Walter Benjamin, an Aesthetic of Redemption

Analyzes the intellectual development of a twentieth-century German-Jewish philosopher whose work sought a synthesis between Judaic theology and Marxist materialism. An introduction to the life and work of Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher and literary and cultural critic. The text offers insight into Benjamin´s complex relationships with Adorno, Brecht, Jewish Messianism and Western Marxism.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.