Introduction

If one conceives of the work of art as a monad, one has to attach extreme importance to art criticism, since it not only becomes the nexus for a thorough understanding of the work of art, but might also be conceived as the medium through which a historical experience becomes – in Benjamin's terms – ‘legible’ for the first time. The critic, according to this view, is an interpreter, in the precise sense that they translate the language of art into (or back into) the language of history.

Art criticism is crucial to both Benjamin and Adorno. First of all, both were practicing critics. After the rejection of his habilitation, which meant the end of his academic career, Benjamin worked as a literary critic for several newspapers and journals, and also repeatedly made plans to found a journal of literary criticism of his own. In a letter to Gershom Scholem, he expresses his wish to be considered the ‘foremost critic of German literature’ (CWB, 359; BB 2, 505). Some argue that he did indeed satisfy that ambition, albeit posthumously. There has been some discussion about whether we should even regard Benjamin as primarily a philosopher, and not rather as a historian or (literary) critic. Up to this day, Benjamin's work is read rather in the circles of literary, media and cultural studies than in philosophy departments.

But for Benjamin, art criticism is not only an important practice; it is also an object of philosophical theory. Like one of his heroes, the romantic philosopher and critic Friedrich Schlegel, he believed that every critical review should be at the same time a philosophy of criticism. The concept of criticism held by the early German Romantics, most notably the Schlegel brothers and Novalis, was the subject of his dissertation, with which we will begin our discussion.