Origin Is The Goal: Research On Thoughts Of Walter Benjamin

Undoubtedly, German thinker Walter Benjamin is unclassifiable, since his thought, his objects of research, as well as his unique style of writing are so ’rhizomatic’ in a Deleuzian way that distinguish themselves from traditional philosophy. Thoughts like Jewish theology, surrealism, and Marxism entangles explicitly and/or implicitly, but are never ’used’ directly, in Benjamin’s work, making his thoughts fragments scattering in socio-cultural time-space. From theological-linguistics, experience, law, literary criticism, and epistemology to Arcades Project and Baudelaire studies, Benjamin’s focuses range from speculative philosophy to the critique of modernity. This dissertation gives up the’ effort to find a major thread in Benjamin’s work, but focuses on some key concepts such as language, experience, origin, monad, constellation, speculative images, fetish, ruins, etc. instead, trying to construct a philosophical constellation of Benjamin’s thoughts.For a lifetime, Benjamin has been thinking of how to secularize messianic redemption. Before mid-20th Century, his research has been centered on how to reveal the holy origin of history in language and experience. By focusing on historical’fragments’with holy revelation, he has tried to pave the way for the return of secular history towards original totality After mid-20th Century, with the vicissitude of his personal life and socio-historical background, as well as the influences of surrealism and Marxism, Benjamin’s thought has broken away from philosophical obscurities, such as theologica-linguistics, law, experience, phenomenon and idea, to studies on the origins of modern capitalism; from the rise and fall of arcades to the urban life of Paris in Baudelaire’s poems, with concepts such as wish-image, primal history, dialectic image, fetish, ruins, fashionand eternal return, he has tried to grasp the suspended moment in the flow of history, unfolding "the now of a particular recognizability "in the continuum of history. By focusing on all those subtleties made by 19th Century and those concealed moments in history, Benjamin wants to realize a ’messianic’ act that is suitable for theological contemplation; which means, on the one hand, to wake up modernity from the myths and dreams in which it immerse itself, on the other hand, to look for ’the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter’ in the time of past and memories.