Andrew Benjamin – författare

Andrew Benjamin approaches the relationship between philosophy and art history through the concept of gesture. Critically engaging with Walter Benjamin, Aby Warburg and Giorgio Agamben, by focusing on gesture he offers a novel philosophical intervention into the classical problem of ‘meaning’ in art, as well as addressing the new perspectives brought by political theology into art theory.Benjamin uses gesture to function as the continual point of orientation, allowing works of art and their detail to be central. Original interpretations of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Rosso Fiorentino and Piero dell Francesca show how Christian political theology has an operative presence within the works of art examined. A key theme running through the book is the question of time in the work of art, alongside the question of how art history, and the representation of history in art, are to be understood philosophically.

The work of Jean-Francois Lyotard signals the return of judgement to the centre of philosophical concerns. This collection of papers is the first devoted to his work and provides an estimation and critique of his writings, and included Lyotard's important essay on Sensus Communis.

The work of Jean-Francois Lyotard signals the return of judgement to the centre of philosophical concerns. This collection of papers is the first devoted to his work and provides an estimation and critique of his writings, and included Lyotard's important essay on Sensus Communis.

This book explores the relationship between art and philosophy. Andrew Benjamin argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. It is in relation to this centrality, understood through the differences between modes of being, that art, mimesis and the avant-garde come to be presented. A fundamental part of this book is the original interpretations of important contemporary painters and their paintings: Lucian Freud's self-portraits, Francis Bacon's use of mirrors, R.B. Kitaj and Jewish identity, Anselm Kiefer and iconoclasm. Apart from painting, Benjamin considers architecture, literature and the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin and Descartes in elaborating the various aspects of ontological difference. The theory of the avant-garde which is developed in the book, in which the avant-garde is a philosophical category rather than a historical marker, is a major contribution to art criticism. It brings the worlds of contemporary art criticism and contemporary philosophy closer together.

This book explores the relationship between art and philosophy. Andrew Benjamin argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. It is in relation to this centrality, understood through the differences between modes of being, that art, mimesis and the avant-garde come to be presented. A fundamental part of this book is the original interpretations of important contemporary painters and their paintings: Lucian Freud's self-portraits, Francis Bacon's use of mirrors, R.B. Kitaj and Jewish identity, Anselm Kiefer and iconoclasm. Apart from painting, Benjamin considers architecture, literature and the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin and Descartes in elaborating the various aspects of ontological difference. The theory of the avant-garde which is developed in the book, in which the avant-garde is a philosophical category rather than a historical marker, is a major contribution to art criticism. It brings the worlds of contemporary art criticism and contemporary philosophy closer together.

This collection explores, in Adorno's description, `philosophy directed against philosophy'. The essays cover all aspects of Benjamin's writings, from his early work in the philosophy of art and language, through to the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin's understanding of history.

Benjamin provides new and important readings of key canonical texts in the history of philosophy in his sustained philosophical reworking of ontology. Amongst texts included are Hegel's Difference Essay and the Shorter Logic and Heidegger's Time and Being and The Question of Being. The effective presence of ontology, defined as `an original difference', will be familiar to readers of his earlier writings. This book represents his most thorough and original contribution to contemporary philosophy to date.

An understanding of what we mean by the present is one of the key issues in literature, philosophy, and culture today, but also one of the most neglected and misunderstood. Present Hope develops a fascinating philosophical understanding of the present, approaching this question via discussions of the nature of historical time, the philosophy of history, memory, and the role of tragedy.Andrew Benjamin shows how we misleadingly view the present as simply a product of chronological time, ignoring the role of history and memory. Accordingly, discussion of what is meant by the present disappears from philosophical concern. To draw attention to this absence, Andrew Benjamin introduces the notion of hope and asks what this concept can tell us about the present.At the heart of the outstanding work is an emphasis on the relation between hope and the Jewish tradition. Through discussions of philosophical responses to the Holocaust, the work of Walter Benjamin, Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Present Hope shows how we must look beyond the purely philosophical horizon to understand the present we live in.

This volume begins with a new essay by Julia Kristeva, ‘The Adolescent Novel’, in which she examines the relation between novelistic writing and the experience of adolescence as an ‘open structure’. It is this blend of the literary with the psychoanalytic that places Kristeva’s work central to current thinking, from semiotics and critical theory to feminism and psychoanalysis.The essays in this volume offer insight into the workings of Kristeva’s thought, ranging from her analyses of sexual difference, female temporality and the perceptions of the body to the mental states of abjection and melancholia, and their representation in painting and literature.Kristeva’s persistent humanity, her profound understanding of the dynamics of intention and creativity, mark her out as one of the leading theoreticians of desire. Each essay offers the reader a new insight into the many aspects that make up Kristeva’s entire oeuvre.

This volume begins with a new essay by Julia Kristeva, ‘The Adolescent Novel’, in which she examines the relation between novelistic writing and the experience of adolescence as an ‘open structure’. It is this blend of the literary with the psychoanalytic that places Kristeva’s work central to current thinking, from semiotics and critical theory to feminism and psychoanalysis.The essays in this volume offer insight into the workings of Kristeva’s thought, ranging from her analyses of sexual difference, female temporality and the perceptions of the body to the mental states of abjection and melancholia, and their representation in painting and literature.Kristeva’s persistent humanity, her profound understanding of the dynamics of intention and creativity, mark her out as one of the leading theoreticians of desire. Each essay offers the reader a new insight into the many aspects that make up Kristeva’s entire oeuvre.

This collection explores, in Adorno's description, `philosophy directed against philosophy'. The essays cover all aspects of Benjamin's writings, from his early work in the philosophy of art and language, through to the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin's understanding of history.

This text outlines a philosophical account of architecture and attempts to establish the singularity of architectural practice and theory. The essays touch on issues as wide ranging as the problem of memory, the work of Eisenman and the dystopias of science fiction.

Walter Benjamin and Romanticism explores the relationship between Walter Benjamin''s literary and philosophical work and the tradition of German Romanticism, as well as H÷lderlin and Goethe. Through a detailed and scholarly analysis of the major texts, the book explores the endurance of Benjamin''s relationship to Romanticism, the residual presence of Romantic Goethean and H÷lderlinian motifs in Benjamin''s subsequent writings and how Benjamin''s understanding of the relationship between criticism and Romanticism can still play a vital role in contemporary philosophical and literary practice.Contributors: Andrew Benjamin, Josh Cohen, David Ferris, Beatrice Hanssen, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Charlie Louth, Bettine Menke, Winfried Menninghaus, Anthony Phelan, Sigrid Weigel

Jean-Francois Lyotard was one of the founding members of the College Internationale de philosophie. Ha has taught at Vincennes, Saint Denis and is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Irvine. Several of his books have appeared in English, notable The Postmodern Condition, Just Gaming and The Dirrerend.The Lyotard Reader is a collection of Jean-Francois Lyotard's most important and significant papers to date. While they are all written from within philosophy, they seek to address subjects as wide-ranging as film, painting (Adami, Francken, Newman), psychoanalysis, Judaism and politics. The originality of Lyotard's work means that it can not be readily situated within any one philosophical tradition. Instead he returns philosophy itself to debates across a range of areas and, in so doing, redefines the philosophical enterprise. A number of chapters in The Lyotard Reader appear for the first time in English. This is the most comprehensive collection available of Lyotard's work, work has profoundly influenced debates on the Enlightenment, on modernity, on postmodernity, on the transmission f information, on literary theory and on philosophy.

By developing his own conception of the 'figure' Andrew Benjamin has written an innovative and provocative study of the complex relationship between philosophy, the history of painting and their presentation of both Jews and animals.As Benjamin makes clear the 'Other' is never abstract. He underscores the means by which the ethical imperative, arising from the way the history of philosophy and the history of art are constructed, shows us how to respond to an already identified, even if unacknowledged, determinant other.

By developing his own conception of the 'figure' Andrew Benjamin has written an innovative and provocative study of the complex relationship between philosophy, the history of painting and their presentation of both Jews and animals.As Benjamin makes clear the 'Other' is never abstract. He underscores the means by which the ethical imperative, arising from the way the history of philosophy and the history of art are constructed, shows us how to respond to an already identified, even if unacknowledged, determinant other.

Interruption is often read as the foundational gesture of modernity - the means through which modernity asserts its existence by claiming its discontinuity with the past. Exposing the limitations of such an understanding, this book offers a very different approach: here, modernity is the site that poses the question of how we are to continue when every attempt to think and understand the present is marked by the necessity of an interruption. Through a reading of Walter Benjamin's writings - particularly on interruption, fashion, and Jugendstil (or Art Nouveau) - Andrew Benjamin in this work offers a sustained meditation on the role of interruption in modernity. His book departs from and elaborates an important but overlooked dimension of Benjamin's discourse: the question of style as it bears upon temporality and spatiality. Extending this meditation in exciting and unexpected ways - toward problems of cosmopolitanism, immigration, and the graphically pornographic, for instance - the author is able to translate Benjamin's multifaceted formulations on style, the dialectical image, awakening, temporality, and spatiality into lucid and highly intelligent stylistics underscoring the philosophical notions of Schein and Erscheining, the interruptions of modernity, and the politics of sameness and otherness. Nothing less than a rethinking of the conditions of Western art as it relates to politics, architecture, and time, this study of Walter Benjamin's modernity in temporal and spatial terms is a provocative and original work of philosophy in its own right - a work that suggests that the time has come to revise existing paradigms.

This text explores the relationship between Walter Benjamin's literary and philosophical work and the tradition of German Romanticism, as well as Holderlin and Goethe. Through a detailed and scholarly analysis of the major texts, the book explores the endurance of Benjamin's relationship to Romanticism, the residual presence of Romantic Goethean and Holderlinian motifs in Benjamin's subsequent writings and how Benjamin's understanding of the relationship between criticism and Romanticism can still play a vital role in contemporary philosophical and literary practice. Contributors include Andrew Benjamin, Josh Cohen, David Ferris, Beatrice Hanssen, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Charlie Louth, Bettine Menke, Winfried Menninghaus, Anthony Phelan and Sigrid Weigel.

Walter Benjamin's most famous and influential essay remains The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Walter Benjamin and the Work of Art is the first book to provide a broad and dedicated analysis of this canonical work and its effect upon core contemporary concerns in the visual arts, aesthetics and the history of philosophy. The book is structured around three distinct areas: the extension of Benjamin's work; the question of historical connection; the importance of the essay in the development of criticism of both the visual arts and literature. Contributors to the volume include major Benjamin commentators, whose work has very much defined the reception of the essay, and leading philosophers, historians and aesthetician, whose approaches open up new areas of interest and relevance.

The first book to examine in detail Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History Benjamin's collection of fragments, Theses on the Philosophy of History, play a determining role in how Benjamin's thought is understood, as well as in the debate about the interplay between politics, history and time. Walter Benjamin and History is the first volume to give access to the themes and problems raised by the Theses, providing valuable exegetical and historical work on the text. The essays collected here are all the work of noted Benjamin scholars, and pursue the themes central to the Theses.

This collection explores, in Adorno''s description, `philosophy directed against philosophy''. The essays cover all aspects of Benjamin''s writings, from his early work in the philosophy of art and language, through to the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin''s understanding of history.

This collection explores, in Adorno''s description, `philosophy directed against philosophy''. The essays cover all aspects of Benjamin''s writings, from his early work in the philosophy of art and language, through to the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin''s understanding of history.