Walter Benjamin’s First Philosophy: Towards a Constellational Definition of Experience

• Main Author: Ross Nathan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2020-02-01
• Series: Open Philosophy
• Subjects: experience; perception; surrealism; memory; critical theory; german romanticism; proust; walter benjamin
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2020-0006

This essay argues for the philosophical standing of Walter Benjamin’s early work and posits a deeper continuity between this early work as a philosopher and the subsequent development of his work as a writer. When these fragments are read in proper relation to each other, they reveal for the first time many of the key innovations of Benjamin as a philosopher, as well as his points of influence on Horkheimer and Adorno. His early ‘Program’ critiques the Enlightenment conception of experience as a means for gaining empirical knowledge, and announces the need for a new concept of experience. Benjamin follows through on this program with a method of philosophical enquiry that is by turns fragmentary and constellational, developing a series of provisional notions of experience, which form a constellation with one another: perception, mimesis, language as a medium of experience, observation and memory.