 The Erkenntniskritische Vorrede or ‘Epistemo-Critical Prologue’ to the work may be understood as having  two central functions: it provides a direct methodological justification for the theory of criticism being utilised in the work, by way of a problematization of existing disciplinary approaches, and it implicitly recovers a concept of allegorical experience which is delineated  in the second part of the thesis in terms amenable for modernity. At the level of methodology, Benjamin advocates the necessity of a transdisciplinary approach (Osborne 2011, 24) to artworks, capable of critically overcoming the epistemological and historical limitations of the existing disciplines of the philosophy of art and the history of art (specifically, literary history). This transdisciplinary aspect of Benjamin’s thesis may partially account for the difficulties in its reception at the University of Frankfurt, where the thesis was rejected by the departments of both philosophy and literature. Much of the theoretical discussion in the Prologue is concerned with correcting the methodological one-sidedness of each existing approach by way of the positive features of the other. In general, the philosophy of art correctly attends to the problem of essences, but remains hampered by its lack of any adequate historical consideration. Conversely, the history of art is preoccupied with historical lineage but has no adequate concept of essence. Yet it is not simply an amalgamation of aesthetics and history that is required, but their radical rethinking in accordance with first a historical concept of essence and second a philosophical concept of history. 