Abstract：Walter Benjamin is an important member of the Frankfurt School critics. His intellectual insight stimulated Adorno's idea of "negative dialectics" and "dialectics of enlightenment" which, in turn, constitute the critical foundation of this school of social criticism. But Benjamin's theoretical concerns are not only criticism, but also construction, showing his ethical responsibility as a resistant intellectual of his time. His perspective is very unique in that it is a Janus-faced combination of theology and Marxism. Therefore, the ultimate horizon of his criticism is Messianic redemption which he terms "origin". For him the "origin" is the authentic totality of the world which was smashed to fragments in modernity. Then the purpose of his criticism is to prepare for a theoretical reestablishment of the lost "origin". So the maxim he likes to quote is that "origin is the goal" which actually summarizes his intellectual concerns, namely both criticism and conservation. This essay locates Benjamin in the context of the differences between the Frankfurt School criticism and the Deconstructive criticism, thus revealing the itinerary of his double-leveled criticism clearly.
