Actual European events rendered Benjamin’s minimalist aesthetic theory historically obsolete.

Evidence

The course of events in Europe made the image of a `bottleneck’ through which humanity would have to pass, taking with it only the minimum of baggage, into a misjudgement of the situation which was increasingly out of place. In the end, the course of events made Benjamin’s whole way of looking at problems, an approach which can be inferred by correlating his various central motifs, look obsolete. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 857

Categorization

• SEED: Angle for an essay: when do historical events retroactively invalidate a thinker’s conceptual apparatus rather than just its political predictions?