In this Book
- Constellation: Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin in the Now-Time of History
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: Fordham University Press
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.
Table of Contents
- Abbreviations
- pp. xiii-xvi
- A Note on Citations
- pp. xvii-xviii
- Introduction
- pp. 1-15
- 1 Mortal Youth
- pp. 16-66
- 2 Presentation
- pp. 67-102
- 3 Inscription
- pp. 103-166
- 4 Collaboration
- pp. 167-207
- 5 Mad Maturity
- pp. 208-248
- Conclusion
- pp. 249-262
- Bibliography
- pp. 301-310