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Benhamming. I hope you agree and as always, I hope you love the show today

So Walter Benhamming is notorious for being one of the most elusive thinkers of the early 20th century

His work is a combination of influences so varied. It's almost funny

It's a mix of ideas so seemingly disconnected the act of connecting them is almost as impressive as the ideas themselves

He'll go from Kant then over to Marx

Then back to 19th century German literary criticism then over to Jewish mysticism

He'll go all over the world and needless to say what results from all this is a very interesting critique of 20th century culture

The man's work is often referred to as difficult

Sometimes people go so far as to say it's downright incomprehensible

This is no doubt part of the reason why there's such a lack of representation of his work in the world

Which is part of the reason why I wanted to cover him here today

Sometimes when reading Benhamming he can say things that on the surface seem to be completely irrational or completely counterintuitive

But I think the biggest barrier and trying to understand what he's saying is in a weird way

Understanding what he's trying to say

But that said I don't think you can just begin the discussion with Walter Benhamming's most famous work called art in the age of mechanical reproduction as some people do

And I don't think you can just can and ball in to talking about his critique of modernity as some people have in the past

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