Squaring Walter Benjamin's Religious, Political, and Aesthetic Positions

This Thesis covers a wide range of Walter Benjamin's writings while attempting to reconcile three of his primary areas of study. Beginning with religion, we look at Benjamin's exploration of the Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism. Benjamin then turns to the field of politics with an emphasis on Marxian economics along with the utopian vision of Charles Fourier. Ultimately, Benjamin looks to theories of aesthetics. Starting with the a-conceptual aesthetic model of Immanuel Kant as a precursor, Benjamin sees aesthetics as an opportunity for the radicalization of freedom.;As one surveys these diverse areas of interest, he/she will come across one common thread consistently surfacing and that is the opening of the possibility for redemption. For instance, in the religious realm Benjamin invokes a weak Messianic power. This power prescribes that mankind take the initiative of being the revelatory judge of itself. In the political field, Benjamin discovers the dialectical image. Through this image, time appears to stand still, opening a vision for the possibility of utopia.;Ultimately, when Benjamin investigates Surrealism, he discovers profane illumination which opens up the widest possible range of perceptual perspectives. Benjamin finds that profane illumination is the ideal way of creating a truly new world. An ideal practitioner of profane illumination is Franz Kafka. Kafka's writings test the perceptual boundaries of his readers. Kafka's vision had the ability to simultaneously invoke the merits of forgetting through oblivion, hyper-focused attention through waiting, and finding one's way back through remembrance. Pushing the boundaries back and forth, in seemingly paradoxical conditions, becomes foundational for Benjamin's envisioning of a dialectical fairyland.