Wild, Unforgettable Philosophy: In Early Works of Walter Benjamin
By (Author) Monad Rrenban
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Lexington Books
1st November 2005
United States
General
Non Fiction
Western philosophy from c 1800
838.91209
Paperback
436
Width 167mm, Height 228mm, Spine 34mm
640g
Through reading the early work of Walter Benjamin - up to and including the Trauerspiel book, Monad Rrenban brings forth a cohesive conception of the wild, unforgettable form, philosophy, as inherent in everything. Somewhat on the basis of existing philosophemes of Western metaphysics, Benjamin's well-known "esotericism" performs the transience of constraints of meaning. Both the form - free from duplicitous, authoritarian, and "rational" meaning - and the practice, of philosophy, enable production of the philosophical not only by so-called philosophers but also conceivably by everything - including art, poetry, and literature. In life and death, Walter Benjamin has and had the status of exile from departmental philosophy. Especially from Benjamin's early work, however, Monad Rrenban is able to elicit the force of the form, philosophy. Distinct in its analysis and depth of analysis, Wild, Unforgettable Philosophy in Early Works of Walter Benjamin elaborates the wild, unforgettable form - philosophy - in relation to language, the discipline and the practice of philosophy, criticism, and the politics of death.
This study of Walter Benjamin is a truly extraordinary piece of scholarship. It is extraordinary in a number of respects: in the depth if its insight, the range of its coverage, the acuteness of its judgments, the thoroughness of its research, the dramatic intensity of its presentation....The results of his meticulous exposition are illuminating for Benjamin's work as a whole....In fact, I think it can be safely said that this is, by far, the best extended study of Walter Benjamin yet written in English. -- Rainer Ngele, Johns Hopkins University