Walter Benjamin was a 20th century German philosopher and cultural critic affiliated with the Frankfurt School. Some of his major works examined how mechanical reproduction impacted the authenticity and aura of art, how sense perception changed with modernity, and the ambiguous political effects of these changes. His influential 1940 work "Theses on the Philosophy of History" presented an allegory of Paul Klee's painting "Angelus Novus," depicting the angel of history looking backward at a growing pile of wreckage produced by "progress."

1. Walter Benjamin
HTH 1002 History of Though II
Kara Heitz

2. The Frankfurt School
• Institute for Social Research
• Marxist changing Marxism
• Critique of economic determinism
• Critique of capitalism, fascism, and
Soviet communism
• Why did capitalism endure?
• Part of the answer: look at culture
Affiliated Thinkers:
Max Horkheimer
Theodor Adorno
Herbert Marcuse
Friedrich Pollock
Erich Fromm
Leo Löwenthal
Siegfried Kracauer
Walter Benjamin

3. Walter Benjamin
(1892-1940)
• Philosopher, cultural critic, essayist,
collector
• Tragic death
• Major works:
• The Task of the Translator“ (1923)
• The Origin of German Tragic Drama
(1928)
• Arcades Project (1927-1940)
• Theses on the Philosophy of History
(1940)
• The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction (1936)

5. Klee’s “Angelus Novus” (1920)
“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel
looking as though he is about to move away from
something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are
staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is
how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned
toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events,
he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling
wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make
whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing
from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such
violence that the angel can no longer close them. The
storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his
back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows
skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”
Benjamin, Angel of History, from
“Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940)

6. The “Aura” of Art
• Cult value
• Distance/Unapproachability
• How aura is lost?
• Exhibition value
• Reproducibility = Loss of
“authenticity”
• Changes in sense perception

7. Sense Perception
& Modernity

8. Art & Politics
• Ambivalent effects
• Loss of ritual value &
“authenticity” = democratic
potential
• But also = fascist potential
• Aesthetics of destruction
• Eisenstein v. Riefenstahl

9. Benjamin’s Argument Today?