In 1912, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the University of Freiburg, but at the summer semester's end, he returned to Berlin and matriculated at the University of Berlin to continue studying philosophy. There, Benjamin had his first exposure to Zionism, which had not been part of his liberal upbringing. This gave him occasion to formulate his own ideas about the meaning of Judaism. Benjamin distanced himself from political and nationalist Zionism, instead developing in his own thinking what he called a kind of " cultural Zionism"—an attitude that recognized and promoted Judaism and Jewish values. In Benjamin's formulation, his Jewishness meant a commitment to the furtherance of European culture. He wrote: "My life experience led me to this insight: the Jews represent an elite in the ranks of the spiritually active ... For Judaism is to me in no sense an end in itself, but the most distinguished bearer and representative of the spiritual." [18] This was a position Benjamin largely held lifelong. [19] Der Sürrealismus: Die letzte Momentaufnahme der europäischen Intelligenz", Literarischen Welt, Feb 1929; repr. in Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, II/1, 1977, pp 295-310. (German) Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life, Harvard University Press, 2014. (English) The conception of the progress of mankind in history is inseparable from that of the process of history as passing through a homogeneous and empty time. The critique of the idea of this process must form the basis of the critique of the idea of progress as such. Rainer Rochlitz, The Disenchantment of Art: The Philosophy of Walter Benjamin, Guilford Press, 1996. (English)

For his postdoctoral thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an idea very similar to the thesis proposed by Heidegger in the latter's own postdoctoral project ( Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning). [32] Wolfram Eilenberger writes that Benjamin's plan was, "to legitimize [his theory of language] with reference to a largely forgotten tradition [found in the archaic writings of Duns Scotus], and to strike the sparks of systematization from the apparent disjunct among modern, logical, and analytical linguistic philosophy and medieval speculations on language that fell under the heading of theology". [24] After Gershom Scholem sympathetically informed his friend that his interest in the concept had been pre-empted by Heidegger's earlier publication, [33] [34] Benjamin seems to have derived a lifelong antagonism toward the rival philosopher whose major insights, over the course of both of their careers, sometimes overlapped and sometimes conflicted with Benjamin's. [24] Incidentally, at that time Heidegger was soon to embark on a love affair with Hannah Arendt, later related to Benjamin through marriage to his cousin Günther Anders. La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica. Urtext, trans. Andrés E. Weikert, México DF: Itaca, 2003, 127 pp. (Spanish) Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit - und weitere Dokumente, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007, 254 pp. [31] He was in the crowd at the conference where Kurt Gödel first described the incompleteness theorem. [38] He once took a class on the Ancient Mayans from Rainer Maria Rilke. [25] He attended the same seminar as Martin Heidegger at Freiburg in the summer of 1913 when both men were still university students: concepts first encountered there influenced their thought for the remainder of their careers. He was an early draft script reader, comrade and frequent house-guest of Bertolt Brecht's (the most innovative writer and director of the Berlin theater scene, memorably mythologized in the musical Cabaret). Martin Buber took an interest in Benjamin, but the younger author declined to contribute to Buber's journal because it was too exoteric. [39]

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Iluminaciones II: Baudelaire: un poeta en el esplendor del capitalismo, trans. Jesús Aguirre, Madrid: Taurus, 1972. Sigrid Weigel, Body- and Image- Space: Re-reading Walter Benjamin, Routledge, 1996, 224 pp. (English) Deutsche Menschen - Eine Folge von Briefen, ed. Walter Benjamin, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983, 99 pp. [26]

Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen" (" On Language as Such and on the Language of Man", 1916) In relation to the history of organic life on Earth,' notes a recent biologist, 'the miserable fifty millennia of homo sapiens represents something like the last two seconds of a twenty-four hour day. The entire history of civilized humanity would, on this scale, take up only one fifth of the last second of the last hour.' The here-and-now, which as the model of messianic time summarizes the entire history of humanity into a monstrous abbreviation, coincides to a hair with the figure, which the history of humanity makes in the universe. Arendt, Hannah; Scholem, Gershom Gerhard; Knott, Marie Luise (2017). "Letter No. 4". The correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Chicago (Ill.): University of Chicago press. p.6. ISBN 978-0-226-92451-9.In 1937 Benjamin worked on "Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire" ("The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire"), met Georges Bataille (to whom he later entrusted the Arcades Project manuscript), and joined the College of Sociology (which he would criticize for its "pre-fascist aestheticism.") [61] In 1938 he paid a last visit to Brecht, who was exiled to Denmark. [62] Meanwhile, the Nazi régime stripped German Jews of their German citizenship; now a stateless man, Benjamin was arrested by the French government and incarcerated for three months in a prison camp near Nevers, in central Burgundy. [63] [64] Numerous scholarly articles and books continue to focus on Benjamin’s artwork essay, with a mixture of positive and negative responses indicative of its general readership over many years. Ian Knizek, for example, criticizes Benjamin’s essay by suggesting that the aura could be transferred effectively to the reproduction (361). Adorno similarly criticized the essay by pointing to the manner in which modern modes of reproduction produce less rather than more critical citizens. He also suggested that in certain instances the autonomous work of art excludes the aura and produces greater self-rationalization (Wolin 193-4). Other more recent critical work has explored Benjamin’s arguments in the context of contemporary debates about the unprecedented levels of participation in art that novel forms of electronic media offer (Ziarek 209-25). Generally speaking, the essay continues to play a significant role in understanding how technology contributes to a de-aestheticization of the artwork in modernity. However, its relatively optimistic attitude towards technology and media, one not shared by many of Benjamin’s contemporaries, has been linked by Miriam Hansen to that of the avant-garde aesthetics of the 1920s (181-2). A Small History of Photography", in Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings, London: NLB, 1979, pp 240-257; repr. as "Little History of Photography", in Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 2, Part 2, 1931-1934, Harvard University Press, 1999, pp 507-530. (English)

Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit: Drei Studien zur Kunstsoziologie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963, 112 pp; 2003. [11] Andrew Benjamin, Charles Rice (eds.), Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity, Melbourne: re.press, 2009. (English)Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that, "Benjamin was a philosopher," [10] while his younger colleagues Arendt [11] and Adorno [12] contend just as emphatically that he was "not a philosopher." [11] [12] As Scholem remarked: "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction." [10] Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, [13] though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority. [11] [13] Beatrice Hanssen, "Benjamin or Heidegger: Aesthetics and Politics in an Age of Technology", in Walter Benjamin and Art, ed. Andrew Benjamin, Continuum, 2005. (English) Eric Jacobson, Metaphysics of the Profane: The Political Theology of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, Columbia University Press, 2003. (English) Psaní vzpomínání. Výbor z díla III, trans. Martin Ritter, Prague: Oikoymenh, 2016, 158 pp. Publisher. Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was born in Berlin, Germany, into a ‘wealthy run-of-the-mill assimilated Jewish family’. He was raised in a well-off quarter of the city and came of age during the Weimar Republic years before becoming a political refugee, fleeing to Paris in 1933. The historical record of his life and career has been clarified with several recent detailed biographies. He often planned to open a bookstore due to his passion for book collecting, but eventually established himself by 1928 as a formidable critic. He made his living through his both journals and newspapers, and only later received a stipend from the Frankfurt School for Passagenwerk during the years of his exile, 1933 - 1940.