Benjamin and phenomenology (Walter Benjamin)

Hannah Arendt was one of the first to point out the affinity between Walter Benjamin's thought and that of Martin Heidegger. This article investigates Benjamin's relation to phenomenology, his positive attitude towards it in his student years, then his neomarxist critique of it, that corresponds with that of the young Adorno. But Benjamin's position is an ambiguous one. The essence of his early theology of language, the inspiring soul of his marxist theory, the puppet of historical materialism, testifies strongly to the phenomenological attitude. Far from being a metaphysical assumption, Benjamin's starting point, the thesis that each expression of human culture can be conceived as a kind of language, is based on immediate lived experience. Here we find the origin of his affinity with Heidegger. Both are fundamentally interested in the primeval event of manifestation. But where Heidegger speaks of ways of being, Benjamin discerns forms of communication. Special attention is given to Benjamin's unique concept of language, the origin and centre of which he locates in the proper name.