Benjamin ,Illuminations

The quote that stood out to me was “every day our cause becomes clearer and people get smarter” (43 Dietzgen) I’d have to agree with this quote as time goes on people are able to apply more concepts and can take knowledge from different sources that we can add to and talk about. As history progresses we have all these different philosophers that enlighten us with iron cage concept, state of exception etc.. and that’s how future thinkers are born. Also another quote that I liked was “History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empthy time, but time filled by the presence of now.”(261) which pretty much define history as we were discussing this in class with history in the past and present I think it ties perfectly together. The past is many events that took place and therefore gets carried on into the future. Even though many of us weren’t present as that history was occurring but the evidence that Fasolt spoke about is still there.


I would say history is always moving therefore it’s never over; it would be in the historical revolt of the FUTURE modern times where it’s ever changing. The reason why "historicism" (Benjamin's term for the iron cage) been so harmful is because it keeps you within one moment instead of making you progress and thrive, like the Germans did with Hitler when he ruled, the people were taken by his craziness and charismatic beauracracy that they dismissed what was really in front of them. Which is why people in that time were stuck in a iron cage and didn’t oppose his views which inevitably led to the worst historical tragedy. Thus I think Benjamin is trying to say that people can easily get stuck in an iron cage if they don’t exercise their rights and do something while they can.