The Idea must be represented through a historical sequence that includes subsequent development in the understanding of later epochs.

Benjamin’s concern to reincorporate the perspective of art’s temporal transformation demands an analogous radicalization. The “genetic and concrete classification” (OGT, 24) that Benedetto Croce called history (in order to distinguish it from that generalizing thought that abstracts away from change and development) must now be reconciled with Benjamin’s theory of Ideas. For the messianic philosophy of history that grounds Benjamin’s work problematizes existing formulations of the concepts of hi