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Name:
Walter Benjamin
Dates:
Born: July 15, 1892 in Berlin
Died: September 27, 1940 in Port Bou, Spain (suicide)
Ph.D.: 1919
Biography:
Born to a wealth Jewish family, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) became one of the most
influential Marxist literary and cultural critics of the 20th century. His writings played a
key role in the development of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.
Waltern Benjamin is perhaps best known for his essay "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction), published in 1934, in which he explored the consequences of how technological reproductions of artworks could cause them to lose their uniqueness.
Knowing that his fate at the hands of the Nazis would not be pleasant, Benjamin sought to emigrate to the United States. He hoped to flee through France and Spain, but while waiting for a visa he realized that he would soon be handed over to the Gestapo, so he took an overdose or morphium and died.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
What is Aesthetics?
In philosophy, aesthetics is the study of beauty and taste, whether in the form of the comic, the tragic or the sublime. Aesthetics has traditionally been part of other philosophical pursuits like the investigation of epistemology or ethics. However, it started to come into its own and become a more independent pursuit under Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who saw aesthetics as a unitary and self-sufficient type of human experience.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
