On critique : experience between Kant and Benjamin -

Abstract

The introduction of a concept of experience has thus far, since Immanuel Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” essay, been inextricable from a notion of a systematic framework. Or, in other words, the introduction of a concept of experience has been inextricable from Kant’s answer to the question of Enlightenment . The importance of a notion of experience is central to a notion of critique, inasmuch as a notion of critique is central to the notion of experience. In other words, the relation between experience and critique is the basis for forming any conception of both. The biggest problem facing critique has always been its inevitable relapse into a set of dogmatic claims for its practice. In the present work, I will attempt to trace the genealogy of this concept of critique, and its impact on the formation of a concept of experience, starting with an exposition of Kant’s “Transcendental Aesthetic” as theory of intuition, and then moving into Benjamin’s development of a concept of experience. In other words, this exposition will be split into two main parts: the first covers the philosophical underpinnings of a notion of critique, one that stems from the critical insight offered by Kant in the first Critique; the second part deals with the conception of a practical critical project via Benjamin’s own theory of experience.