Walter Benjamin

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>One of the most profound and original thinkers of the twentieth century, Walter Benjamin grounded revolutionary Marxism and critical theory in the Jewish messianic tradition. The result was a picture of humanity as creative and imaginative at root, rather than grounded in material production alone. Images—visual, linguistic and urban-architectural- - were at the center of this history. In fact, Benjamin showed, in his most far-reaching work, that the swamping of the world with reproducible images had created both crisis (fascism) and opportunity (linking democracy to the radical potentialities of art and culture.). We cannot understand the present without him.</jats:p>