera de una nueva época? “¡Nada de eso!, pues se encuentra en el umbral del juicio final.” Benjamin está pensando en sí mismo. En el juicio final, el último intelectual –ese héroe saturnino de la cultura moderna, con sus ruinas, sus visiones desafiantes, sus ensueños, su insalvable melancolía, sus ojos bajos– explicará que adoptó muchas “posiciones” y defendió hasta lo último la vida del espíritu, tan justa e Inhumanamente como pudo.
Susan Sontag, “Bajo el signo de Saturno”
Incluye: Sobre algunos temas en Baudelaire, Tesis de filosofía de la historia, Franz Kafka, La tarea del traductor, Sobre el lenguaje en general y sobre el lenguaje de los hombres, Sobre la facultad mimética, Para una crítica de la violencia, Destino y carácter

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

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

[Arnoldo David Diaz]

Si bien el libro en general es muy bueno, creo que prefiero la traducción de las "Tesis sobre la historia" que hizo Bolivar Echeverría, me parece más certera

[Diego Alexander]

Imprescindible lectura de los textos más importantes de Walter Benjamin.