Find Out The Way Of Criticism From Benjamin To Baudrillard Bying Analyzing The Object

Walter Benjamin is an important member of the Frankfurt School. His intellectual insight stimulats Adorno's idea of negative dialectics"and"dialectics of enlightenment"which, in turn, constitute the critical foundation of social criticism of school. But Benjamin's theoretical concerns are not only criticism, but also construction, showing his ethical responsibility as a resistant intellectual of his time. His perspective is very unique in that it is a Janus-faced combination of theology and Marxism. Therefore, the ultimate horizon of his criticism is Messianic redemption which he terms"origin". Benjamin takes the pursuit of spiritual life and independent thinking as his life-long ideological posture. He comprehends the society and puts into practice his realistic criticism, thought outlet and spiritual salvation by collecting the rubbish and debris on the street of Paris.The French thinker Jean Baudrillard investigates the contemporary world from the perspective of the social theory of the post-modern consuming society and comes up with new problems. His main concerns are focused upon the following aspects: the issue of modernity and cultural crisis, the transformation of the modal of consuming and the structure of the media communication, consumerism and ordinary daily life, the crisis of the spiritual ecology in commercial fetishism, the mass media and secularization. It is of great significance to study these issues in order to explore the worldwide cultural crisis of the contemporary consuming society. Baudrillard has an investigation of the consumer society by way of daily"objects" and Semiology, which is really a new perspective on the analysis of the consuming level in people's daily life and meanwhile deepens the theory of alienation criticism. These theories indicate that the Western social criticism has turned from the criticism of the pure alienation of material to that of the signs of the mass media. The development of science and technology brings capitalism into the era of symbolic simulations. This marks the end of the era of industrial production as well as the termination of the revolution based on industrial production. At a time governed by symbols, the non-organized fight against the rule of symbols is an important approach available.Following the thinking of western Marxism, Benjamin and Baudrillard criticize their society by analyzing the commodity. Marxist philosophy and economics are theoretically based as well. I intend to discover the invisible way of criticism from Benjamin to Baudrillard by comparing their cultural criticism and finding out their relationship and differences.