TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ross, Nathan
T1  - Walter Benjamin’s first philosophy: towards a constellational definition of experience
T2  - Open Philosophy
N2  - This essay argues for the philosophical standing of Walter Benjamin’s early work and posits a deeper continuity between this early work as a philosopher and the subsequent development of his work as a writer. When these fragments are read in proper relation to each other, they reveal for the first time many of the key innovations of Benjamin as a philosopher, as well as his points of influence on Horkheimer and Adorno. His early ‘Program’ critiques the Enlightenment conception of experience as a means for gaining empirical knowledge, and announces the need for a new concept of experience. Benjamin follows through on this program with a method of philosophical enquiry that is by turns fragmentary and constellational, developing a series of provisional notions of experience, which form a constellation with one another: perception, mimesis, language as a medium of experience, observation and memory.
KW  - Experience
KW  - Perception
KW  - Surrealism
KW  - Memory
KW  - Critical Theory
KW  - German Romanticism
KW  - Proust
KW  - Walter Benjamin
Y1  - 2020
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/56627
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-566271
SN  - 2284-3515
VL  - 3
IS  - 1
SP  - 81
EP  - 101
PB  - De Gruyter
ER  -