Adorno expected Benjamin specifically to fuse concreteness with transcendence

Evidence

What Adorno did not consider either Bloch or Kracauer to be capable of (Kracauer’s book on Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of his Time, written in exile in France, was devastatingly criticized by Adorno in a letter to his former mentor as a sorry effort aimed at sales success), he expected Benjamin to produce: a philosophy embodying a way out of the dream state of bourgeois immanence by being concrete and transcendent at once, by combining the density of experience with the rigour of thought. Adorno functioned as a kind of supervisor during the 1930s, trying to commit Benjamin to confronting theology with historical materialism, a confrontation which Adorno thought Horkheimer was showing more and more appreciation for. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 773

Categorization

• QUESTION: What was Kracauer’s Offenbach book actually like, and was Adorno’s dismissal fair? Worth chasing.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno supervised Benjamin’s attempt to fuse theology with historical materialism; Adorno demanded a philosophy both concrete and transcendent to escape bourgeois immanence — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 211; Benjamin’s thought contained irreconcilable theological and materialist commitments. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 228 (+1 more)