The angel of history. Walter Benjamin as a Jewish intellectual – part two. His text "On the Concept of History" (1940) reread eight decades later.
Walter Benjamin's (1892-1940) last notes titled "On the Concept of History" contain his well-known philosophical theses. The author had expressly not determined his theses for printing. When they were finally published three years later (1943) from the estate, they began a career that reached its peak in the epoch of the great marxist theory of the 1960s and 1970s. The historical-philosophical theses are at the same time enigmatic oracle speeches on theology and angels as well as a promise for the historical power of historical materialism. They were considered the last words of a great thinker with whom the old philosophy of history came to an end and at the same time a new beginning was promised. The text "On the concept of history" is thus a posthumously published, historical-philosophical essay by Walter Benjamin from 1940, in which this under the impression of the rise of fascism in Europe and the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the historicizing conception, especially of social democracy criticized and at the same time takes a messianic position.
The theses form the questioning of one's own convictions. They contain questions and hardly any answers they are fragments of thinking fragmented under the pressure of politics and personal hopelessness. Some of them are honest, in part it can be assumed that the author, through his metaphor or his parables, avoids a sharper formulation or perhaps even the last illusionless view of the truth. The emblematic inference to the philosophy of history is anything but an inference, it is the contradictory attempt to a beginning. As part of a Critical Complete Edition of the Works of Walter Benjamin, Volume 19: On the Concept of History as Volume 19 new edited and published in 2010.
Walter Benjamin's (1892-1940) last notes titled "On the Concept of History" contain his well-known philosophical theses. The author had expressly not determined his theses for printing. When they were finally published three years later (1943) from the estate, they began a career that reached its peak in the epoch of the great marxist theory of the 1960s and 1970s. The historical-philosophical theses are at the same time enigmatic oracle speeches on theology and angels as well as a promise for the historical power of historical materialism. They were considered the last words of a great thinker with whom the old philosophy of history came to an end and at the same time a new beginning was promised. The text "On the concept of history" is thus a posthumously published, historical-philosophical essay by Walter Benjamin from 1940, in which this under the impression of the rise of fascism in Europe and the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the historicizing conception, especially of social democracy criticized and at the same time takes a messianic position.
The theses form the questioning of one's own convictions. They contain questions and hardly any answers they are fragments of thinking fragmented under the pressure of politics and personal hopelessness. Some of them are honest, in part it can be assumed that the author, through his metaphor or his parables, avoids a sharper formulation or perhaps even the last illusionless view of the truth. The emblematic inference to the philosophy of history is anything but an inference, it is the contradictory attempt to a beginning. As part of a Critical Complete Edition of the Works of Walter Benjamin, Volume 19: On the Concept of History as Volume 19 new edited and published in 2010.
- Teacher: מיכאל פיש