The aim of this paper is to begin to respond to the question of how to engage the presence of catastrophic climate change as a locus of philosophical thought. What has to be thought is the end of the world. Central to that project is Heidegger’s “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and in particular, Heidegger’s thinking of the earth/world relation, both in itself and in terms of the limits it encounters. Heidegger’s use of “examples” of artwork, as well (...) as works by Nicolas Poussin and Anselm Kiefer, are deployed in order to begin to understand the role of art in thinking the end of the world. (shrink)

Many of those working on moral responsibility assume that "once blameworthy, always blameworthy." They believe that blameworthiness is like diamonds: it is forever. We argue that blameworthiness is not forever; rather, it can diminish through time. We begin by showing that the view that blameworthiness is forever is best understood as the claim that personal identity is sufficient for diachronic blameworthiness. We argue that this view should be rejected because it entails that blameworthiness for past action is completely divorced from (...) the distinctive psychological features of the person at the later time. This is because on none of the leading accounts of personal identity does identity require the preservation of any distinctive psychological features, but merely requires some form of continuity. The claim that blameworthiness is forever should therefore be rejected. We then sketch an account of blameworthiness over time, and consider two objections. (shrink)

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 ofBenjamin 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 AndrewBenjamin 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. Ratherwhat 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. (shrink)

Towards the unconditioned: Kant, Epicurus and Glückseligkeit -- Arendt and the time of the pardon -- Kant, evil, and the unconditioned -- Judgment after Derrida.

_An original philosophical account of relational ontology drawing on the work of Descartes, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Heidegger._.

This collection explores, in Adorno's description, `philosophy directed against philosophy'. The essays cover all aspects of Benjamin's writings, from his early work in the philosophy of art and language, through to the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin's understanding of history.

In recent years, the science and the philosophy of consciousness has seen growing interest in structural questions about consciousness. This is the Editorial Introduction for a special volume for Philosophy and the Mind Sciences on “Structuralism in Consciousness Studies.”.

Pandemic plans recommend phases of response to an emergent infectious disease outbreak, and are primarily aimed at preventing and mitigating human-to-human transmission. These plans carry presumptive weight and are increasingly being operationalized at the national, regional and international level with the support of the World Health Organization. The conventional focus of pandemic preparedness for EIDs of zoonotic origin has been on public health and human welfare. However, this focus on human populations has resulted in strategically important disciplinary silos. As the (...) risks of zoonotic diseases have implications that reach across many domains outside traditional public health, including anthropological, environmental, and veterinary fora, a more inclusive ecological perspective is paramount for an effective response to future outbreaks. (shrink)

The paper both connects and disassociates the work of Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg. There are two interrelated undertakings. The first involves the relationship between philosophy and art history and thus how art history figures within the philosophical. The second pertains to the status of the image. Part of the argument to be advanced is that an engagement with philosophical approach to art history yields a concern with the image in which it is the image's material presence that proves (...) decisive. Indeed, it is by insisting on the object's materiality that it then becomes possible to locate the effective presence of the gesture as integral to the work of art. The contention is that gesture is the intersection of art's material presence and the concerns of meaning. The paper us develop via an engagement with works by Edgar Degas and Luca Signorelli. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to examine the limits of Aristotle’s and Arendt’s contributions to a philosophical anthropology. By focusing on the concept of ‘potentiality’—and thus the ‘good life’ as a potentiality awaiting actualization—the limit emerges from the way Aristotle understands ‘life.’ His discussion of slavery is pivotal in this regard.

Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin have emerged as figures of great importance in the current debates about modernity. The central and privileged place of the philosophical problem of modernity has been threatened by the possibility advanced by Jean-François Lyotard that modernity as a project is over and the new concern is the postmodern. The work of Adorno and Benjamin is the background against which the problems of modernity and postmodernity are addressed in this volume. This collection brings together (...) some of the most innovative academics working in the area of European radical philosophy. Issues covered range from art, literature and music to feminism and Judaism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is establish the difference between aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Part of the argument is that only a philosophy of art can give an adequate philosophical account of works of art. The argument is advanced drawing on the writings of Immanuel Kant and Gunter Figal.

Benjamin provides new and important readings of key canonical texts in the history of philosophy in his sustained philosophical reworking of ontology. Amongst texts included are Hegel's _Difference Essay_ and the _Shorter Logic_ and Heidegger's _Time and Being_ and _The Question of Being_. The effective presence of ontology, defined as `an original difference', will be familiar to readers of his earlier writings. This book represents his most thorough and original contribution to contemporary philosophy to date.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the role of allegory in Philo and spe­cifically in his text On the Migration of Abraham. This involves the twofold move of arguing that even though Philo remains a Platonist and that his language is Platonic in orientation what occurs is a transformation of seeing, which is an immediate activity, into reading, which is always mediate. The second elements stems from this insistence on mediation. It results in freeing allegory from the hold (...) of the allegorical/literal op­position. Allegory is transformed as a result in the name of an ineliminable allegoresis. (shrink)

Collected essays consider points of affinity and friction between Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger. Despite being contemporaries, Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger never directly engaged with one another. Yet, Hannah Arendt, who knew both men, pointed out common ground between the two. Both were concerned with the destruction of metaphysics, the development of a new way of reading and understanding literature and art, and the formulation of radical theories about time and history. On the other hand, their life (...) trajectories and political commitments were radically different. In a 1930 letter, Benjamin told a friend that he had been reading Heidegger and that if the two were to engage with one another, “sparks will fly.” Acknowledging both their affinities and points of conflict, this volume stages that confrontation, focusing in particular on temporality, Romanticism, and politics in their work. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to examine the limits of Aristotle’s and Arendt’s contributions to a philosophical anthropology. By focusing on the concept of ‘potentiality’—and thus the ‘good life’ as a potentiality awaiting actualization—the limit emerges from the way Aristotle understands ‘life.’ His discussion of slavery is pivotal in this regard.

Walter Benjamin's Politics of 'bad tasteMichael Mac Modernity as an unfinished Project: Benjamin and Political RomanticismRobert Sinnerbrink Violence, ...

Walter Benjamin’s writings on fashion need to be read as engagements with the problem of historical time and a related politics of time. The aim of this article is to develop this position. Its point of orientation is Thesis XIV from the Theses on the Philosophy of History. What is argued is that close attention to the temporality of change and novelty within fashion may allow an insight into a conception of interruption and the ‘new’, however, it cannot yield (...) a politics. Moreover, the link between fashion and utopianism allows for the development of a critique of the utopian dimension of Benjamin’s thought. The basis of that critique is the inherent politics of time in his own writings. (shrink)

This collection explores, in Adorno's description, `philosophy directed against philosophy'. The essays cover all aspects of Benjamin's writings, from his early work in the philosophy of art and language, through to the concept of history. The experience of time and the destruction of false continuity are identified as the key themes in Benjamin's understanding of history.

Jean-Francois Lyotard was one of the founding members of the College Internationale de philosophie. Ha has taught at Vincennes, Saint Denis and is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Irvine. Several of his books have appeared in English, notable The Postmodern Condition, Just Gaming and The Dirrerend. The Lyotard Reader is a collection of Jean-Francois Lyotard's most important and significant papers to date. While they are all written from within philosophy, they seek to address subjects as (...) wide-ranging as film, painting, psychoanalysis, Judaism and politics. The originality of Lyotard's work means that it can not be readily situated within any one philosophical tradition. Instead he returns philosophy itself to debates across a range of areas and, in so doing, redefines the philosophical enterprise. A number of chapters in The Lyotard Reader appear for the first time in English. This is the most comprehensive collection available of Lyotard's work, work has profoundly influenced debates on the Enlightenment, on modernity, on postmodernity, on the transmission f information, on literary theory and on philosophy. (shrink)

Art, Mimesis and the Avant-Garde explores the relationship between art and philosophy. Andrew Benjamin argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. It is in relation to this centrality, understood through the differences between modes of being, that art, mimesis, and the avant-garde come to be presented. A fundamental part of this book is the original interpretations of important contemporary painters and their themes: Lucian Freud's self-portraits, Francis Bacon 's use (...) of mirrors, R. B. Kitaj and Jewish identity, Anselm Kiefer and iconoclasm. Apart from painting, Benjamin considers architecture, literature, and the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin and Descartes in elaborating the various aspects of ontological difference. Benjamin develops the theory of the avant-garde as a philosophical category rather than a historical marker, thus bringing the worlds of contemporary art criticism and contemporary philosophy closer together. (shrink)

Offers a sustained meditation on the role of interruption in modernity. This book departs from and elaborates an important but overlooked dimension of Walter Benjamin's discourse: the question of style as it bears upon temporality and spatiality. This work suggests that the time has come to revise existing paradigms.

World-leading philosopher Andrew Benjamin presents a radically new materialist philosophy of art and a rethinking of the history of art in that context.

An understanding of what we mean by the present is one of the key issues in literature, philosophy, and culture today, but also one of the most neglected and misunderstood. _Present Hope_ develops a fascinating philosophical understanding of the present, approaching this question via discussions of the nature of historical time, the philosophy of history, memory, and the role of tragedy. Andrew Benjamin shows how we misleadingly view the present as simply a product of chronological time, ignoring the (...) role of history and memory. Accordingly, discussion of what is meant by the present disappears from philosophical concern. To draw attention to this absence, Andrew Benjamin introduces the notion of hope and asks what this concept can tell us about the present. At the heart of the outstanding work is an emphasis on the relation between hope and the Jewish tradition. Through discussions of philosophical responses to the Holocaust, the work of Walter Benjamin, Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, and the poetry of Paul Celan, _Present Hope_ shows how we must look beyond the purely philosophical horizon to understand the present we live in. (shrink)

This engrossing study, first published in 1989, explores the basic mutuality between philosophy and translation. By studying the conceptions of translation in Plato, Seneca, Davidson, Walter Benjamin and Freud, Andrew Benjamin reveals the interplay between the two disciplines not only in their relationship to language, but also at a deeper, cognitive level. Benjamin engages throughout with the central tenets of post-structuralism: the concept of a constant yet illusive ‘true’ meaning has lost authority, but remains a problem. (...) The fact of translation seems to defy the notion that ‘meaning’ is reducible to its component words; yet, to say that the ‘truth’ is more than the sum of its parts, we are challenging the very foundations of what it is to communicate, to understand, and to know. In Translation and the Nature of Philosophy, the author sets out his own theory of language in light of these issues. (shrink)

Critique as a philosophical concept needs to be recast once it is linked to the possibility of a productive opening. In such a context critique has an important affinity to destruction and forms of inauguration. Working through writings of Marx and Walter Benjamin, specifically Benjamin's 'The Meaning of Time in the Moral World', destruction and inauguration are repositioned in terns of othering and the caesura of allowing.

In this paper, we examine the lawfulness of a proposal to provide elective ventilation to incompetent patients who are potential organ donors. Under the current legal framework, this depends on whether the best interests test could be satisfied. It might be argued that, because the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (UK) (and the common law) makes it clear that the best interests test is not confined to the patient's clinical interests, but extends to include the individual's own values, wishes and beliefs, (...) the proposal will be in the patient's best interests. We reject this claim. We argue that, as things currently stand, the proposal could not lawfully be justified as a blanket proposition by reference to the best interests test. Accordingly, a modification of the law would be necessary to render the proposal lawful. We conclude with a suggestion about how that could be achieved. (shrink)

The project of this paper is part of a larger attempt to develop a philosophy of art. Integral to that project is the distinction between aesthetics and a philosophy of art. It is always possible to consider affect as an end in itself if what is at stake involves a series of psychological claims. Equally, it is possible to engage with such claims philosophically. However, there is no clear connection between either possibility and a philosophy of art. In the latter (...) the presentation of affect is always located within images. Images are produced by the work of materials. Images have to be understood in terms of that production. They have a material presence. If there is a failure to insist on the complex materiality of art’s work as comprising a locus of philosophical inquiry, then any subsequent theory of the image is unable to contribute to the development of a genuine philosophy of art. Moreover, within the history of art images are informed form. The informing of form has two elements. Form is informed firstly by the history in which those images are located, and secondly by their capacity to be reworked. The latter can be understood as a futural coming-into-relation and thus the possibility that images and the elements from which they are comprised are able to have an afterlife. The afterlife is forms’ capacity to continue to be informed. It is this latter possibility which necessitates that hermeneutic concerns supplant aesthetic ones in the creation of a philosophy of art. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of a political theology that take both God and law as central. Rather than operate abstractly, the paper works closely on passages from Exodus and Genesis that are themselves linked directly to what is at stake in “listening to God”. The transformation of the immediacy of listening to the necessarily mediated response to the law is the move that the passages from the Torah entail. Within that setting, listening breaks (...) the hold of immediacy and thus the possibility of any immediacy of reception. What is opened as a result, the argument continues, is an importantly different hermeneutic register and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of a political theology that take both God and law as central. Rather than operate abstractly, the paper works closely on passages from Exodus and Genesis that are themselves linked directly to what is at stake in “listening to God”. The transformation of the immediacy of listening to the necessarily mediated response to the law is the move that the passages from the Torah entail. Within that setting, listening (...) breaks the hold of immediacy and thus the possibility of any immediacy of reception. What is opened as a result, the argument continues, is an importantly different hermeneutic register and philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

The aim of this response is twofold. It is to reinforce the argument that the concept of life is central to Walter Benjamin; secondly, it is to clarify some of the elements involved in thinking philosophically about the political.

The article examines Hannah Arendt’s contribution to the development of a philosophical anthropology that takes relationality as its point of departure. The relations in question are to ‘others’ and to ‘place.’ The first part of the article argues that while relationality has to be understood as a descriptive of human being, the possibility of coming into relation—in Arendt’s terms ‘appearing’—needs to be understood as the actualization of a potentiality. While the potentiality has a necessary existence, its actualization is inherently contingent. (...) It is the problem of potentiality as that which demands actualization that, while fundamental to Arendt’s project, she fails to take up. The second part of the article traces the presence of this limit in Arendt’s thought through her engagement with Heidegger in her text What is Existential Philosophy? (shrink)

Colour plays a fundamental role in the philosophical treatments of painting. Colour while it is an essential part of the work of art cannot be divorced from the account of painting within which it is articulated. This paper begins with a discussion of the role of colour in Schelling's conception of art. Nonetheless its primary concern is to develop a critical encounter with Jean-François Lyotard's analysis of the Dutch painter Karel Appel. The limits of Lyotard's writings on painting, which this (...) paper will attribute in part to Lyotard's ‘empiricism’, becomes most apparent in his treatment of colour. (shrink)

JPVA Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts No 6 Complexity Architecture / Art / Philosophy 'Beginning with complexity will involve working with the recognition that there has always been more than one. Here however this insistent "more than one" will be positioned beyond the scope of semantics; rather than complexity occurring within the range of meaning and taking the form of a generalised polysemy, it will be linked to the nature of the object and to its production. Complexity, therefore, (...) will be inextricably connected to the ontology of the object. What this means is that complexity, in resisting the hold of a semantic idealism on the one hand, and the attempt to give to it the position of being the basis of a new foundationalism on the other, becomes a way of thinking both the presence and the production of objects.' Andrew Benjamin The Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts has set new standards in its exploration of themes central to philosophy's relation to the visual arts, illuminating areas of art criticism, architecture, feminism as well as philosophy itself. Rather than simply reflecting current trends it provides a forum in which the real developments in the analysis of the visual arts and its larger cultural and political context can be presented. Articles by well known philosophers and theorists, as well as some lesser known, together with writings by artists and architects allow a strong interdisciplinary approach reflecting the Journal's roots in post-structural theory. Previous issues include: Philosophy & the Visual Arts (No 1) Philosophy & Architecture (No 2) Architecture, Space, Painting (No 3) The Body (No 4) Abstraction (No 5). (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.