Constellation: Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin in the Now-Time of History

By James McFarland

Book Overview

Constellation is the first extended exploration of the relationship between Walter Benjamin, the Weimar-era revolutionary cultural critic, and the radical philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The affinity between these noncontemporaneous thinkers serves as a limit case manifesting the precariousness and potentials of cultural transmission in a disillusioned present.

In five chapters, Constellation presents the changing figure of Nietzsche as Benjamin encountered him: an inspiration to his student activism, an authority for his skeptical philology, a manifestation of his philosophical nihilism, a companion in his political exile, and ultimately a subversive collaborator in his efforts to think beyond the hopeless temporality--new and always the same--of the present moment in history.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0823245365
• ISBN13: 9780823245369
• Release Date: December 2012
• Publisher: Modern Language Initiative
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.0"