Walter Benjamin as Guide: Images in the Modern City.

The article proposes a sociological mapping and an intended approach to the writings of the German literacy and cultural critic Walter Benjamin. The approach necessitates an analysis that utilizes the understanding of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre of the dialectics of milieu and situation in order to render a critical reconstitution of Benjamin's thinking. The explicit impact of Jewish theology on Benjamin's thought provided an epistemological tension in practically all of Benjamin's writings. Benjamin has sought to rescue the lived-experience of history and culture from an overdetermined and passive phenomenology.