Books by Andrew Benjamin

Presents an examination of topics in ancient philosophy through the lens of modern European thought. This book aims to underscore the relevance of Ancient Philosophy for contemporary debates in Continental Philosophy. It also presents scholarship in the field of modern European thought.

In his new book, the eminent philosopher Andrew Benjamin turns his attention to architecture, design, sculpture, painting and writing. Drawing predominantly on a European tradition of modern philosophical criticism running from the German Romantics through Walter Benjamin and beyond, he offers a sequence of strong meditations on a diverse ensemble of works and themes: on the library and the house, on architectural theory, on Rachel Whiteread, Peter Eisenman, Anselm Kiefer, Peter Nielson, David Hawley, Terri Bird, Elizabeth Presa and others. In Benjamin's hands, criticism is bound up with judgment. Objects of criticism always become more than mere documents. These essays dissolve the prejudices that have determined our relation to aesthetic objects and to thought, releasing in their very care and attentiveness to the 'objects themselves' the unexpected potentialities such objects harbour. In his sensitivity to what he calls 'the particularity of material events', Benjamin's writing comes to exemplify new possibilities for the contemporary practice of criticism itself. These essays are a major contribution to critical thought about art and architecture today, and a genuine work of what Benjamin himself identifies as a 'materialist aesthetics'.

Walter Benjamin is universally recognised as one of the key thinkers of modernity: his writings on politics, language, literature, media, theology and law have had an incalculable influence on contemporary thought. Yet the problem of architecture in and for Benjamin's work remains relatively underexamined. Does Benjamin's project have an architecture and, if so, how does this architecture affect the explicit propositions that he offers us? In what ways are Benjamin's writings centrally caught up with architectural concerns, from the redevelopment of major urban centres to the movements that individuals can make within the new spaces of modern cities? How can Benjamin's theses help us to understand the secret architectures of the present? This volume takes up the architectural challenge in a number of innovative ways, collecting essays by both well-known and emerging scholars on time in cinema, the problem of kitsch, the design of graves and tombs, the orders of road-signs, childhood experience in modern cities, and much more. Engaged, interdisciplinary, bristling with insights, the essays in this collection will constitute an indispensable supplement to the work of Walter Benjamin, as well as providing a guide to some of the obscurities of our own present.

Reprint. Originally published: London, England: Routledge, 1989.

What is the work of art? How does art work as art? Andrew Benjamin contends that the only way to address these questions is by developing a radically new materialist philosophy of art, and by rethinking the history of art from within that perspective. A materialist philosophy of art starts with the contention that meaning is only ever the after effect of the way in which materials work. Starting with the relation between history, materials and work (art's work), this book opens up a highly original reconfiguration of the philosophy of art. Benjamin undertakes a major project that seeks to develop a set of complex interarticulations between art history and an approach to art's work that emphasizes art's material presence. A philosophy of art emerges from the limitations of aesthetics.

This book provides a highly original approach to the writings of the twentieth-century German philosopher Walter Benjamin by one of his most distinguished readers. It develops the idea of 'working with' Benjamin, seeking both to read his corpus and to put it to work - to show how a reading of Benjamin can open up issues that may not themselves be immediately at stake in his texts. The defining elements in Benjamin's writings that Andrew Benjamin isolates - history, experience, translation, technical reproducibility and politics - are put to work; that is, their utility is established in engaging the works of others. The question is how utility is understood. As Andrew Benjamin argues, utility involves demonstrating the different ways in which Benjamin is a central thinker within the project of understanding the nature of modernity. This is best achieved by noting connections and points of differentiation between his work and the writings of Adorno and Heidegger. However, the more demanding project is that 'working with' Benjamin necessitates deploying the implicit assumptions within his writings as well as demanding of his formulations more than is provided by their initial presentation. What is at stake is not the application of Benjamin's thought. Rather what counts is its use.Working with Benjamin engages with the themes central to Benjamin's work with deftness, daring and critical insight while at the same time situating those themes within current academic and cultural debates.

By developing his own conception of the 'figure' Andrew Benjamin has written an innovative and provocative study of the complex relationship between philosophy, the history of painting and their presentation of both Jews and animals.As Benjamin makes clear the 'Other' is never abstract. He underscores the means by which the ethical imperative, arising from the way the history of philosophy and the history of art are constructed, shows us how to respond to an already identified, even if unacknowledged, determinant other.

This text outlines a philosophical account of architecture and attempts to establish the singularity of architectural practice and theory. The essays touch on issues as wide ranging as the problem of memory, the work of Eisenman and the dystopias of science fiction.

Benjamin provides readings of key canonical texts in the history of philosophy, including works by Hegel and Heidegger. This book represents a thorough and original contribution to contemporary philosophy to date.

Exploring the relationship between art and philosophy, this treatise argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. The author explores painting, architecture and literature to elaborate the various aspects of ontological difference.

An exploration of how we think about the present, this text draws upon philosophy, architecture and poetry. It considers the roles played by themes that fragment and complicate the present. Loss, memory, tragedy, and hope are examined in a discussion of what is meant by the present.