Peter E. Gordon is the Amabel B. James Professor of History and Faculty Affiliate in the Departments of German, Government, and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is the author of several notable and award-winning books on modern European philosophy and social theory, as well as their history. His latest book, Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver (2026), published in the Jewish Lives series of Yale University Press, reframes Walter Benjamin’s biography, looking beyond the narrative informed by his tragic death to trace how Benjamin’s life and thought were closely tied to his practice of working with fragments—a disciplined mode of engagement that draws materials from the depths of history and gives them critical form. In this expansive interview with Lilia Endter for the JHI Blog, Peter Gordon discusses Benjamin’s own method of interpreting cultural artifacts, the role of identity categories in constructing an intellectual biography, the impact of Benjamin’s material precarity on his ideas, and Benjamin’s complex relationship with Marxism.
