---
product_id: 45290723
title: "Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life"
brand: "howard eiland"
price: "E£ 5850"
currency: EGP
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.com.eg/products/45290723-walter-benjamin-a-critical-life
store_origin: EG
region: Egypt
---

# Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life

**Brand:** howard eiland
**Price:** E£ 5850
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life by howard eiland
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## Description

Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A Missing Element
  

*by M***N on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 2, 2014*

I am filing a minority report.  Make no mistake, this is a competent biography of a difficult person who produced work that never yields to clarity, and so this book provides a service.  And I have to say, I was constantly mindful of being in the hands of the person who translated the Arcades Project into English.  I felt my appreciation continually, and always was aware that the authors were people who were dedicated to Benjamin, maybe in a way that neither Adorno, Horkheimer or Scholem were. Maybe the dedication of these authors was only equaled by Benjamin's wife (forever -- despite the divorce) Dora.My reservation stems from two sources.  First, I felt a dissociation between the life events of the man and the work.  Maybe this is not only unavoidable with a person such as Benjamin, and maybe it is a matter of producing a biography that is approachable by a wider audience than admiring specialists.  But still, I couldn't help but feel that given the sheer power of Benjamin's work and the sheer will (to) power to write and, most of all to THINK, despite the excruciating adversities Benjamin faced there wasn't some connecting thread or theme that could have been elucidated. As a result, I felt that the accounts of the  events in Benjamin's life became monotonously repetitious (even the flight from the Nazi's seemed to be just an intensification of the usual travails of poverty and homelessness), and the expositions on his works were stridently schematic.Which brings me to the second concern:  it seems to me that the theological dimension of Benjamin's life and work was strangely absent. The "theological" seems to me to be the driving locus of his thought, and the only "reserve" in which Benjamin carved out a byway (a tunnel?) to a future.  That this "future" of his never escaped the theological lent to his work that "messianic" cast that anyone who reads Benjamin has too grapple with.  That "theological" stream or strain of thought forms the basis for the friendship and struggles between him and Scholem (for whom the religious and Messianic were preset and solved). The precious little attention paid to Benjamin's affinities to theological themes -- Jewish, Messianic, mystical,  eschatological, redemptive and textual -- seems strange.I see Benjamin being drawn to the theological as his only connection to the sense of there being a "future" at all.  This "prophetic" detachment from material exigency seems to offer a powerful theme on which to lay out his biographical course. The unreality of his love triangles and his inability to extricate himself from culturally collapsing interwar Europe seems bound up with this deep commitment to honor the "mourning" that lends depth, feeling and Kierkegaardian faith to life, but that also renders materialist futurity as a blurred obscurity, if not conceptually entangled impossibility.  He could not envision that any border would open up for him, no less the day after he committed suicide.Maybe the authors leave this missing stream or theme to the reader's devices to construct. But I can't help but feel that the book did not quite reach my own mourning for the work and loss of Benjamin.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    dense, informative, a  little sad
  

*by S***R on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 16, 2022*

This is a thick book that delves into the life and above all the writings of Walter Benjamin over more than 600 pages. The authors do an excellent job recreating the intellectual growth of this great thinker while including the details of a complex and ultimately deeply sad life. I'm not sure if I yet understand Benjamin as a person  but I appreciate this illuminating, measured look into his life and tragic times.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Very Much Nourishment for Thought
  

*by A***C on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 12, 2017*

This is a thoughtful and detailed review of the writing and the life of Walter Benjamin. His monument at Portbou gives some insight into a life that was every bit as tragic as the times he lived in. Curiosity led me to know what happened to him and why his thinking was such a threat to the forces of evil and division that dominated European Society at that time. With Brexit and Catalan separatists, Donald Trump, ISIS and many more, it seems that we are destined to repeat the mistakes that led to the death of this very fine man. The book arrived in good condition and it took only 10 days from order to delivery. Well done Amazon

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*Last updated: 2026-02-24*