Page "Walter Benjamin" Paragraph 27

Walter Benjamin corresponded much with Theodor Adorno and Bertolt Brecht, and was occasionally funded by the Frankfurt School under the direction of Adorno and Horkheimer, even from their New York City residence.

The competing influences — Brecht ’ s Marxism, Adorno ’ s critical theory, Gerschom Scholem ’ s Jewish mysticism — were central to his work, although their philosophic differences remained unresolved.

Moreover, the critic Paul de Man argued that the intellectual range of Benjamin ’ s writings flows dynamically among those three intellectual traditions, deriving a critique via juxtaposition ; the exemplar synthesis is " On the Concept of History " ( Theses on the Philosophy of History ).