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A 5 page paper that considers the question of whether Frankfurt School theorist Walter Benjamin was a Marxist, by reflecting on Benjamin's essays in Illuminations and the introduction by Hannah Arendt. Bibliography cites 2 sources.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_Waltben.doc
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derived. Hannah Arendt, in her introduction to Benjamins Illuminations, believed that Benjamin was a Marxist, and many of the constructs and considerations presented in his essays suggest that this
determination is in fact true. Some have described Walter Benjamin as a literary critic and an essayist, whose focus was on the political and social ramifications of the
work of others. But Hannah Arendt believed that this evaluation of Walter Benjamin did not consider the most important elements of his scholarly persona and denied the elemental nature
of the texts he created (Arendt 3). In order to understand Benjamin, it is important to conceive of his scholarly works as a reflection of his capacity to embrace
his own political ideologies as well as create a determined picture of the essential political considerations of others. Though it is accurate to consider Benjamin a critic, to conceptualize
him as only a literary critic or to discuss his works only as they reflect on others limits the capacity to understand the impact of his work. Benjamins essays
were essential to the progression of his own ideas, and in the end, his own capacity to embrace Marxism, especially in the basic premises presented by Marx and Engel.
Hannah Arendt believed that Benjamin progressed from "half-hearted Zionism" to a "half-hearted Communism" during a time when confronting the elements of either had significant political and social ramifications (Arendt 34).
The changing course of the world in the early 20th century made it not a particularly receptive place for new and compassionate ideologies. Though in the end, Arendt
suggested that Benjamin embraced Communism, she recognized that he kept many of the elements of Zionism open to him for many years. Arendt wrote: "In a remarkable and probably
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