Walter Benjamin Popular Books
Walter Benjamin Biography & Facts
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; German: [ˈvaltɐ ˈbɛnjamiːn] ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and Neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis. Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Baudelaire, Goethe, Kafka, Kraus, Leskov, Proust, Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority. In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown. Life Early life and education Walter Benjamin and his younger siblings, Georg (1895–1942) and Dora (1901–1946), were born to a wealthy business family of assimilated Ashkenazi Jews in Berlin, then the capital of the German Empire. Walter's father, Emil Benjamin, was a banker in Paris who had relocated from France to Germany, where he worked as an antiques trader; he later married Pauline Schönflies. He owned a number of investments in Berlin, including ice skating rinks. Walter's uncle, William Stern, was a prominent German child psychologist who developed the concept of the intelligence quotient (IQ). He also had a cousin, Günther Anders, a German philosopher and anti-nuclear activist who studied under Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Through his mother, Walter's great-uncle was the classical archaeologist Gustav Hirschfeld. In 1902, ten-year-old Walter was enrolled at the Kaiser Friedrich School in Charlottenburg; he completed his secondary school studies ten years later. In his youth, Walter was of fragile health and so in 1905 the family sent him to Hermann-Lietz-Schule Haubinda, a boarding school in the Thuringian countryside, for two years; in 1907, having returned to Berlin, he resumed his schooling at the Kaiser Friedrich School. In 1912, at the age of 20, he enrolled at the University of Freiburg, but at the summer semester's end, he returned to Berlin and matriculated at the University of Berlin to continue studying philosophy. There, Benjamin had his first exposure to Zionism, which had not been part of his liberal upbringing. This gave him occasion to formulate his own ideas about the meaning of Judaism. Benjamin distanced himself from political and nationalist Zionism, instead developing in his own thinking what he called a kind of "cultural Zionism"—an attitude that recognized and promoted Judaism and Jewish values. In Benjamin's formulation, his Jewishness meant a commitment to the furtherance of European culture. He wrote: "My life experience led me to this insight: the Jews represent an elite in the ranks of the spiritually active ... For Judaism is to me in no sense an end in itself, but the most distinguished bearer and representative of the spiritual." This was a position Benjamin largely held lifelong. It was as a speaker and debater in the milieu of the Gustav Wyneken's German Youth Movement that Benjamin was first encountered by Gershom Scholem and later Martin Buber although he had parted ways with the youth group before they had become properly acquainted. Elected president of the Freie Studentenschaft (Free Students Association), Benjamin wrote essays arguing for educational and general cultural change while working alongside Wyneken at the legendary and controversial youth magazine Der Anfang (The beginning), that was banned in all schools in Bavaria. Wyneken's thesis that a new youth must pave the way for revolutionary cultural change became the main theme of all of Benjamin's publications at that time. When not reelected as student association president, he returned to Freiburg to study, with particular attention to the lectures of Heinrich Rickert; at that time he traveled to France and Italy. Benjamin's attempt to volunteer for service at the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 was rejected by the army. Benjamin later feigned illnesses to avoid conscription, allowing him to continue his studies and his translations of works by French poet Charles Baudelaire. His conspicuous refuge in Switzerland on dubious medical grounds was a likely factor in his ongoing challenges in obtaining academic employment after the war. The next year, 1915, Benjamin moved to Munich, and continued his schooling at the University of Munich, where he met Rainer Maria Rilke and Scholem; the latter became a friend. Intensive discussions with Scholem about Judaism and Jewish mysticism gave the impetus for the 1916 text (surviving as a manuscript) Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen ("On Language as Such and on the Language of Man"), which, as Benjamin said to Scholem , "has an immanent relationship to Judaism and to the first chapter of the Genesis". In that period, Benjamin wrote about the 18th-century Romantic German poet Friedrich Hölderlin. In 1917 Benjamin transferred to the University of Bern; there he met Ernst Bloch, and Dora Sophie Pollak (née Kellner), whom he married. They had a son, Stefan Rafael, in 1918. In 1919 Benjamin earned his PhD summa cum laude with the dissertation Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik (The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism). For his postdoctoral thesis in 1920, Benjamin hit upon an idea very similar to the thesis proposed by Martin Heidegger in the latter's own postdoctoral project (Duns Scotus: Theory of Categories and Meaning). Wolfram Eilenberger writes that Benjamin.... Discover the Walter Benjamin popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Walter Benjamin books.
Best Seller Walter Benjamin Books of 2024
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Walter Benjamin
Gianluca SollaBenjamin il fuggitivo, l’esiliato, l’outsider. È da fuggitivo che l’intellettuale tedesco scrive come nessuno ha ancora scritto. È da outsider, incapace di trovare un posto nella c...
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Walter Benjamin - Textos esenciales
Walter BenjaminLa obra ¿inclasificable? de Benjamin es ciertamente sui generis, tan amplia en sus intereses y tan fragmentaria, que fue preciso que pasaran varias décadas para que fuera reconocid...
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Walter Benjamin
Howard CaygillThis book analyses the development of Benjamin's concept of experience in his early writings showing that it emerges from an engagement with visual experience, and in particula...
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The Conservative Mind
Russell Kirk"It is inconceivable even to imagine, let alone hope for, a dominant conservative movement in America without Kirk's labor." WILLIAM F BUCKLEY "A profound critique of co...
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Walter Benjamin
Rafael Díaz SilvaLa obra es producto de doce años de investigación, en los que el autor consultó fuentes en archivos de Jerusalén, TelAviv, Berlín, Marbach y Portbou, entre otros. Narrado, simultán...
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Lives of the Artists
Giorgio Vasari & George BullBeginning with Cimabue and Giotto in the thirteenth century, Vasari traces the development of Italian art across three centuries to the golden epoch of Leonardo and Michelangelo. G...
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Walter Benjamin
Antoni J. Colom Cañellas & Lluís Ballester BrageEn el año que se cumple el 75º aniversario de la muerte de Walter Benjamin, los autores presentan con esta obra una sistemática de su pensamiento pedagógico. Supone un reto inédito...
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Walter Benjamin
Howard Eiland & Michael W. JenningsWalter Benjamin is one of the twentieth century’s most important intellectuals, and also one of its most elusive. His writingsmosaics incorporating philosophy, literary criticism, ...
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Walter Benjamin
Richard WolinFew twentiethcentury thinkers have proven as influential as Walter Benjamin, the GermanJewish philosopher and cultural and literary critic. Richard Wolin's book remains among the c...
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Phaedrus
PlatoPhaedrus is widely recognized as one of Plato's most profound and beautiful works. It takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus and its ostensible subject is love,...
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Grand Hotel Abyss
Stuart Jeffries“Marvelously entertaining, exciting and informative.” Guardian“An engaging and accessible history.” New York Review of BooksThis group biography is “an exhilarating pageturner” and...
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Poetry from the Future
Srećko Horvat'A compelling vision, an urgent necessity, and not beyond reach' Noam ChomskyThe past is forgotten, and the future is without hope. Dystopia has become a reality. This is the new ...
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Walter Benjamin
Gershom Scholem, Lee Sigel & Harry ZohnGershom Scholem is celebrated as the twentieth century’s most profound student of the Jewish mystical tradition; Walter Benjamin, as a master thinker whose extraordinary essays m...
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Walter Benjamin
Werner FuldDie Zeit der ersten Wiederentdeckung Walter Benjamins ist vorüber. Was oft unkritisch begrüßt worden war, erscheint im Licht dieser Biographie weitaus komplizierter und weniger ein...
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Walter Benjamin
Alain NazeL'image ne constitue pas seulement un objet de pensée chez Benjamin, mais vaut comme élément dans lequel se déploie sa pensée, à l'instar de la fulguration visuelle dans laquelle s...
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Walter Benjamin
Lorenz JägerGenie und Grenzgänger – Lorenz Jägers große Biographie Walter BenjaminsWalter Benjamin wollte in keine Schublade oder philosophische Schule passen, sein Werk blieb unvollendet – un...
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Walter Benjamin
Esther LeslieEsther Leslie's pathbreaking study of Walter Benjamin is unlike any other book presently available in English on Benjamin, in seeking to make a case for a more politicised reading ...
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Walter Benjamin
Jean-Michel PalmierWalter Benjamin. Un itinéraire théorique concentre et condense, dans un style clair et rigoureux, les clés thématiques indispensables pour aborder tout en nuances la pensée complex...
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Walter Benjamin
Terry EagletonEl interés por Walter Benjamin ha aumentado en los últimos años. Sin embargo, sólo hay un relativo conocimiento para resolver el enigma de su obra. Este libro no intenta alcanzar l...
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Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen
Larry McMurtryIn a lucid, brilliant work of nonfiction, Larry McMurtry has written a family portrait that also serves as a larger portrait of Texas itself, as it was and as it has become.Using a...
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Walter Benjamin
Howard CaygillThis book analyzes the development of Walter Benjamin's concept of experience in his early writings showing that it emerges from an engagement with visual experience, and in pa...
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Walter Benjamin
Jean-Marc LachaudSpectateur engagé et acteur critique de son époque, solidaire des « vaincus » violentés par les tumultes de l'Histoire, Walter Benjamin emprunte de nombreux chemins critiques de ma...
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Greek Tragedy
Aeschylus, Euripides & SophoclesAgememnon is the first part of the Aeschylus's Orestian trilogy in which the leader of the Greek army returns from the Trojan war to be murdered by his treacherous wife Clytemnestr...
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Walter Benjamin
Howard Eiland & Michael W. JenningsWalter Benjamin è stato uno dei piú importanti ed enigmatici intellettuali del ventesimo secolo. I suoi scritti, che sovrappongono filosofia, teoria letteraria, analisi marxiana ...
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Walter Benjamin
Carlos Pernisa Júnior, Fernando Fábio Fiorese Furtado & Nilson Assunção AlvarengaA imagem em Walter Benjamin é parte de um processo de construção de linhas de pensamento. Transformada em palavra, ou até feita das próprias palavras, a imagem tornase integrante d...
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Leonardo da Vinci
Walter IsaacsonThe #1 New York Times bestseller from Walter Isaacson brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography that is “a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achie...
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Crossings
Alex Landragin"A sparkling debut. Landragin’s seductive literary romp shines as a celebration of the act of storytelling." Publishers Weekly"Romance, mystery, history, and magical invention danc...
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Tales from the Thousand and One Nights
N. J. DawoodSometimes known as the Arabian Nights, Tales from the Thousand and One Nights includes some of the world's bestloved tales, including such classics as Aladdin and 'Sindbad the Sail...
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Walter Benjamin
Lluis MontullConcretament, la que es formula als anys vint, al text pròpiament titulat Per a la crítica de la violència; i la que apareix a les darreries de la seva filosofia, quan esdevé expre...
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Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin1927 begann Walter Benjamin anlässlich eines mehrmonatigen ParisAufenthalts mit seinen Überlegungen zu den Pariser Passagen, seinem ambitioniertesten, als Geschichtsphilosophie des...
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Walter Benjamin
Jeanne Marie GagnebinAlguns fazem de Benjamin um materialista otimista, que celebraria o fim da arte tradicional em proveito de uma união entre arte e técnica; outros, particularmente Adorno e seus dis...
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Expiration Dates
Rebecca SerleFrom the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years and One Italian Summer comes a love story that will define a generation. Being single is like playing the lottery. There...
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Selected Essays
Samuel JohnsonThis volume contains a generous selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as 'The Rambler' in the early 1750s. It was here that he first created the literary charact...
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God is Dead. God Remains Dead. And We Have Killed Him.
Friedrich Nietzsche, R. Kevin Hill & Michael A. Scarpitti'We have left dry land and put out to sea! We have burned the bridge behind us what is more, we have burned the land behind us!'Nietzsche's devastating demolition of religion woul...
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Henri Matisse
Alastair SookeHenri Matisse by Alastair Sooke an essential guide to one of the 20th century's greatest artists'One January morning in 1941, only a fortnight or so after his seventyfirst birthda...
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Delayed Rays of a Star
Amanda Lee KoeAn NPR Best Book of the YearA dazzling debut novel following the lives of three groundbreaking womenMarlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahlcinema legends who lit...
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Walter Benjamin and the Idea of Natural History
Eli FriedlanderIn 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 ho...
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Literature and Evil
Georges Bataille & Alastair Hamilton'Literature is not innocent,' stated Georges Bataille in this extraordinary 1957 collection of essays, arguing that only by acknowledging its complicity with the knowledge of evil ...
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Landscapes
John Berger & Tom Overton“Essential reading”n+1Creative and political art criticism on landscape works from the Renaissance to the present from a “master” storyteller (Arundhati Roy, author of The God of S...
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Walter Benjamin
Carlos Eduardo Jordão Machado, Rubens Machado Jr. & Miguel VeddaBenjamin retratou uma época marcada por radicais transformações da percepção e do comportamento dos cidadãos: o crescimento vertiginoso das grandes cidades, o impacto do trânsito, ...
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One Italian Summer
Rebecca SerleINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIn this “magical trip worth taking” (Associated Press), the New York Times bestselling author of In Five Years returns with a powerful novel about ...
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Walter Benjamin
Bernd WitteWalter Benjamin (1892 – 1940) war einer der einflussreichsten Intellektuellen der zwanziger und dreißiger Jahre. Seine geschichtsphilosophischen und ästhetischen Schriften wie «Ein...
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Walter Benjamin
Graeme GillochThe works of Walter Benjamin (18921940) are widely acclaimed as being among the most original and provocative writings of twentiethcentury critical thought, and have become require...
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Walter Benjamin
Uwe Steiner & Michael WinklerSeven decades after his death, German Jewish writer, philosopher, and literary critic Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) continues to fascinate and influence. Here Uwe Steiner offers a co...
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Selected Writings
Gerard De NervalPoet, visionary, shortstory writer and autobiographer, Gérard de Nerval (18081855) explored the uncertain borderlines between dream and reality, irony and madness, autobiography an...
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Walter Benjamin
Terry EagletonFrom our finest radical literary analyst, a classic study of the great philosopher and cultural theorist.