Contents -- Volume Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Bibliographical Note -- Preface -- Introduction. Melancholy, Hope, Redemption -- Chapter One. Benjamin's Philosophy of History: The Messianic Is Now -- Introduction -- 1. The Notion of 'Weak Messianic Power' in On the Concept of History -- 2. Redemption and 'Rejuvenation' of the Past -- 2.1. Introduction -- 2.2. The Dialectical Image and Its Ethical-Political Relevance -- 2.3. Renewed Legibility and Redemption -- 2.4. The Relation between Benjamin's Materialism and His Jewish Messianism -- Conclusion -- Chapter Two. The Kafka-essays and The Origin of German Tragic Drama: On Failure and the Limits of Human Understanding -- Introduction -- 1. Franz Kafka, the Unknowability of the Divine and the Decline of Experience -- 1.1. Introduction -- 1.2. The Kafka-Essay and the 'Inaccessibility of Doctrine' -- II.I.3. Kafka's Last Will and Shame -- 1.4. The Kafka-Letter and the Decay of Tradition -- 1.5. The Conscious Experience and Benjamin's Critique of Modernity -- 2. The Origin of German Tragic Drama and the 'Empty World' of the Baroque -- 2.1. Presentation of the Subject Matter -- 2.2. Trauerspiel and Allegory -- Chapter Three. The 'Will to Allegory' and the 'Distortion' of Truth in History -- Introduction -- 1. Benjamin's Iconography -- 1.1. Benjamin and Alois Rieglwrite indexwrite {98:Riegl, Alois} -- 1.2. Benjamin and Aby Warburg: The Survival of Ancient Gods in 'an Unsuitable, Indeed Hostile, Environment' -- 1.3. Conflicts and Compromises: The Timeless 'Hybridity' of Logos and Magic -- 2. The 'Distortion' of Truth in History -- 2.1. Kafka, the Trauerspiel and the Messianic -- 2.2. The Relation between Benjamin's Messianism and His Historical Analyses -- 2.3. A Case in Point: Technological Reproducibility -- Conclusion -- Appendix. Relational 'Purity,' the Collector and the Fl›neur.

Introduction. The Concept of Purity -- 1. The 'Representational Impulse' of Truth and the Movement of the Absolute -- 2. The Collector and the Fl›neur -- Conclusion. Walter Benjamin and Joseph Roth -- Bibliography -- Essays by Walter Benjamin -- Books by Walter Benjamin -- Letters from/to Walter Benjamin -- Other Sources (Selection) -- Index of Names.