"Positions on the Philosophy of History" (1940) by Walter Benjamin is one of the most important texts of the 20th century, and perhaps the most significant proof of critical thinking since Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach". It is a suggestive, enigmatic text, whose interpretation is scattered with images and allegories, paradoxes and insights.
Michael Lowy does not seek to criticize the "Positions" as much as he tries to understand them. The proposed reading is not intended to be considered the most correct or scientific. Simply, where others see only contradictions or ambiguities, it clarifies the fundamental coherence that Benjamin has constructed among three heterogeneous discourses: German Romanticism, Jewish messianism, and revolutionary Marxism, for which his writing produces a kind of alchemical fusion.
Michael Lowy shows us in the best way that in the "Positions" Benjamin exercises a revolutionary critique of the philosophy of progress, that he is a nostalgic of the past who dreams of the future, a romantic follower of materialism."