Thinking Before Totality: Kritik, Ubersetzung, and the Language of Interpretation in the Early Walter Benjamin

Abstract

Walter Benjamin's early writings, mostly comprised of shorter essays, can undoubtedly be considered one of the least well understood productions within 20th century critical thought. Written between 1913 and 1922, these shorter pieces display a vast thematic range. Beginning with an essay on two poems by Hdlderlin, short sketches on Socrates, the Middle Ages and on ancient man, Benjamin eventually moves on to two more developed essays, the first entitled On Language as Such and on the Language of Man, the second being On the Program of the Coming Philosophy. Even by 1918, when Benjamin is already writing his dissertation, his thought still seems conspicuously diverse and discontinuous, as though he was in search of an ideal topic, an ultimate issue. Besides placing greater emphasis on Benjamin's later work, most of the criticism on Benjamin has attempted to cope with the thematic diversity of his earlier works by reading the respective essays as the expression of a theological or metaphysical phase, thus implementing a strong division between this period and the later,