Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226042374
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 692
Book Description
These letters provide a lively view of Benjamin's life and thought from his days as a student to his melancholy experiences as an exile in Paris. As he defends his changing ideas to admiring and skeptical friends - poets, philosophers, and radicals - we witness the restless self-analysis of a creative mind far in advance of his own time.
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910-1940
Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226042374
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 692
Book Description
These letters provide a lively view of Benjamin's life and thought from his days as a student to his melancholy experiences as an exile in Paris. As he defends his changing ideas to admiring and skeptical friends - poets, philosophers, and radicals - we witness the restless self-analysis of a creative mind far in advance of his own time.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226042374
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 692
Book Description
These letters provide a lively view of Benjamin's life and thought from his days as a student to his melancholy experiences as an exile in Paris. As he defends his changing ideas to admiring and skeptical friends - poets, philosophers, and radicals - we witness the restless self-analysis of a creative mind far in advance of his own time.
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910-1940
Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, German
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Called "the most important critic of his time" by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years, as his work has assumed a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A "natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature," writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword to this volume; and Benjamin's correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas, while also offering an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived. Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Max Brod, and Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin elaborates on his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, and expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as Marxism and French national character. Providing an indispensable tool for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin's work, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910-1940 is a revelatory look at the man behind much of the twentieth century's most significant criticism.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, German
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Called "the most important critic of his time" by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years, as his work has assumed a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A "natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature," writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword to this volume; and Benjamin's correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas, while also offering an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived. Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Max Brod, and Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin elaborates on his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, and expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as Marxism and French national character. Providing an indispensable tool for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin's work, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910-1940 is a revelatory look at the man behind much of the twentieth century's most significant criticism.
The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940
Author: Walter Benjamin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674174153
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
The legendary correspondence between the critic Walter Benjamin and the historian Gershom Scholem bears indispensable witness to the inner lives of two remarkable and enigmatic personalities. Benjamin, acknowledged today as one of the leading literary and social critics of his day, was known during his lifetime by only a small circle of his friends and intellectual confreres. Scholem recognized the genius of his friend and mentor during their student days in Berlin, and the two began to correspond after Scholem's emigration to Palestine. Their impassioned exchange draws the reader into the very heart of their complex relationship during the anguished years from 1932 until Benjamin's death in 1940.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674174153
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322
Book Description
The legendary correspondence between the critic Walter Benjamin and the historian Gershom Scholem bears indispensable witness to the inner lives of two remarkable and enigmatic personalities. Benjamin, acknowledged today as one of the leading literary and social critics of his day, was known during his lifetime by only a small circle of his friends and intellectual confreres. Scholem recognized the genius of his friend and mentor during their student days in Berlin, and the two began to correspond after Scholem's emigration to Palestine. Their impassioned exchange draws the reader into the very heart of their complex relationship during the anguished years from 1932 until Benjamin's death in 1940.
Walter Benjamin
Author: Momme Brodersen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Revised and updated for the English edition, this comprehensive biography provides an account of Benjamin's career, and demonstrates the fallacy of the popular, romanticized notion of his life as the sorrowful progression of a melancholic personality
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Revised and updated for the English edition, this comprehensive biography provides an account of Benjamin's career, and demonstrates the fallacy of the popular, romanticized notion of his life as the sorrowful progression of a melancholic personality
Walter Benjamin
Author: Uwe Steiner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226772225
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Seven decades after his death, German Jewish writer, philosopher, and literary critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) continues to fascinate and influence. Here Uwe Steiner offers a comprehensive and sophisticated introduction to the oeuvre of this intriguing theorist. Acknowledged only by a small circle of intellectuals during his lifetime, Benjamin is now a major figure whose work is essential to an understanding of modernity. Steiner traces the development of Benjamin’s thought chronologically through his writings on philosophy, literature, history, politics, the media, art, photography, cinema, technology, and theology. Walter Benjamin reveals the essential coherence of its subject’s thinking while also analyzing the controversial or puzzling facets of Benjamin’s work. That coherence, Steiner contends, can best be appreciated by placing Benjamin in his proper context as a member of the German philosophical tradition and a participant in contemporary intellectual debates. As Benjamin’s writing attracts more and more readers in the English-speaking world, Walter Benjamin will be a valuable guide to this fascinating body of work.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226772225
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Seven decades after his death, German Jewish writer, philosopher, and literary critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) continues to fascinate and influence. Here Uwe Steiner offers a comprehensive and sophisticated introduction to the oeuvre of this intriguing theorist. Acknowledged only by a small circle of intellectuals during his lifetime, Benjamin is now a major figure whose work is essential to an understanding of modernity. Steiner traces the development of Benjamin’s thought chronologically through his writings on philosophy, literature, history, politics, the media, art, photography, cinema, technology, and theology. Walter Benjamin reveals the essential coherence of its subject’s thinking while also analyzing the controversial or puzzling facets of Benjamin’s work. That coherence, Steiner contends, can best be appreciated by placing Benjamin in his proper context as a member of the German philosophical tradition and a participant in contemporary intellectual debates. As Benjamin’s writing attracts more and more readers in the English-speaking world, Walter Benjamin will be a valuable guide to this fascinating body of work.
The Disenchantment of Art
Author: Rainer Rochlitz
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9780898624076
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
Fifty years after his death, Walter Benjamin remains one of the great cultural critics of this century. Despite his renown, however, Benjamin's philosophical ideas remain elusive--often considered a disaggregated set of thoughts not meant to cohere. This book provides a more systematic perspective on Benjamin, laying claim to his status as a philosopher and situating his work in the context of its time. Exploring Benjamin's theory of language, spoken and nonspoken, Rainer Rochlitz shows how Benjamin reconceptualized traditional ideas of language, art, and history. Offering an expansive assessment of a unique twentieth-century thinker, this volume provides an indispensable guide for readers of Benjamin's recently released collected works.
Publisher: Guilford Press
ISBN: 9780898624076
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 298
Book Description
Fifty years after his death, Walter Benjamin remains one of the great cultural critics of this century. Despite his renown, however, Benjamin's philosophical ideas remain elusive--often considered a disaggregated set of thoughts not meant to cohere. This book provides a more systematic perspective on Benjamin, laying claim to his status as a philosopher and situating his work in the context of its time. Exploring Benjamin's theory of language, spoken and nonspoken, Rainer Rochlitz shows how Benjamin reconceptualized traditional ideas of language, art, and history. Offering an expansive assessment of a unique twentieth-century thinker, this volume provides an indispensable guide for readers of Benjamin's recently released collected works.
Walter Benjamin
Author: Bernd Witte
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814320181
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
Expanded and revised, as well as translated, from the 1985 German edition, details the thought of Benjamin (1892-1940), an all-around European intellectual most active between the wars. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814320181
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 238
Book Description
Expanded and revised, as well as translated, from the 1985 German edition, details the thought of Benjamin (1892-1940), an all-around European intellectual most active between the wars. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Fall of Language
Author: Alexander Stern
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674240634
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
In the most comprehensive account to date of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of language, Alexander Stern explores the nature of meaning by putting Benjamin in dialogue with Wittgenstein. Known largely for his essays on culture, aesthetics, and literature, Walter Benjamin also wrote on the philosophy of language. This early work is famously obscure and considered hopelessly mystical by some. But for Alexander Stern, it contains important insights and anticipates—in some respects surpasses—the later thought of a central figure in the philosophy of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein. As described in The Fall of Language, Benjamin argues that “language as such” is not a means for communicating an extra-linguistic reality but an all-encompassing medium of expression in which everything shares. Borrowing from Johann Georg Hamann’s understanding of God’s creation as communication to humankind, Benjamin writes that all things express meanings, and that human language does not impose meaning on the objective world but translates meanings already extant in it. He describes the transformations that language as such undergoes while making its way into human language as the “fall of language.” This is a fall from “names”—language that responds mimetically to reality—to signs that designate reality arbitrarily. While Benjamin’s approach initially seems alien to Wittgenstein’s, both reject a designative understanding of language; both are preoccupied with Russell’s paradox; and both try to treat what Wittgenstein calls “the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language.” Putting Wittgenstein’s work in dialogue with Benjamin’s sheds light on its historical provenance and on the turn in Wittgenstein’s thought. Although the two philosophies diverge in crucial ways, in their comparison Stern finds paths for understanding what language is and what it does.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674240634
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
In the most comprehensive account to date of Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of language, Alexander Stern explores the nature of meaning by putting Benjamin in dialogue with Wittgenstein. Known largely for his essays on culture, aesthetics, and literature, Walter Benjamin also wrote on the philosophy of language. This early work is famously obscure and considered hopelessly mystical by some. But for Alexander Stern, it contains important insights and anticipates—in some respects surpasses—the later thought of a central figure in the philosophy of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein. As described in The Fall of Language, Benjamin argues that “language as such” is not a means for communicating an extra-linguistic reality but an all-encompassing medium of expression in which everything shares. Borrowing from Johann Georg Hamann’s understanding of God’s creation as communication to humankind, Benjamin writes that all things express meanings, and that human language does not impose meaning on the objective world but translates meanings already extant in it. He describes the transformations that language as such undergoes while making its way into human language as the “fall of language.” This is a fall from “names”—language that responds mimetically to reality—to signs that designate reality arbitrarily. While Benjamin’s approach initially seems alien to Wittgenstein’s, both reject a designative understanding of language; both are preoccupied with Russell’s paradox; and both try to treat what Wittgenstein calls “the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language.” Putting Wittgenstein’s work in dialogue with Benjamin’s sheds light on its historical provenance and on the turn in Wittgenstein’s thought. Although the two philosophies diverge in crucial ways, in their comparison Stern finds paths for understanding what language is and what it does.
Fire Alarm
Author: Michael Lowy
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784786438
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Book Description
This illuminating study of Benjamin’s final essay helps unlock the mystery of this great philosopher Revolutionary critic of the philosophy of progress, nostalgic of the past yet dreaming of the future, romantic partisan of materialism—Walter Benjamin is in every sense of the word an “unclassifiable” philosopher. His essay “On the Concept of History” was written in a state of urgency, as he attempted to escape the Gestapo in 1940, before finally committing suicide. In this scrupulous, clear and fascinating examination of this essay, Michael Löwy argues that it remains one of the most important philosophical and political writings of the twentieth century. Looking in detail at Benjamin’s celebrated but often mysterious text, and restoring the philosophical, theological and political context, Löwy highlights the complex relationship between redemption and revolution in Benjamin’s philosophy of history.
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784786438
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Book Description
This illuminating study of Benjamin’s final essay helps unlock the mystery of this great philosopher Revolutionary critic of the philosophy of progress, nostalgic of the past yet dreaming of the future, romantic partisan of materialism—Walter Benjamin is in every sense of the word an “unclassifiable” philosopher. His essay “On the Concept of History” was written in a state of urgency, as he attempted to escape the Gestapo in 1940, before finally committing suicide. In this scrupulous, clear and fascinating examination of this essay, Michael Löwy argues that it remains one of the most important philosophical and political writings of the twentieth century. Looking in detail at Benjamin’s celebrated but often mysterious text, and restoring the philosophical, theological and political context, Löwy highlights the complex relationship between redemption and revolution in Benjamin’s philosophy of history.
The Messianic Reduction
Author: Peter Fenves
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804757887
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
The Messianic Reduction is the first study of Benjamin's early philosophy that takes into consideration the full range of his work, with particular emphasis on its complex relation to phenomenology, Kant and neo-Kantianism, and certain developments in mathematics.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804757887
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
The Messianic Reduction is the first study of Benjamin's early philosophy that takes into consideration the full range of his work, with particular emphasis on its complex relation to phenomenology, Kant and neo-Kantianism, and certain developments in mathematics.