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Marking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, "Toward the Critique of Violence," this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory.
The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context.
With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and justice-which addresses such topical matters as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion-Benjamin's work is as important today as it was upon its publication in Weimar Germany a century ago.
Show moreMarking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, "Toward the Critique of Violence," this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory.
The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context.
With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and justice-which addresses such topical matters as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion-Benjamin's work is as important today as it was upon its publication in Weimar Germany a century ago.
Show moreWalter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German Jewish philosopher. Peter Fenves is Joan and Serapta Harrison Professor of Literature, Northwestern University. Julia Ng is Lecturer in Critical Theory and codirector of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought, Goldsmiths, University of London.
"This translation places before English readers for the first time
the most comprehensible version yet of Benjamin's compelling and
demanding essay."—Kevin McLaughlin, Brown University
"Fenves and Ng have assembled the definitive scholarly edition in
English of Walter Benjamin's influential 1921 essay "Toward the
Critique of Violence"...An indispensable resource for those
interested in Benjamin's particular intervention at a place where
political theology meets questions of morality, power, and
authority. Essential." –G.D. Miller, CHOICE
"A new edition of Benjamin's allusive essay helps elucidate what is
often enigmatic and esoteric about a text whose author is working
towards a more Marxist perspective. It is fully annotated and
includes a large and helpful selection of notes and fragments by
Benjamin that are closely related to what he was formulating."—Sean
Sheehan, The Prisma
"In making Benjamin's essay and these various sets of writings
easily accessible to a new generation of English-language readers,
as well as scholars already conversant with the main text, this
critical edition encourages the sort of deep analysis it enables.
Readers of Benjamin of all kinds, from undergraduate and graduate
students to established scholars, will surely appreciate the book
and the manifold resources it has to offer."—Michael Powers, The
German Quarterly
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