Towards a Philosophy of Urban Life

This chapter examines Benjamin’s writings on cities, demonstrating how cities provide the basis for many of Benjamin’s philosophical innovations. The first section establishes a dialogue between Georg Simmel’s ‘Metropolis’ essay and Benjamin’s writings on urban experience. It argues that Benjamin was influenced by Simmel’s diagnosis of the city as a space of overstimulation and commodification. But unlike Simmel, Benjamin posits freedom not to be a result of detachment and abstraction, but to be found in the integration, combination and translation of various separated levels of experience. The chapter then explores Benjamin’s writings on specific cities, Berlin, Marseille and Naples. Benjamin’s memory of his childhood in Berlin is the impetus for a critical relation to technology. His visit to Marseille shapes his conceptualization of mimesis. And Naples provides an image for freedom in thinking.