“New Stars Were Rising in the Sky” : On Benjamin's Concept of Cosmic Experience and Technology around 1930

The question concerning technology was, for Walter Benjamin, tied to the First World War. It was the first global and technical war, from which there were infinite technical images, but, according to Benjamin, no communicable experiences. The war technology was, however, only one side of this crisis; the other side consisted of developments in modern physics. Benjamin connected the questions that arose for philosophy from the revolutionization of physics to the overpowering effect of the technical-industrial world war. From there, he came to the conclusion that a coming philosophy must be a philosophy of technology (Technik). This thesis will be elaborated in the following chapter, which will conclude with a reading of the aphorism “To the Planetarium,” in which Benjamin develops a new form of cosmopolitics: a techno-cosmopolitics.