Amazon.com
A leading German critic of his day and a member of the generation scarred by the First WorldWar, Walter Benjamin's writing career was marked by deep philosophical insights and tumultuousemotional crises. His work has mostly been unavailable in English translations, but this collection marksthe first of three proposed volumes of his essays. In his early work, we encounter Benjamin as an idealisticuniversity student and come to see him commenting on the aesthetics of such subjects as morality inchildren's books, the uses of force and violence, and writers such as Goethe and Dostoyevsky.Book Description

Walter Benjamin was one of the most original and important critical voices of the twentieth century, but until now only a few of his writings have been available in English. Harvard University Press has now undertaken to publish a significant portion of his work in definitive translation, under the general editorship of Michael W. Jennings. This volume, the first of three, will at last give readers of English a true sense of the man and the mans' theets of his thought. A separate volume will consist of his book The Arcades Project, the magnum opus of his Paris years.

The writer Walter Benjamin emerged our of the head-on collision of an idealistic youth movement and the First World War, which Benjamin and his close friends thought immoral. He walked away from the wreck scarred yet determined "to be considered as the principal critic of German literature." But the scene as he found it was dominated by "talented fakes," so-to use his words-"only a terrorist campaign would I suffice" to effect radical change. This book offers the record of the first phase of that campaign, culminating with "One-Way Street," one of the most significant products of the German avant-garde of the Twenties. Against conformism, homogeneity, and gentrification of all life into a new world order, Benjamin made the word his sword.

Volume I of the Selected Writings brings together essays long and short, academic treatises, reviews, fragments, and privately circulated pronouncements. Fully five-sixths of this material has never before been translated into English. The contents begin in 1913, when Benjamin, as an undergraduate in imperial Germany, was president of a radical youth group, and take us through 1926, when he had already begun, with his explorations of the world of mass culture, to emerge as a critical voice in Weimar Germany's most influential journals.

The volume includes a number of his most important works, including "Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin," "Goethe's Elective Affinities," "The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism," "The Task of the Translator," and "One-Way Street." He is as compelling and insightful when musing on riddles or children's books as he is when dealing with weightier issues such as the philosophy of language, symbolic logic, or epistemology. We meet Benjamin the youthful idealist, the sober moralist, the political theorist, the experimentalist, the translator, and, above all, the virtual king of criticism, with his magisterial exposition of the basic problems of aesthetics.

Benjamin's sentences provoke us to return to them again and again, luring us as though with the promise of some final revelation that is always being postponed. He is by turns fierce and tender, melancholy and ebullient; he is at once classically rooted, even archaic, in his explorations of the human psyche and the world of things, and strikingly progressive in his attitude toward society and what he likes to call the organs of the collective (its architectures, fashions, signboards). Throughout, he displays a far-sighted urgency, judging the present on the basis of possible futures. And he is gifted with a keen sense of humor. Mysterious though he may sometimes be (his Latvian love, Asia Lacis, once described him as a visitor from another planet), Benjamin remains perhaps the most consistently surprising and challenging of critical writers.

Customer Reviews (2)

An Excellent Introduction
Walter Benjamin has progressed over the years from an obscure lesser member of the Frankfurt School to a widely read leading member of that obscure school. Aided by such as Hannah Arendt, who introduced him to a wider audience in her writings (and also to me), readers have come to appreciate Benjamin for the beauty of his writing as well as his sharp insight.

This volume, along with its companion, is an excellent introduction to the style and thought of this man who, while out of step with his times, possessed the insight to give those times an original critique.

Possessed of a lively style and free from the Marxist bagge that weighs down his Frankfurt School colleagues such as Adorno and Horkheimer (I think Benjamin owes much more to Heidegger than Marx), Benjamin will hook any reader who takes the time to spend an hour or two with this book. From here it's an easy step to purchase other Benjamin writings, a step I can almost guarantee.

Endlessly fascinating...
While his work is as important as Barthes, Foucault, or Derrida, or any other critic of the 20th Century, Benjamin's work has a mystical quality, a kind of enchantment, that resonates much more than any other critic I have read. It is always human and sensitive, even despite hisdeterminedly impersonal tone.

When I think of Benjamin, I think of Emerson's famous line about Hawthorne - that he was a greater man than any of his works betray. The integrity and character of Walter Benjamin shines through his works, and is an inspiration to anyone who takes literature seriously.

This first volume of Bejamin's complete works is very attractive and welcome. Some of my favorite essays are present, such as his essays on children's literature, and the nature of language. I eagerly await the other two volumes. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Unique English-language edition of brilliant letter-writer
The most complete English-language edition of Benjamin's letters reveals the German author dealing with characteristic and unrelenting vigour and insight in a wide range of issues from Jewishness and Zionism to European literature, book-collecting and, of course, letter-writing. Yet, with the beginning of each of the 332 letters included in the volume, the reader is brought a little closer to Benjamin's tragic suicide, as he attempts to escape the consequences of the second world war ... Read more

Amazon.com
Benjamin Franklin, writes journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson, was that rare Founding Father who would sooner wink at a passer-by than sit still for a formal portrait. What's more, Isaacson relates in this fluent and entertaining biography, the revolutionary leader represents a political tradition that has been all but forgotten today, one that prizes pragmatism over moralism, religious tolerance over fundamentalist rigidity, and social mobility over class privilege. That broadly democratic sensibility allowed Franklin his contradictions, as Isaacson shows. Though a man of lofty principles, Franklin wasn't shy of using sex to sell the newspapers he edited and published; though far from frivolous, he liked his toys and his mortal pleasures; and though he sometimes gave off a simpleton image, he was a shrewd and even crafty politician. Isaacson doesn't shy from enumerating Franklin's occasional peccadilloes and shortcomings, in keeping with the iconoclastic nature of our time--none of which, however, stops him from considering Benjamin Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age," and one of the most admirable of any era. And here's one bit of proof: as a young man, Ben Franklin regularly went without food in order to buy books. His example, as always, is a good one--and this is just the book to buy with the proceeds from the grocery budget. --Gregory McNameeBook Description
Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us. An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours.

He was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical -- though not most profound -- political thinkers. He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it. He sought practical ways to make stoves less smoky and commonwealths less corrupt. He organized neighborhood constabularies and international alliances, local lending libraries and national legislatures. He combined two types of lenses to create bifocals and two concepts of representation to foster the nation's federal compromise. He was the only man who shaped all the founding documents of America: the Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the peace treaty with England, and the Constitution. And he helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor, democratic values, and philosophical pragmatism.

But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.

Through it all, he trusted the hearts and minds of his fellow "leather-aprons" more than he did those of any inbred elite. He saw middle-class values as a source of social strength, not as something to be derided. His guiding principle was a "dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people." Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.

In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century.Download Description
"Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father who winks at us. An ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings, he seems made of flesh rather than of marble. In bestselling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin seems to turn to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. By bringing Franklin to life, Isaacson shows how he helped to define both his own time and ours. He was, during his 84-year life, America's best scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, and business strategist, and he was also one of its most practical -- though not most profound -- political thinkers. He was the only man who shaped all the founding documents of America: the Albany Plan of Union, the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the peace treaty with England, and the Constitution. And he helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor, democratic values, and philosophical pragmatism. But the most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself. America's first great publicist, he was, in his life and in his writings, consciously trying to create a new American archetype. In the process, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public, and polished it for posterity.In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Franklin's amazing life, from his days as a runaway printer to his triumphs as a statesman, scientist, and Founding Father. He chronicles Franklin's tumultuous relationship with his illegitimate son and grandson, his practical marriage, and his flirtations with the ladies of Paris. He also shows how Franklin helped to create the American character and why he has a particular resonance in the twenty-first century. " ... Read more

Customer Reviews (189)

Humanizing Ben Franklin
The Ben Franklin of elementary school (or high school, for that matter), history texts has little in common with the wittty, brilliant, bawdy and sophisticated Franklin of Walter Isaacson's biography.The book is (unusually for a serious biography) a "page turner."Exceedingly well-written, with a graphic and entertaining sense of place.Isaacson's descriptions of late 18th century Philadelphia and Paris are awesome. I have recommended the book to a number of friends who, undaunted by its size , have greatly enjoyed it.

fantastic book
This is a marvelous book, readable to the extreme but still jammed with facts and analysis.It is to be recommended to a wide range of readers.I had not expected to enjoy Isaacson's biography nearly as much as a did although I had just finished his book on Kissinger and had loved that book which is why I read the Franklin bio.It came as a shock to me that the Franklin book was so different and so lively.History really came alive.Kudos to Walter Isaacson on this topic, a terrific job here!

Better than I expected
I'm no scholar and not a real fan of American history, but this book was enjoyable. Well written and Franklin was an interesting person.

America's first great philosopher
In his book `Benjamin Franklin an American Life', Walter Isaacson gives a solid well balanced and positive look at Benjamin Franklin.He broadens and deepens the perspective of the fun spectacled kite flying scientist and writer of Poor Richards Almanac to give us a multi-layered unpretentious promoter of higher virtues, community spirit, and citizenship. Franklin is revealed as being particularly harsh on those who sought hereditary privilege or who had "no other quality to recommend them but birth."He was against those Gentlemen who did nothing of value but living idly on the labors of others. Isaacson shows the two momentous initiatives that would lead Franklin's political career and the destiny of America.First he became an increasingly fervent opponent of the Proprietors and then the British as they stubbornly asserted their right to control taxes and government.. Second he became a leader in an effort to get the colonies to work together by forging associations and removing the parochial view of America. As a printer he helped defined the free press. Isaacson reveals Franklins opinion that the job of printers is to allow people to express differing opinions.There would be very little printed if publishers produced only things that offended nobody.Franklins credo is still framed on newsroom walls. "Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public: and that when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter". Franklin was instrumental in shaping the great documents of the war: the Declaration of Independence, the alliance with France, and the treaty with England.He also devised the first federal scheme for America under which the separate states and national government would have shared power.His influence at the constitutional convention in 1787 was tremendous as he spread a spirit of compromise and Enlightenment in the creation of the Constitution.

Isaacson wrote much more than a standard hagiography.He includes the positives along with the negatives of the most accessible of the Founding Fathers.Franklin's life and exploits are examined along with the many facets of the printer, scientist, diplomat and the public man.A truly remarkable life of someone who preached and truly believed that the middle-class were the "source of social strength and not as something to be derided".Well worth the read and addition to the history shelf.

Great book!
A very interesting book.I like the chronological time line with distinct chapters.While he was an amazing man in some respects, I was disappointed in his treatment of his family. I think the author did a great job of balancing the good and the not so good of Franklin's life.All in all, a very well rounded account. ... Read more

Book Description
If Walter Benjamin (with an irony that belies his seemingly tragic life) is now recognized as one of the century's most important writers, reading him is no easy matter. Benjamin opens one of his most notable essays, "The Task of the Translator", with the words "No poem is intended for the reader, no image for the beholder, no symphony for the listener". How does one read an author who tells us that writing does not communicate very much to the reader? How does one learn to regard what comes to us from Benjamin as something other than direct expression?

Carol Jacobs' In the Language of Walter Benjamin is an attempt to come to terms with this predicament. It does so by teasing out such guidelines for criticism as Benjamin seems to offer in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Jacobs reminds us of Benjamin's distinction between truth and knowledge. She above all insists on his method of philosophical contemplation as performance, on a performance that demands precise immersion in the minute details of subject matter. ... Read more

Book Description
This illuminating study of Benjamin's final essay helps unlock the mystery of this great philosopher.

Revolutionary critic of the philosophy of progress, nostalgic of the past yet dreaming of the future, romantic partisan of materialism—Walter Benjamin is in every sense of the word an "unclassifiable" philosopher. His last text was written in a state of urgency, as he attempted to escape the Gestapo in 1940, before finally committing suicide. "On the Concept of History" is one of the most important philosophical and political writings of the twentieth century, argues Michael Löwy in this scrupulous, clear and fascinating examination.

Löwy uses the concept of "elective affinity," the mutual attraction between two cultural figures, derived from the amorous encounter of two souls in Goethe's novel Elective Affinities. Looking in detail at Benjamin's celebrated but often mysterious text, and restoring the philosophical, theological and political context, Löwy strives to understand and highlight the complex relationship between redemption and revolution in Benjamin's philosophy of history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An enjoyable but uncritical exposition
I bought this book without knowing anything about it except that it is a book-length commentary on Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History". The Amazon page does not allow one to search inside the book or even to see the table of contents. The editorial reviews consist of two short and uninformative but admiring sentences. There is nothing here but the title to indicate the content of the book.

The book consists of an Introduction, two chapters or sections (one about a hundred pages, the other about ten pages), notes, and an index. The Introduction is titled, "Introduction: Romanticism, Messianism and Marxism in Walter Benjamin's Philosophy of History". The first chapter is titled, "A Reading of Walter Benjamin's 'Theses "On the Concept of History"'." The second chapter is titled, "The Opening-up of History". There are more than a dozen black and white illustrations and photos scattered throughout the text.

The introductory material situates Benjamin's text in its historical and intellectual context. There follows a thesis-by-thesis commentary. The author brings out much of value in the theses, and while he takes issue with other commentators on Benjamin, he never becomes critical of Benjamin himself, in either a global or a local sense, i.e., he doesn't criticize Benjamin's overall project or any of Benjamin's particular claims in the theses. One suspects that the author has spent too much time in the company of others who closely mirror his views, and has not had to defend his general outlook in the face of hostile criticism. The author employs incautious superlatives, such as calling Benjamin's theses, "...one of the most important philosophical and political texts of the twentieth century." (p.4)

The book is nicely prepared for publication and nicely bound. The translation is smooth and seamless, and never "feels" like a translated text.

The "star" system of rating a book is highly unsatisfactory. I gave the book three stars for reasons as mixed as Benjamin's motives in writing his theses. If one is (as I was) simply looking for an insightful exposition of the theses on history, then the book deserves five stars. If one is looking for a critical appraisal of Benjamin's conception of history, then the book deserves a single star. I am happy to have the book in my library as a reference, and I imagine I will consult it with some frequency.

Those seeking more on Benjamin's theses might look into Volume 4 of Benjamin's Selected Writings published by Harvard. This includes about seven pages of notes and material not included in the theses, taken from Benjamin's working notes published in toto in his Gesammelte Schriften.

J. N. Nielsen
Political Economy of Globalization: One Hundred Theses on World Trade
Variations on the Theme of Life ... Read more

Book Description
Walter Benjamin and Romanticism explores the relationship between Walter Benjamin's literary and philosophical work and the tradition of German Romanticism, as well as Hölderlin and Goethe. Through a detailed and scholarly analysis of the major texts, the book explores the endurance of Benjamin's relationship to Romanticism, the residual presence of Romantic Goethean and Hölderlinian motifs in Benjamin's subsequent writings and how Benjamin's understanding of the relationship between criticism and Romanticism can still play a vital role in contemporary philosophical and literary practice. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

The correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, which appears here for the first time in its entirety in English translation, must rank among the most significant to have come down to us from that notable age of barbarism, the twentieth century. Benjamin and Adorno formed a uniquely powerful pair. Benjamin, riddle-like in his personality and given to tactical evasion, and Adorno, full of his own importance, alternately support and compete with each other throughout the correspondence, until its imminent tragic end becomes apparent to both writers. Each had met his match, and happily, in the other. This book is the story of an elective affinity. Adorno was the only person who managed to sustain an intimate intellectual relationship with Benjamin for nearly twenty years. No one else, not even Gershom Scholem, coaxed so much out of Benjamin.

The more than one hundred letters in this book will allow readers to trace the developing character of Benjamin's and Adorno's attitudes toward each other and toward their many friends. When this book appeared in German, it caused a sensation because it includes passages previously excised from other German editions of the letters--passages in which the two friends celebrate their own intimacy with frank remarks about other people. Ideas presented elliptically in the theoretical writings are set forth here with much greater clarity. Not least, the letters provide material crucial for understanding the genesis of Benjamin's Arcades Project.

Customer Reviews (1)

The letters of two geniuses
Walter Benjamin and G. Scholem are two of the most important thinkers of this century. And in this book we can listen to their voices and thoughts. In my opinion the most interesting part of the book are the letters related to Franz Kafka. In fact, I think the way they understand and illustrateKafka is still unsurpassed, and just for that is really worth to read thisbook. ... Read more

Book Description
Gershom Scholem is celebrated as the twentieth century's most profound student of the Jewish mystical tradition; Walter Benjamin, as a master thinker whose extraordinary essays mix the revolutionary, the revelatory, and the esoteric. Scholem was a precocious teenager when he met Benjamin, who became his close friend and intellectual mentor. His account of that relationshipÑwhich was to remain crucial for both menÑis both a celebration of his friend's spellbinding genius and a lament for the personal and intellectual self-destructiveness that culminated in Benjamin's suicide in 1940.

At once prickly and heartbroken, argumentative and loving, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship is an absorbing memoir with the complication of character and motive of a novel. As Scholem revisits the passionate engagements over Marxism and Kabbala, Europe and Palestine that he shared with Benjamin, it is as if he sought to summon up his lost friend's spirit again, to have the last word in the argument that might have saved his life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A great intellectual friendship and a tragic end
This is the story of a friendship between two of the most remarkable intellectual figures of the twentieth century , Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin. It begins in Berlin in 1914 and continues through their separation until Benjamin's tragic death twenty -five years later. Both of them were greatly interested in the historical processes of their times, in philology , in the meaning of signs and symbols, in Socialism, in Zionism. Scholem left Germany for the Jerusalem of pre- state Israel and became a central figure there in the development of the Hebrew University. He became too the great scholar who opened a new field that of Jewish Mysticism. Benjamin hesitated and seemed to always find the way to misfortune. But their conversation and their friendship illuminates fundamental issues of life and thought. This book should be read by everyone for whom the life of the mind is important. ... Read more

Book Description
The works of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) are widely acclaimed as being among the most original and provocative writings of twentieth-century critical thought, and have become required reading for scholars and students in a range of academic disciplines.This book provides a lucid introduction to Benjamin's oeuvre through a close and sensitive reading not only of his major studies, but also of some his less familiar essays and fragments. Gilloch offers an original interpretation of, and fresh insights into, the continuities between Benjamin's always demanding and seemingly disparate texts.Gilloch's book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in social theory, literary theory, cultural and media studies and urban studies who are seeking a sophisticated yet readable overview of Benjamin's work. It will also prove rewarding reading for those already well-versed in Benjaminian thought. ... Read more

Book Description

“There is no world of thought that is not a world of language,” Walter Benjamin remarked, “and one only sees in the world what is preconditioned by language.” In this book, Samuel Weber, a leading theorist on literature and media, reveals a new and productive aspect of Benjamin’s thought by focusing on a little-discussed stylistic trait in his formulation of concepts.

Weber’s focus is the critical suffix “-ability” that Benjamin so tellingly deploys in his work. The “-ability” (-barkeit, in German) of concepts and literary forms traverses the whole of Benjamin’s oeuvre, from “impartibility” and “criticizability” through the well-known formulations of “citability,” “translatability,” and, most famously, the “reproducibility” of “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” Nouns formed with this suffix, Weber points out, refer to a possibility or potentiality, to a capacity rather than an existing reality. This insight allows for a consistent and enlightening reading of Benjamin’s writings.

Weber first situates Benjamin’s engagement with the “-ability” of various concepts in the context of his entire corpus and in relation to the philosophical tradition, from Kant to Derrida. Subsequent chapters deepen the implications of the use of this suffix in a wide variety of contexts, including Benjamin’s Trauerspiel book, his relation to Carl Schmitt, and a reading of Wagner’s Ring. The result is an illuminating perspective on Benjamin’s thought by way of his language—and one of the most penetrating and comprehensive accounts of Benjamin’s work ever written.

Book Description
This first comparative study of philosophers and literary critics Mikhail Bakhtin and Walter Benjamin focuses on the two thinkers' conceptions of experience and form in order to uncover articulations of modernity that are still relevant today. ... Read more

Book Description

Walter Benjamin's posthumously published collection of writings on hashish is a detailed blueprint for a book that was never written--a "truly exceptional book about hashish," as Benjamin describes it in a letter to his friend Gershom Scholem. A series of "protocols of drug experiments," written by himself and his co-participants between 1927 and 1934, together with short prose pieces that he published during his lifetime, On Hashish provides a peculiarly intimate portrait of Benjamin, venturesome as ever at the end of the Weimar Republic, and of his unique form of thought.

Consciously placing himself in a tradition of literary drug-connoisseurs from Baudelaire to Hermann Hesse, Benjamin looked to hashish and other drugs for an initiation into what he called "profane illumination." At issue here, as everywhere in Benjamin's work, is a new way of seeing, a new connection to the ordinary world. Under the influence of hashish, as time and space become inseparable, experiences become subtly stratified and resonant: we inhabit more than one plane in time. What Benjamin, in his contemporaneous study of Surrealism, calls "image space" comes vividly to life in this philosophical immersion in the sensuous.

This English-language edition of On Hashish features a section of supplementary materials--drawn from Benjamin's essays, letters, and sketches--relating to hashish use, as well as a reminiscence by his friend Jean Selz, which concerns a night of opium-smoking in Ibiza. A preface by Howard Eiland discusses the leading motifs of Benjamin's reflections on intoxication.

Customer Reviews (2)

A revolutionary contact high?
Benjamin aptly describes the bipolar nature of his own intoxicated illumination when he writes that, in "the imagination put in thrall to thinking during hashish intoxication," there are two "different sorts of powers:a genius of melancholy gravity, another of Ariel-like spirituality."Here, first, is an illustration of Benjamin's genius for melancholic heaviness:"In the end, things are merely mannequins, and even the great moments of world history are only costumes beneath which they exchange glaces of complicity with nothingness, with the petty and the banal.Such nihilism is the innermost core of bourgeois coziness -- a mood that in hashish intoxication concentrates to satanic contentment, satanic knowing, satanic calm..."Here, next, an example of his more uplifting, "Ariel-like spirituality":"Versailles, for one who has taken hashish, is not too large, nor eternity too long.Against the background of these immense dimensions of inner experience, of absolute duration and immeasurable space, a wonderful, beatific humor dwells all the more fondly on the contingencies of the world of space and time."In the end, sadly, the darkness seems to have won out over the light in Bejamin's own life, but one wonders whether that fate would have been averted had he not lived through such dark days?Still, Benjamin believed in the revolutionary potential of the experiences he describes in this book to lighten the times, and he came to advocate a "profane illumination" that would be capable of recapturing the transformative insights hashish (and also opium and mescaline) afforded without continually requiring the drugs themselves.Such ideas seem to me to be well worth pondering.

This is wonderful, nostalgia-inducing, provocative collection of Benjamin's waking dreams and wandering reflections.

Metaphysical Giggles
I bought this book because it came as a bit of a shock to me that the uptight highbrow metaphysician, Walter Benjamin, had experimented with hashish.I knew, as one does, about his suicide by taking a morphine tablet.But I imagined that this was a one time thing, done as a way of escaping Nazi arrest.

Well, what do we get when a rather tedious, uptight German metaphysician smokes some pot? An uptight, convoluted, ponderous description of it.German philosophers tend to write this way you know, as any reader who has had to plough through Kant and Hegel is well aware.

In today's era, when every other suburban housewife smokes a joint from time to time, all these "insights" cited by the editorials seem more than absurd.They rise to the level of high camp.All this convoluted, philosophical introspection to describe the increase in appetite-You know, getting the "munchies"-almost made me titter aloud, as Benjamin does when he ingests the drug, and acts as if this is some profound revelation about the absurdity of existence.I'm sure we all remember those dorm room giggles.

Yes, one can argue that this is a jaded age and that our familiarity with all these effects does not vitiate a profound philosopher's insights.I wouldn't want to argue it though.
This age is not any more jaded than the one in which Benjamin took his life rather than be captured by the mass murderers unleashed throughout Europe at the time.And his insights are not profound.They're typical of German metaphysical twaddle, and, as such, excruciatingly tedious and boring.

Maybe there is somebody out there who would appreciate this book, some pale admirer of the German metaphysicians who is still rereading Hegel to unlock his insights. They don't exist - that goes for Benjamin as well as Hegel.
... Read more