Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism

An Aesthetic of Redemption

Richard Wolin

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780520914308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Few twentieth-century thinkers have proven as influential as Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher and cultural and literary critic. Richard Wolin's book remains among the clearest and most insightful introductions to Benjamin's writings, offering a philosophically rich exposition of his complex relationship to Adorno, Brecht, Jewish Messianism, and Western Marxism. Wolin provides nuanced interpretations of Benjamin's widely studied writings on Baudelaire, historiography, and art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In a new Introduction written especially for this edition, Wolin discusses the unfinished Arcades Project, as well as recent tendencies in the reception of Benjamin's work and the relevance of his ideas to contemporary debates about modernity and postmodernity. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.
Few twentieth-century thinkers have proven as influential as Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish philosopher and cultural and literary critic. Richard Wolin's book remains among the clearest and most insightful introductions to Benjamin's writings, offerin

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• A Note on the Translations
• A Note on Terminology
• INTRODUCTION to the Revised Edition
• Chapter One ORIGINS
• Chapter Two THE PATH TO TRA VERSPIEL
• Chapter Three IDEAS AND THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
• Chapter Four FROM MESSIANISM TO MATERIALISM
• Chapter Five BENJAMIN AND BRECHT
• Chapter Six THE ADORNO BENJAMIN DISPUTE
• Chapter Seven BENJAMIN’S MATERIALIST THEORY OF EXPERIENCE
• Chapter Eight “A L’ÉCART DE TOUS LES COURANTS”
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX