3 - Works

Summary

In the writings presented in this section, Benjamin moves away from the education and school reform subjects to which his earliest writings have been devoted. Concerns that now appear include the nature of language and the poetic, as well as the relation of history and criticism. Four essays written by Benjamin between 1914 and 1918 are emphasized here: “The Life of Students”; “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin”; “On Language in General and on the Language of Man”; and “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy.” The first of these works is written when he is just twenty-two years old; the last is completed when he is twenty-six and about to begin work on his doctoral dissertation. Only the first of these essays appears in print during Benjamin's lifetime. Despite not being published, the remaining essays are recognized for the place they hold as early developments of issues that will later receive more critical and less metaphysically inclined treatment.

“The Life of Students” (1914–1915, pub. 1915)

Our concern here must be with inner unity, not with critique from outside.

Benjamin's essay “The Life of Students” shows the influence of the ideas and hopes of the student reform movement he first experienced during his school years. The idealism of the student youth movement, so evident in Benjamin's earliest writings on education, is still present in this essay but in a way that registers difficulties within the contemporary German university, particularly with regard to its emphasis on the vocational training of students.