Abstract
My paper explores the possibility of articulating the experience of color as a mood. A mood of color, is not just a matter of the emotional ambiance that might be associated with certain colors. Rather, color must be capable of bringing out the texture of experience as an interrelated totality. That is, there must be ways to experience color not simply as a surface property of discrete objects but as disclosing a mode of unity of reality and of one’s being in the world. I elaborate this understanding of color as a mood by way of Walter Benjamin’s writings. In particular Benjamin thinks of the mood of color as a facet of childhood experience. I trace this theme through his writings on the child’s view of color as well in his own autobiography “Berlin Childhood around 1900”.
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Notes
- 1.
“Berlin Childhood around 1900” in Benjamin (2002: 344). Throughout this essay I will refer to Benjamin’s writings immediately following the quote by way of the following abbreviations: SW (followed by the volume number) – Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin Cambridge: Harvard University Press. C – Complete Correspondence (Benjamin 1994), O – The Origin of German Tragic Drama (Benjamin 1977), A – The Arcades Project (Benjamin 1999b).
- 2.
See Kant (2001): § 14.
- 3.
Kant (2001): § 42.
- 4.
In this context consider an interesting remark of Wittgenstein: “Colors spur us to philosophize… Colors seem to present us with a riddle” he writes, but he adds “a riddle that stimulates (anregt) us – not one that disturbs (aufregt) us.” (Wittgenstein 1984: 66).
- 5.
See the fragment entitled “Imagination” in Benjamin (1996: 280–282).
- 6.
I am indebted to Werner Hamacher’s insightful reading of this part of the Berlin Childhood in “The Word Wolke – if it is one – (Walter Benjamin’s theory of the Mimetical),” in Hamacher (1988).
References
Benjamin, Walter. 1977. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Trans. J. Osborne. London: NLB.
Benjamin, Walter. 1994. Complete Correspondence. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 1996. Selected writings. vol. 1. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. “Aphorisms on Imagination and Color,” 48–49; “A Child’s View of Color,” 50–52; “Old Forgotten Children’s Books,” 406–413; “The World of Children’s Books,” 435–443.
Benjamin, Walter. 1999a. “On the Mimetic Faculty.” In Selected Writings, vol. 2, 720–722. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 1999b. The Arcades Project. Trans. H. Eiland and K. McLaughlin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 2002. “Berlin Childhood Around 1900.” In Selected Writings, vol. 3, 344–413. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hamacher, Werner. 1988. “The Word Wolke – if it is one – (Walter Benjamin’s theory of the Mimetical).” In Benjamin’s Ground, ed. Rainer Nägele and Trans. Peter Fenves, 171–201. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 2001. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Trans. P. Guyer and E. Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1984. Culture and Value. Trans. Peter Winch. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
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Friedlander, E. (2011). A Mood of Childhood in Benjamin. In: Kenaan, H., Ferber, I. (eds) Philosophy's Moods: The Affective Grounds of Thinking. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 63. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1503-5_4
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