The Pearl Fisher

On the Importance of Walter Benjamin to Hanna Arendt

Abstract

In this text we analyze Hannah Arendt's personal and intellectual relationship with Walter Benjamin, highlighting their coexistence in exile and their mutual influence in dealing with tradition, Jewish assimilation, and the criticism of progress. Arendt sees Benjamin as a poetic and revolutionary thinker, whose attention to fragments and small things represents a form of resistance against authority and historical linearity. After Benjamin’s suicide, Arendt preserved and published his works, facing resistance from the Institute for Social Research. He became a central interlocutor in Arendtian philosophy, especially in her critique of tradition, her attention to the singularity of events, and her independent critical thinking.