Writing Us
On Aura, Alienation, and the Authority of Art
Dear No Ones,
It is a fascinating irony that “aura” has found its way into the slang of today’s youth just as adults sound the alarm against AI’s threat to that very concept.
Nearly 90 years ago, philosopher Walter Benjamin introduced the term for criticism in his 1935 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, defining aura as the authenticity and authority of a work rooted in its “unique manifestation” of time and place. He warned that technological advancement was causing art to lose its “aura” through the ease of mechanical reproduction. It has been easy to dismiss Benjamin’s critique as nostalgia and elitist gatekeeping, but his definition of “aura” still holds up despite its contested value.
Ironically, while adults worry that AI is killing off our sense of aura, young people have resurrected the exact same concept in their own everyday slang.
Benjamin’s concept of aura draws on two pillars of thought: G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx.
For Hegel, creativity is an act of freedom, a way to see our identity reflected in the world. In his Aesthetics, he writes that art “speaks to the mind [of its creator] through the senses by showing the mind its own freedom in [an artistic] form.” Ultimately, art is how we externalize this inner freedom, making it tangible. Hegel beautifully compared this artistic self-realization to a parent proudly recognizing the best version of themselves in their child.
Karl Marx, however, looked at the dark side of this equation: what happens when “artistic” fulfillment is stripped away from craft. In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he observed that when work ceases to be self-affirming, the worker feels the craft “denies himself... he feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home.” For Marx, modern labor forces a profound estrangement, robbing individuals of the very freedom Hegel celebrated.
Hegel saw creativity as the way we enjoy and realize ourselves, while Marx exposed how labor alienates us when that creative connection is severed. Despite their differences, both dialectical thinkers viewed craft (art and labor) through a similar lens: as a manifestation of human labor that should serve as an empowering expression of identity, or what Benjamin calls our aura.
I recently shared these ideas about Marx, Hegel, and Benjamin with my 10th-grade class after our school held a symposium on AI. My students immediately recognized how AI can alienate us from our work, but they also noted that ‘alienating’ assignments can actually drive them toward AI. If a task doesn’t express their freedom, they may feel no claim to it. I admitted that we teachers must be diligent in how we design labor. Marx, after all, directed his critique not at the worker but at the supervisors who assigned the work. Still, my students pushed back against the binary of “easy” AI versus “hard” human effort. They argued that our 'aura' shouldn’t only be a matter of convenience, but a product of challenge. Aura isn’t a simple thing.
I appreciated their pushback against an “easy” aura, their recognition that value lies in challenging tasks which may seem antithetical at first but, in true Hegelian fashion, can be overcome and integrated into their identity. It reminded me of a conversation with my 12th-grade book club on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. They debated Aristotle’s claim that in the arts, “excellence lies in the result itself,” whereas in the expression of virtue, excellence is a matter of the actor. While their critique stemmed from a mistranslation of Aristotle’s techne (technology or artisanship), their point still resonated with me: if excellence lies only in the result, we are justifying the most sinister rationale of AI: that the product matters more than the process of the person. They argued that the product only reflects the person’s process. Excellence is the authenticity of effort and intent. That is what makes work virtuous; that is what 'aura' is really about.
Harrison, whom I have worked with since 6th grade, soon to attend Stanford this fall, said, during the discussion on Aristotle: “I feel like all this fuss about AI, with all the cheating and arguing to change how we think about writing, is only going to set up another renaissance, a human renaissance, that will remind us again why human authenticity, with all its imperfections and unique brilliance, will always be what matters most.”
I agree. Aura is about our authenticity, our authorship, our authority. Aura is about us. That is my infinite hope.
Much love,
C.I.
https://youtube.com/shorts/C057RNu3C7s?si=pyN3wbk2ILo7toCs