ENGLISH

The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time

By Peter Fenves

Book information

Publisher
Stanford University Press
Year
2010
ISBN
0804757887, 9780804757881, 0804757879, 9780804757874
LCC
B3209.B584 F46 2011
Google Books ID
_P9RMBYUPvQC
Open Library ID
OL25001602M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
1 MB (1434926 bytes)
Series
Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics
Pages
334\334
Orientation
yes
Scanned
no
Time added
2012-02-04 16:00:00

Description

The Messianic Reduction is a groundbreaking study of Walter Benjamin's thought. Fenves places Benjamin's early writings in the context of contemporaneous philosophy, with particular attention to the work of Bergson, Cohen, Husserl, Frege, and Heidegger. By concentrating on a neglected dimension of Benjamin's friendship with Gershom Scholem, who was a student of mathematics before he became a scholar of Jewish mysticism, Fenves shows how mathematical research informs Benjamin's reflections on the problem of historical time. In order to capture the character of Benjamin's "entrance" into the phenomenological school, the book includes a thorough analysis of two early texts he wrote under the title of "The Rainbow," translated here for the first time. In its final chapters, the book works out Benjamin's deep and abiding engagement with Kantian critique, including Benjamin's discovery of the political counterpart to the categorical imperative in the idea of "pure violence."

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