Walter Benjamin and the idea of natural history

• Verfasst von: Friedlander, Eli [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Walter Benjamin and the idea of natural history
• Verf.angabe: Eli Friedlander
• Verlagsort: Stanford, California
• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• E-Jahr: 2024
• Jahr: [2024]
• Umfang: xi, 333 Seiten
• Format: 23 cm
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Cultural memory in the present
• Fussnoten: Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 311-315
• ISBN: 978-1-5036-3655-2
• ISBN: 978-1-5036-3770-2
• Schlagwörter: (p)Benjamin, Walter / (s)Umweltpsychologie / (s)Natur <Motiv> / (s)Philosophie / (s)Sprachphilosophie
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Online-Ausgabe: Friedlander, Eli, 1960 - : Walter Benjamin and the idea of natural history. - Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2024. - 1 Online-Ressource (xi, 333 Seiten)
• K10plus-PPN: 1865790001

Abstract

"In this incisive new work, Eli Friedlander demonstrates that Walter Benjamin's entire corpus, from early to late, comprises a rigorous and sustained philosophical questioning of how human beings belong to nature. Across seemingly heterogeneous writings, Friedlander argues, Benjamin consistently explores what the natural in the human comes to, that is, how nature is transformed, actualized, redeemed, and overcome in human existence. The book progresses gradually from Benjamin's philosophically fundamental writings on language and nature to his Goethean empiricism, from the presentation of ideas to the primal history of the Paris arcades. Friedlander's careful analysis brings out how the idea of natural history inflects Benjamin's conception of the work of art and its critique, his diagnosis of the mythical violence of the legal order, his account of the body and of action, of material culture and technology, as well as his unique vision of historical materialism. Featuring revelatory new readings of Benjamin's major works that differ, sometimes dramatically, from prevailing interpretations, this book reveals the internal coherence and philosophical force of Benjamin's thought"--

Abstract

Introduction : the natural in the human -- God, nature and man in language -- Naming beauty -- The life and afterlife of words -- The life of forms -- The guilt and innocence of life -- Fate, redemption and hope in love -- Myth, law and life in common -- The language of the body and the body of language -- Acting naturally -- "From the pagan context of nature ... into the Jewish context of history" -- Matters of memory -- First and second nature in art -- Distorted life.