Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin is often regarded as a cultural critic, whose overwhelming array of outstanding and idiosyncratic works is held together by little more than the impression that they bear the stamp of his indefinable "genius." In Eli Friedlander's portrayal, Benjamin's oeuvre is a unique coherent philosophical system firmly rooted in the tradition of philosophical thought. Friedlander identifies the foundational ideas already formulated in Benjamin's early work, which are characteristic of the various layers of his philosophical endeavor. He guides the reader from there to Benjamin's reflections on the "dialectical image," a key concept of the Arcades Project, the nature of language, the relationship between beauty and truth, the "embodiment of ideas," to dreams and historical awakening, and to the relationship between myth and G.