Theses on the Philosophy of History
Walter Benjamin
Benjamin wrote the theses in the winter of 1939 to 1940 and they were first published in 1942, after his death, in the hectographed memorial volume Walter Benjamin zum Gedachtnis issued by the Institute for Social Research. The year has been moved from 1940 to 1942 under the project rule that posthumous works take their first publication date rather than their composition date. The link is to Illuminations, the Schocken collection edited by Hannah Arendt, whose contents include the theses.
Why you should read this
Written shortly before Benjamin's death while fleeing occupied France, these eighteen fragmentary theses reject the idea of history as steady progress, offering instead the image of an angel of history blown backward into the future by a storm it cannot see. Best for readers who want Benjamin's bleakest and most compressed political writing.
- Field
- History
- Form
- Non-fiction
- Published
- 1942
- Themes
- HistoriographyHistory
