Community in Walter Benjamin's Philosophy

The essays contained in the inaugural volume of New Benjamin Studies are dedicated to the concept of 'community' (Gemeinschaft).Indeed, community runs like a thread through many of Benjamin's writings: from his earliest reflections on the German Student Movement, including his 1911 essay on 'The Free School Community', to his ill-fated Habilitation on the Origin of the Mourning Play (1925); and from his early language-philosophical tract 'On Language as Such and on the Language of Man' (1916) to his later, more pointedly materialist city portrait 'Moscow' (1927). For Benjamin, the term entails not only a critique of 'national community' (Volksgemeinschaft), but equally an effort to delineate a form of 'ethical community' (sittliche Gemeinschaft) and a 'community of language' (Sprachgemeinschaft). In each case, these figures of community are articulated in response to shifting historical circumstances, including two World Wars, and through an engagement with a wide range of interlocutors. Although Benjamin never systematically expounds the concept of community per se, there is a sense in which it marks a nodal point: an opportunity to rethink the interplay of language, history, and politics in the register of what is common.