Benjamin - philosophy, aesthetics, history. Most of this material is reprinted from Fall-winter 1983-1984 issue of the Philosophical forum.Benjamin was a philosopher. He was one through all the phases and in all the fields of his activity. On the face of it he wrote mostly about subjects of literature and art, sometimes also about topics on the borderline between literature and politics, but only rarely about matters conventionally considered and accepted as themes of pure philosophy. Yet in all these domains he drives his impulse from the philosopher's experience, of the world and its reality. He was a metaphysician, pure and simple.