Events

Event Description

In the second Public Philosophy Discussion of the Fall 2026 semester, we will be discussing Walter Benjamin's classic text "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In this essay, Benjamin teases out the contradictions of art and industrial capitalism and how the Marxist notion of alienation can be applied to works of art themselves (through what he conceptualizes as the separation of the artwork's "aura" from itself). What insights can we glean from this analysis in what we could plausibly call our contemporary "Age of Digital Reproduction?" How has the digital environment changed our relationships with artworks (and art's relationship with itself) in novel ways?