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November 23, 2010
In 'Benjamin’s Critique of Aesthetic Autonomy' George Markus in Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity, edited by Andrew Benjamin & Charles Rice, (its an open access publication) says that both Adorno and Benjamin:
combined some fundamental elements of the Marxist idea of socialism with the Romantic conception of an ultimate reconciliation between man and nature beyond all utilitarian practices. No collective home for men if their world is treated as the mere collection of manipulable objects; no liquidation of the exploitation of human beings by other humans without over- coming the exploitation of nature by men.
Markus says that Benjamin’s rejection of the claim to the autonomy of art orients his whole approach to culture, the grounds for this attitude are less clear, at least in the sense that the considerations invoked by him do not seem to be easily reconcilable.
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