Walter Benjamin’s first philosophy: towards a constellational definition of experience
- 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.
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| Author: | Nathan Ross |
|---|---|
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-566271 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0006 |
| ISSN: | 2284-3515 |
| Parent Title (German): | Open Philosophy |
| Publisher: | De Gruyter |
| Document Type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of Publication (online): | 2020/02/20 |
| Date of first Publication: | 2020/02/20 |
| Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
| Release Date: | 2020/11/19 |
| Tag: | Critical Theory; Experience; German Romanticism; Memory; Perception; Proust; Surrealism; Walter Benjamin |
| Volume: | 3 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Page Number: | 21 |
| First Page: | 81 |
| Last Page: | 101 |
| HeBIS-PPN: | 474012441 |
| Institutes: | Gesellschaftswissenschaften / Gesellschaftswissenschaften |
| Philosophie und Geschichtswissenschaften / Philosophie | |
| Angeschlossene und kooperierende Institutionen / Institut für Sozialforschung (IFS) | |
| Dewey Decimal Classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 10 Philosophie / 100 Philosophie und Psychologie |
| 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 30 Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie / 300 Sozialwissenschaften | |
| Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
| Licence (German): |  Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0 |
