Abstract

Although the affinity between Marcuse and Benjamin has been noticed frequently, there has been no systematic attempt to examine the nature of their spiritual kinship. Scholem once wrote in his “Reflections on Jewish Theology” that Benjamin and Marcuse are among “the most important ideologists of revolutionary messianism…whose acknowledged or unacknowledged ties to their Jewish heritage are evident.” This is certainly accurate for Benjamin, but much less evident for Marcuse.

Jewish messianism is clearly one of the main sources of Benjamin's Weltanschauung; in its apocalyptic, catastrophic, destructive dimension, and in its hope for absolute redemption, it is intimately linked to the Utopian anarchism of Benjamin's political writings of the 1920s.