Walter Benjamin - Thought

Thought

Walter Benjamin corresponded much with Theodor Adorno and Bertolt Brecht, and was occasionally funded by the Frankfurt School under the direction of Adorno and Horkheimer, even from their New York City residence. The competing influences — Brecht’s Marxism, Adorno’s critical theory, Gerschom Scholem’s Jewish mysticism — were central to his work, although their philosophic differences remained unresolved. Moreover, the critic Paul de Man argued that the intellectual range of Benjamin’s writings flows dynamically among those three intellectual traditions, deriving a critique via juxtaposition; the exemplar synthesis is On the Concept of History (Theses on the Philosophy of History).

Read more about this topic:  Walter Benjamin

Famous quotes containing the word thought:

    Nothing that has ever been thought and said with a clear mind and pure ethical strength is totally in vain; even if it comes from a weak hand and is imperfectly formed, it inspires the ethical spirit to constantly renewed creation.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)

    I—this thought which is called I—is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    He was the finest of our happy men;
    He had all joys, he never thought of death;
    He fiddled sometimes with his mind, and then
    Shook off the tremor like a nervous wren....
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)