The name of the German philosopher, Marxist, aesthetics,The critic and translator Walter Benjamin is increasingly remembered by current cultural scientists. Quote it has now become fashionable. Just as many of his contemporaries, such as Ortega-y-Gasset or Bertolt Brecht. All of them were united by a tragic sense of peace, concern for the fate of art and pessimism about humanity. Apparently, all this turned out to be very much in tune with our era, which calls itself "postmodernism." This article is an attempt to shed at least a faint light on what kind of person Walter Benjamin was.
Short life story
The future philosopher was born in 1892 inprosperous Jewish family in Berlin. On the maternal side, Walter Benjamin was related to Heinrich Heine. Father was engaged in antiques trade. Subsequently, the bankruptcy of the family case prompted the philosopher to go to Moscow. It was in the years 1926-1927. He worked a lot in the archives, met with Vladimir Mayakovsky. From this trip he left mostly negative memories, which he recorded in his Moscow Diary. In 1933, the Jew and anti-fascist Walter Benjamin was forced to emigrate from Germany. He went to France, from where in 1940 he tried to get to the USA through Spain.
Tragic end
At the border crossing, the Spaniards refused to the writer,since he did not have a visa. By law, he should have been sent back to France, where the Nazis already ruled. He was allowed to spend the night at a local hotel, where he committed suicide on the night of September 26-27. His death helped the rest of the group of refugees to cross the border - the Spaniards, impressed by the tragedy, missed everyone unconditionally. In this group was Hannah Arendt, who was a big fan of Benjamin's ideas. She brought with her one of the drafts of his article “On the Concept of History” and published it in the USA under the title “Abstracts on the Philosophy of History”.
Philosophical views
Walter Benjamin, like many of his contemporaries,was heavily influenced by Marxism. He very peculiarly combined it with Jewish mysticism and psychoanalysis. Being a translator, was the distributor of French culture. Thanks to him, the novels of Marcel Proust and Charles Baudelaire came out in Germany. Walter Benjamin anticipated the historical approach of the second half of the 20th century. He outlined his views on the philosophy of history in a posthumous work that Arendt transported to the USA. But the most famous work that Walter Benjamin wrote? - "The work of art in the era of technical reproducibility." In it, he formulated a theory that has become very popular in our time: about the aura that an art object loses and has undergone endless replication.
The fate of the teachings
Only after his death, in the second half of the 20century, the ideas of Walter Benjamin began to gain fame. A big role in this was played by his friends and colleagues - Theodore Adorno and Gershom Scholem. Adorno created a whole archive of the philosopher, collecting all his notes, notes, passages of texts and drafts in one place. He did not divide the work of Benjamin into significant and passing. This archive formed the basis of Adorno's many years of work dedicated to the heritage of Walter Benjamin. He did much to popularize the writer's works, but focused exclusively on his philosophical works. For a long time, no one suspected Benjamin had research on the history of photography, for example.
Walter Benjamin: the most famous quotes
Walter Benjamin’s language is very specific.The writer was distinguished by the ability to see big in the small, to draw deep conclusions from ordinary things. Therefore, the unexpected turns of his speech are often surprising, but can not fail to admire. For example, in the "Berlin Chronicles", he deduces his future rebellion and inclination to sabotage from the stubborn unwillingness to go along with someone who was peculiar to him in childhood.
Poeticization of everyday is distinctiveBenjamin style trait. In his work “One-way street”, he connects the birth of the detective story with the bourgeois epoch. All this lush, dark and slightly dusty interior, which were surrounded by wealthy merchants, as nalzya better suited for the dead bodies. “On this sofa, the aunt could only be killed,” writes the philosopher.
Perhaps Walter Benjamin is gettingmore popular, because the current generation, frantically turning around itself, does not find any points of support and is forced to look for them in the past. He is now perceived as an example of ideological resistance to established traditions, a rebellious spirit of disbelief in the obvious and denial of the worship of science as the only answer to all questions. His works are written in a sophisticated, correct German language and stylistically perfect. They are definitely worth reading for anyone interested in issues related to historical perspective.
