Benjamin defined progress as interruptions of time, not continuity

Evidence

In a note for the Passagen-Werk, he wrote: In every true work of art, there is a particular point at which someone who is able to put himself in that position can feel a cool wind blowing, as if from a coming dawn. From this it can be seen that art, which has often been thought to obscure any relation to progress, can in fact help to define progress genuinely. Progress does not lie in the continuity of the course of time, but in interferences with it, at home, or wherever something truly new makes itself felt for the first time with the soberness of the dawn. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 227

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This inverts the standard Enlightenment picture of progress as cumulative continuity and grounds it in the ‘cool wind’ of true artworks — a genuinely paradigm-shifting redefinition worth sitting with.
• XREF: Overlaps with Walter Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history and the messianic ‘now-time’.