A mood of childhood in Benjamin

Eli Friedlander

pp. 39-50

in: Hagi Kenaan, Ilit Ferber (eds), Philosophy's moods, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

My paper explores the possibility of articulating the experience of color as a mood. A mood of color, is not just a matter of the emotional ambiance that might be associated with certain colors. Rather, color must be capable of bringing out the texture of experience as an interrelated totality. That is, there must be ways to experience color not simply as a surface property of discrete objects but as disclosing a mode of unity of reality and of one's being in the world. I elaborate this understanding of color as a mood by way of Walter Benjamin's writings. In particular Benjamin thinks of the mood of color as a facet of childhood experience. I trace this theme through his writings on the child's view of color as well in his own autobiography "Berlin Childhood around 1900".

Cited authors

Benjamin Walter