At the outset of Berlin Childhood around 1900, Walter Benjamin suggests that something out of his past was calling to him and that he had decided to surrender himself to it. His memory has a narcotic affect. But it is teaching him something. Peter Szondi argues that, for Benjamin, the “search for time past is […]
Religion and philosophy are both interested in some form of ultimate good that results in happiness. Aristotle is often noted for saying that all human beings desire to be happy. Much of what we do is for the sake of happiness. For Aristotle, the desire for happiness is built into human nature and is achievable. […]
Anyone who reads Walter Benjamin can sense, from the very first sentences of any of his essays or books, that his writing is influenced by mysticism. But Benjamin was torn between mysticism and the political. While his friend Gershom Scholem encouraged him to pursue the mystical and the theological, other friends, like Bertolt Brecht and […]
The relationship of boredom to art, entertainment, and modernity is a topic of interest to great thinkers and writers such as Soren Kierkegaard, Charles Baudelaire, and Walter Benjamin. For all of them, boredom is something that is born out of modernity. In many ways it is something that passes on from the aristocracy to the […]
I recently wrote an essay on Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt’s readings of the schlemiel and published it on the online journal Berfrois. This essay touches on thinkers and themes that will appear in my book on the schlemiel. It is a foreshadowing, if you will. Here is the link to the article: http://www.berfrois.com/2014/07/menachem-feuer-walter-benjamin-hannah-arendts-readings-of-the-schlemiel/ Enjoy! Menachem […]
Over the years, I have driven thousands of miles across the United States. And I have always looked at these journeys – with all of those hours behind the wheel – as opportunities for me to think and reflect on all kinds of things. To be sure, some of my best thoughts have come to […]
A Talk (Today) at the New School: The Schlemiel in Walter Benjamin & Hannah Arendt’s Mystical and Political Readings I will be giving a talk today at the New School on Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt’s Readings of the Schlemiel. This talk is based on the book I am currently writing on the schlemiel. If […]
Like Robert Walser, Walter Benjamin, from time to time, wrote in very small script. According to the editors of the Walter Benjamin Archive, Benjamin’s “miniaturized script is reminiscent of Robert Walser’s ‘pencil system’, which he used to help him write”(50). But unlike Walser, who “learnt to ‘play and poeticize’, in the small and smallest details, […]
One of the things that really prompted me to look into the schlemiel was a statement Walter Benjamin once made – in a letter to his dear friend, the Kabbalah scholar, Gershom Scholem – about Franz Kafka’s literary project. In the letter, dated June 12, 1938, Benjamin describes Kafka’s entire literary project in terms of […]
Walter Benjamin was fascinated with the figure of the “imposter” (or intriguer) and how it related to the Trauerspiel (Mourning Play) since it represents the meeting point of comedy and tragedy. This meeting point, for Benjamin, finds its precursor in Socrates. His silence, as opposed to tragic silence, is ironic. It is based on letting […]
