What does it mean to be critical? On literary and social critique in Walter Benjamin

Abstract

If critical theory is to claim its place in philosophy as not merely an attitude or a set of alliances, but also as a coherent philosophy, then what is necessary most of all is to specify the nature of what it means to be critical in a manner that is both methodically concrete and original to this movement. This chapter proposes turning to the early and middle writings of Walter Benjamin in order to give such a formulation. The concept of critique or criticism (Kritik) points toward the inner core of early critical theory’s development because it cuts across two of the central concerns of the first generation of critical theory: art criticism and social critique. Walter Benjamin’s work has an especially strong significance in helping us understand the entwinement between these two dimensions of the concept of critique. This is because, the author argues, critique is ultimately for Benjamin an epistemological category that cuts across both the reception of art and the participation in political life.