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:

    “If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.”
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    “He was like most new babies,
    as ugly as an artichoke
    but the queen thought him a pearl.
    She gave him her dumb lactation,
    delicate, trembling, hidden,
    warm, etc.”
    —Anne Sexton (1928–1974)