Walter Benjamin
Born: 07-14-1892
Walter Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, and essayist known for his eclectic approach to literature and art. Born in 1892 in Berlin, he was a pivotal figure in the Frankfurt School and is celebrated for works like "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." His writings explore themes of history, aesthetics, and modernity, leaving a profound impact on 20th-century thought.
Book summaries for books written by Walter Benjamin
Quotes
The flâneur must always be half-dreamer, half-awake.
History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now.
The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the flâneur as phantasmagoria – now a landscape, now a room.
Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre.
The only true paradises are the paradises that have been lost.
The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.
The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public.
The city is the matrix of the modern phantasmagoria.
The street becomes a dwelling for the flâneur; he is as much at home among the facades of houses as a citizen is in his four walls.
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
The power of a country road is different when one is walking along it from when one is flying over it by airplane.
The first, autonomous stage of the development of the arcades is the bazaar.