Emerging ‘Orders’: The Contemporary Relevance of Religion and Teaching in Walter Benjamin’s Early Thought

In an attempt to comprehend Walter Benjamin’s interest in religion and religiosity, I will primarily refer to those texts in which he explicitly discusses — and allocates a central role to — religion.² Rather than starting with any established concept of religion, I will be guided by Benjamin’s own texts, from which I will quote extensively. Just what Benjamin may have meant by ‘religion’ is one of the questions to which the reflections which follow are intended to provide an answer.