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

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.

Author: James McFarland
Publisher: Modern Language Initiative
Published: 11/14/2014
Pages: 344
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 8.97h x 6.15w x 0.86d
ISBN: 9780823263097

About the Author

James McFarland is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Vanderbilt University.