ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to identify the constituents of Benjamin’s conception of ‘collective experience’ by way of comparison with Helmuth Plessner’s criticisms of this category. Plessner’s modern conservatism, which endorses the value of bourgeois tact, is based on anthropological arguments regarding human needs and the affirmation of the achievements of Western civilisation. Benjamin’s opposition to bourgeois society is not based on historical or social analysis, or anthropology. As he writes in his notes for ‘On the Concept of History,’ he surveys social phenomena with his theological instrument for the ‘presence of messianic force in history,’ which he finds in ‘classless society’ [SW IV, 402]. On the basis of this comparison with Plessner I argue that ‘community’ in Benjamin’s writing is a category of experience and not a type of social organisation, and that this is also the perspective he uses to develop his image of ‘communist society.’ This latter point is used to evaluate Michael Löwy’s interpretation of Benjamin’s essay on Bachofen.
