Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin was a German Jew born on July 15, 1892. Hewas born into the upper-middle class and received a good education. He attended several universities including Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Humboldt University of Berlin, and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He applied to become a professor at Goethe University Frankfurt but the entry of The Origin of German Tragic Drama was not accepted as a qualification as the habilitation teaching credential. He wrote for the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung. During the Nazi regime Benjamin fled to Spain and France. He was at one point incarcerated in a French prison camp for three months. He did secure a visa to the US and made it across the French-Spanish border but the Franco government cancelled all transit visas. With little hop of escaping the Nazis Benjamin killed himself with an overdose of morphine pills on September 25, 1940.
Walter Benjamin was a very influential philosopher and social scientist. He wrote the book The Arcades Project, shorter work such as: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, “On the Concept of History”, and “Critique of Violence”. He worked with Marxist cultural theory and qabala, a mystical variety of Jewish theory. In politics he talks a lot of sovereign violence. He claims capitalism and the state to be a religious or metaphysical system based on fate and guilt. He is also notable for the argument that things or objects have some kind of language, perception or subjectivity. In an early text, he suggested that things propel us into the future. He believed science to be a process that produces ‘concepts’, which group phenomenon together. The accumulation of knowledge does not constitute the ‘truth’. It is more of a mystical experience. “The experience of ‘truth’ occurs in a field of made up ideas… An idea carries the symbolic function into language. It is a bearer of the magical power which language inherits from superstition and sorcery.” He also describes the aura of objects. Science has the danger of reducing an object to its function and therefore cannot escape the present but the essence or aura of an object as the power to make the object unique. From what I understand he is trying to say the truth is subjective and changes from culture to culture as the aura of objects and things changes from culture to culture.
He talks of a utopian world where everything has a place to fit in. He expresses that settling for the imperfect present is basically settling for hell. He says that redemption should always come with the intent to improve and revolutionize the flawed current system. One of his most famous works “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” speaks to culture in a historical context.
He claims that aura has disappeared in the modern age because things have become reproducible. An original work of art in uniquely present but when it is reproduced it diminished the original and neither is fully present or authentic. Also, artwork is experienced through contemplation where photographs and films are not. Distraction has replaced contemplation. “Benjamin criticizes the usual account whereby true art is contemplated and the masses seek only distraction. For Benjamin, contemplation is a kind of domination by the author: the work of art absorbs the audience. In contrast, distraction involves the audience absorbing the work of art.” He is describing the result of capitalism’s commodification of and art. While this has the negative affect of removing art from tradition it can also have positive aspects. This removing from tradition can allow the work of art to be used in different ways and combinations.
Art can also now be associated with politics. It can also be more interactive. He suggests that art now takes the on the role of education as it can form habits through an unconscious tactical appreciation. He talks about authorship in this new age of reproduction. The distinction between author and public has disappeared because everyone can be an author. It is simply a division of function. Because everyone can be an author, he argues, that human have the right to reproduce He also viewed the growing propaganda or mobilization of images and art as positive because it could strengthen a revolution for a better society. However, there is the danger that propaganda is used instead to create myths because the media is controlled by the wealthy and powerful who do not want a revolution.
Walter Benjamin has many more theories relating to philosophy and social theory. His unique experiences and friendships lead him to be a revolutionary thinker of his time. His writing style was also very unique. The thoughts and sentences did not follow on another. The each stood on their own encompassing the idea on its own yet all connecting to a bigger picture, like a mosaic.
Sources:
Robison, Andrew. "Walter Benjamin: Art, Aura and Authenticity." Ceasefire Magazine RSS. 14 June 2013. Web. 6 Feb. 2015. <https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/walter-benjamin-art-aura-authenticity/>.
Robison, Andrew. "Walter Benjamin and Critical Theory." Ceasefire Magazine RSS. 4 Apr. 2013. Web. 6 Feb. 2015. https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-benjamin-1/
"Walter Benjamin." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin>.