Peter E. Gordon will speak on his latest book, Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver (Yale University Press, 2026). Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen and capacious imagination, he developed a unique style of criticism―his friend Hannah Arendt called it pearl-diving―that sought out fragments of redemption in the ruins of bourgeois civilization. In his book, Peter E. Gordon tells Benjamin’s story in a vivid and poetic style, inviting the reader to look beyond the image of Benjamin as a tragic figure of German-Jewish history and portraying him as a complex personality of unique and multifaceted gifts.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, the Political Science Department, German Studies, and the Philosophy Department. 

PETER E. GORDON is the Amabel B. James Professor of History, Faculty Affilitate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Government, and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. A resident faculty member at Harvard's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Gordon is a critical theorist and an historian of modern European philosophy and social thought, specializing in Frankfurt School critical theory, phenomenology, existentialism, and Western Marxism.  A frequent contributor of criticism and commentary to periodicals such as The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, The Boston Review of Books, The New Statesman, The Nation, The London Review of Books, and The New York Review of Books, he has published major works on Heidegger, the Frankfurt School, Jürgen Habermas, and Theodor W. Adorno.