Walter Benjamin’s First Philosophy: Towards a Constellational Definition of Experience

Open Philosophy 3 (1):81-101 (2020)
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Abstract

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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References found in this work

Negative dialectics.Theodor W. Adorno - 1973 - New York: Continuum.
The Arcades Project.Walter Benjamin, Howard Eiland & Kevin Mclaughlin - 1999 - Science and Society 65 (2):243-246.
Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption.Richard Wolin - 1994 - University of California Press.
Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption.Richard Wolin - 1986 - Studies in Soviet Thought 31 (1):65-67.

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