{"title":"Walter Benjamin","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"walter-benjamin-a-philosophical-portrait","title":"Walter Benjamin: A Philosophical Portrait","description":"\u003cdiv id=\"iframeContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBy Eli Friedlander\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“This highly original study by Friedlander is a rare attempt to expose the philosophical infrastructure of the thought of Walter Benjamin. Rather than a collection of disjointed observations on culture, the Benjaminian corpus turns, on Friedlander’s reading, into a singular testimony to the fragile and liminal possibility of philosophy that refuses to assimilate the singular under the umbrella of universal abstraction….Friedlander pays special attention to Benjamin’s relation to Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx, accentuating the problems of temporality, historicity, and a philosophically robust materialism. A laudable achievement, this volume is an exquisite dialogue between philosophy and its others, between totality and constellation, and between the universal and the singular.”—M.V. Marder, \u003cem\u003eChoice\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“Benjamin is not, for Friedlander, just a writer or a thinker, he is a philosopher of world-historical significance, and his work is a vessel of the highest truth.”—Brian Hanrahan, \u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWalter Benjamin is often viewed as a cultural critic who produced a vast array of brilliant and idiosyncratic pieces of writing with little more to unify them than the feeling that they all bear the stamp of his \"unclassifiable\" genius. Eli Friedlander argues that Walter Benjamin's corpus of writings must be recognized as a unique configuration of philosophy with an overarching coherence and a deep-seated commitment to engage the philosophical tradition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFriedlander finds in Benjamin's early works initial formulations of the different dimensions of his philosophical thinking. He leads through them to Benjamin's views on the dialectical image, the nature of language, the relation of beauty and truth, embodiment, dream and historical awakening, myth and history, as well as the afterlife and realization of meaning. Those notions are articulated both in themselves and in relation to central figures of the philosophical tradition. They are further viewed as leading to and coming together in \u003cem\u003eThe Arcades Project\u003c\/em\u003e. Friedlander takes that incomplete work to be the central theater where these earlier philosophical preoccupations were to be played out. Benjamin envisaged in it the possibility of the highest order of thought taking the form of writing whose contents are the concrete time-bound particularities of human experience. Addressing the question of the possibility of such a presentation of philosophical truth provides the guiding thread for constellating the disparate moments of Benjamin's writings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHardcover\u003cbr\u003e304 pages\u003cbr\u003eHarvard University Press, 2012\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e6.2 x 1 x 9.2 inches\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN 9780674061699\u003cbr\u003ePhilosophy, Criticism \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":428296805,"sku":"9780674061699","price":50.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/products\/Walter-Benjamin-A-Philosophical-Portrait_Eli-Friedlander.jpg?v=1591817780"},{"product_id":"walter-benjamin-selected-writings-volume-2-part-1","title":"Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 1","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy Walter Benjamin\u003cbr\u003eEdited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“For those who know only the small selection of essays and longer texts previously translated into English, this book may be a revelation.\u003cem\u003e Selected Writings, Volume 2\u003c\/em\u003e, spanning the period from his abandonment of academia and his emergence as an important literary journalist in 1927 to his near silencing after the Nazis seized power and his exile in 1934, shows [Walter Benjamin] at his sparkling best….All his published work of this time is included here, from a few longer essays on themes as varied as the history of photography and Kafka to three-page pieces on recent French fiction, art history, ‘the crisis of the novel,’ food and the effects of hashish. The new book also includes a generous selection of Benjamin’s notes, diary entries and drafts. Interesting in themselves, and indispensable to anyone seeking insight into Benjamin’s thinking, they also offer a view of the writer at work, developing different aspects of a thought or recycling successful paragraphs from one assignment to another.”—Paul Mattick, \u003cem\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse and mounting political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic and public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of the Selected Writings is now available in paperback in two parts. In Part 1, Benjamin is represented by two of his greatest literary essays, “Surrealism” and “On the Image of Proust,” as well as by a long article on Goethe and a generous selection of his wide-ranging commentary for Weimar Germany’s newspapers. Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 2 contains, in addition to the important longer essays (“Franz Kafka,” “Karl Kraus,” and “The Author as Producer”) the extended autobiographical meditation “A Berlin Chronicle”; extended discussions of the history of photography and the social situation of the French writer; and previously untranslated shorter pieces on such subjects as language and memory, theological criticism and literary history, astrology, and the newspaper, and on such influential figures as Paul Valery, Stefan George, Hitler, and Mickey Mouse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePaperback\u003cbr\u003e480 pages\u003cbr\u003eHarvard University Press, 2005\u003cbr\u003e6.3 x 9.25 inches\u003cbr\u003eISBN 9780674015883\u003cbr\u003ePhilosophy, Sociology, Anthology\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":564869557,"sku":"9780674015883","price":34.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/products\/Walter-Benjamin-Selected-Writings-Volume-2-Part-1_Walter-Benjamin_Michael-W.-Jennings_Howard-Eiland_Gary-Smith.jpg?v=1591810947"},{"product_id":"early-writings-1910-1917","title":"Early Writings (1910-1917)","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy Walter Benjamin\u003cbr\u003eEdited and translated by Howard Eiland\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“In\u003cem\u003e Early Writings\u003c\/em\u003e, Howard Eiland covers the earliest period of Benjamin’s extant oeuvre that helped form the critical project that dominated his literary and philosophical career. This volume’s range provides a comprehensive account of Benjamin’s development from an ardent advocate of youth and educational reform to a philosophically committed critic of literature.”—David Ferris, University of Colorado at Boulder\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“In the introduction, editor and translator Eiland does a wonderful job of explaining how the essays relate to events in Benjamin’s early adult life and to the evolution of his theories…These pieces offer the reader valuable insight into Benjamin’s philosophical thought.”—Scott Duimstra, \u003cem\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“This is a valuable addition to the available work in English of one of the seminal Jewish critical thinkers of the 20th century, author of the massive Arcades Project. The mostly lambent translations by editor Eiland and others…help place Benjamin’s later work within the context of his early preoccupations.”—\u003cem\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWalter Benjamin became a published writer at the age of seventeen. Yet the first stirrings of this most original of critical minds—penned during the years in which he transformed himself from the comfortable son of a haute-bourgeois German Jewish family into the nomadic, uncompromising philosopher-critic we have since come to appreciate—have until now remained largely unavailable in English. \u003cem\u003eEarly Writings, 1910-1917\u003c\/em\u003e rectifies this situation, documenting the formative intellectual experiences of one of the twentieth century's most resolutely independent thinkers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere we see the young Benjamin in his various roles as moralist, cultural critic, school reformer, and poet-philosopher. The diversity of interest and profundity of thought characteristic of his better-known work from the 1920s and 30s are already in evidence, as we witness the emergence of critical projects that would occupy Benjamin throughout his intellectual career: the role of the present in historical remembrance, the relationship of the intellectual to political action, the idea of truth in works of art, and the investigation of language as the veiled medium of experience.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven at this early stage, a recognizably Benjaminian way of thinking comes into view—a daring, boundary-crossing enterprise that does away with classical antitheses in favor of the relentlessly-seeking critical consciousness that produced the groundbreaking works of his later years. With the publication of these early writings, our portrait of one of the most significant intellects of the twentieth century edges closer to completion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHardcover\u003cbr\u003e320 pages\u003cbr\u003eBelknap Press, 2011\u003cbr\u003e5.3 x 1.1 x 9.1 inches\u003cbr\u003eISBN 9780674049932\u003cbr\u003ePhilosophy, Anthology\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":564974893,"sku":"9780674049932","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/products\/Early-Writings-1910-1917_Walter-Benjamin_Howard-Eiland.jpg?v=1591811313"},{"product_id":"aesthetics-and-politics","title":"Aesthetics and Politics","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Georg Lukacs \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith an afterword by Fredric Jameson\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"This is vital reading for anyone concerned with the relationship between art and socialism.\"—John Fowles, \u003cem\u003ePhilosophy\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"They are key texts in the study of modernism, of expressionist drama and of realism, and of many closely related general questions...It is genuinely an indispensable volume.\"—Raymond Williams\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"A volume of Adorno is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature.\"—Susan Sontag\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAn intense and lively debate on literature and art between thinkers who became some of the great figures of twentieth-century philosophy and literature.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eNo other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In \u003cem\u003eAesthetics and Politics\u003c\/em\u003e the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous, interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of twentieth-century intellectual history.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePaperback\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e256 pages\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVerso, 2020\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e5 x 7.8 inches \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eISBN 9781788738583\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTheory\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41008468852904,"sku":"9781788738583","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/products\/Aesthetics-and-Politics_Theodor-Adorono_Walter-Benjamin_Ernst-Bloch_Bertolt-Brecht_Georg-Lukacs_Fredric-Jameson.jpg?v=1631303495"},{"product_id":"one-way-street-and-other-writings","title":"One-Way Street And Other Writings","description":"By Walter Benjamin \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIntroduction by Susan Sontag\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eClassic collection of Walter Benjamin’s celebrated essays.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWalter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThis collection, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work over a twenty-year period, showing the richness and the multi-dimensional nature of his thought. Included in these pages are aphorisms and townscapes, esoteric meditation and reminiscences of childhood, and reflections on language, psychology, aesthetics and politics.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePaperback\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e480 pages\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVerso Books, 2021\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOriginally published in 1979\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e5 x 7.8 inches\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eISBN 9781839761652\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePhilosophy","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42961268801704,"sku":"9781839761652","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/products\/One_Way_Street_Walter_Benjamin.jpg?v=1670520857"},{"product_id":"the-origin-of-german-tragic-drama","title":"The Origin of German Tragic Drama","description":"By Walter Benjamin\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIntroduction by George Steiner\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTranslated by John Osborne\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"He drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe.\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003eSusan Sontag\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"If the killing of Lorca was Fascism’s first great crime against literature, Benjamin’s death was undoubtedly the second.\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Listener\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Walter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of this century.\"\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003eGeorge Steiner\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Origin of German Tragic Drama\u003c\/em\u003e is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out \u003cem\u003eThe Origin of German Tragic Drama\u003c\/em\u003e as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePaperback\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e256 pages\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eVerso Publishers, 2023\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e5 x 7.8 inches\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eISBN 9781804290460\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLiterary Theory\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44969691349160,"sku":"9781804290460","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/files\/The_Origin_of_German_Tragic_Drama_Walter_Benjamin_Verso.jpg?v=1694703836"},{"product_id":"understanding-brecht","title":"Understanding Brecht","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy Walter Benjamin   \u003cbr\u003eIntroduction by Stanley Mitchell   \u003cbr\u003eTranslated by Anna Bostock    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"A small bomb of ideas and vital argument.\"\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eGuardian\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"He does not abolish the distance between us and Leskov, or Brecht, or Kafka; he brings it to life.\"\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eTimes Higher Education Supplement\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"If the killing of Lorca was Fascism’s first crime against literature, Benjamin’s death was undoubtedly the second.\"\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003e—\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Listener\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA collection of essays of political philosophy by the renowned mid 20th-century critical theorist and literary critic\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht, both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices, continued to discuss, argue and correspond on topics as varied as Fascism and the work of Franz Kafka. Faced by the onset of the ‘midnight of the century’, with the Nazi subversion of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in Russia, both men, in their own way, strove to keep alive the tradition of dialectical critique of the existing order and radical intervention in the world to transform it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn\u003cem\u003e Understanding Brecht\u003c\/em\u003e we find collected together Benjamin’s most sensitive and probing writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor. Stimulated by Brecht’s oeuvre and theorising his particular dramatic techniques—such as the famous ‘estrangement effect’—Benjamin developed his own ideas about the role of art and the artist in crisis-ridden society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis volume contains Benjamin’s introductions to Brecht’s theory or epic theatre and close textual analyses of twelve poems by Brecht (printed in translation here) which exemplify Benjamin’s insistence that literary form and content are indivisible. Elsewhere Benjamin discusses the plays \u003cem\u003eThe Mother\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eTerror\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eMisery of the Third Reich\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThe Threepenny Opera\u003c\/em\u003e, digressing for some general remarks on Marx and satire.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere we also find Benjamin’s masterful essay “The Author as Producer” as well as an extract from his diaries that records the intense conversations held in the late 1930s in Denmark (Brecht’s place of exile) between the two most important cultural theorists of this century. In these discussions, the two men talked of subjects as diverse as the work of Franz Kafka, the unfolding Soviet Trials, and the problems of literary work on the edge of international war.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePaperback\u003cbr\u003e144 pages\u003cbr\u003eVerso, 2024\u003cbr\u003e5.5 x 7.8 inches\u003cbr\u003eISBN 9781804294796\u003cbr\u003eLiterary Criticism, Theory and Aesthetics \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"vendor-unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49657770901672,"sku":"9781804294796","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/files\/Understanding_Brecht_Walter_Benjamin.jpg?v=1726073630"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0175\/8594\/collections\/benjamin_1.jpg?v=1505511381","url":"https:\/\/neue-galerie-design-shop.myshopify.com\/collections\/walter-benjamin.oembed","provider":"Neue Galerie Design Shop \u0026 Book Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}