Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), a German philosopher and critic, published widely on such topics as technology, language, literature, the arts, and society. He left a large body of mostly unfinished work that has been slowly published in his native country. Since the 1980s, this fragmented work has elicited much commentary, including several thousand studies.

"We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art," wrote the French poet and essayist, Paul Valery, in his work Pieces Sur L'Art. Benjamin used that thought as the basis for what became one of his most famous essays, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. It served as a foundation for the evolution of thought that emerged from the Postmodern school philosophy. In the face of Nazi oppression...