Gerhard Richter examines, in the work of Walter Benjamin, one of the central pro
blems of modernity: the question of how to receive an intellectual inheritance.
Covering aspects of Benjamin's complex relationship to the legacies of such wri
ters as Kant, Nietzsche, Kafka, Heidegger, and Derrida, each chapter attends to
a key concern in Benjamin's writing, while reflecting on the challenges that thi
s issue presents for the question of inheritability and transmissibility. Both r
eading Benjamin and watching himself reading Benjamin, Richter participates in t
he act of inheriting while also inquiring into the conditions of possibility for
inheriting Benjamin's corpus today.
