The Claim of Experience: Aesthetics and Modernity in the Work of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Rancière and Stanley Cavell

This thesis analyses the work of three philosophers in the context of the post-Kantian tradition of aesthetics and their responses to the changes in experience in the historical period of modernity. By examining the work of Walter Benjamin, Jacques Rancière and Stanley Cavell, the thesis demonstrates the possibilities for connections between individual and shared experience in both aesthetic and political contexts. The thesis demonstrates how we share ordinary experiences in the world.