In this incisive new work, Eli Friedlander demonstrates that Walter Benjamin's entire corpus, from early to late, comprises a rigorous and sustained philosophical questioning of how human beings belong to nature.Across seemingly heterogeneous writings, Friedlander argues, Benjamin consistently explores what the natural in the human comes to, that is, how nature is transformed, actualized, redeemed, and overcome in human existence. The book progresses gradually from Benjamin's philo...

Walter Benjamin wird oft als Kulturkritiker angesehen, dessen überwältigendes Aufgebot an herausragenden und eigenwilligen Werken nicht viel mehr zusammenhält als der Eindruck, sie trügen den Stempel seines nicht weiter zu spezifizierenden „Genius“. In Eli Friedlanders Darstellung ist Benjamins OEuvre ein einzigartiges kohärentes philosophisches System, das fest in der philosophischen Denktradition verankert ist. Friedlander findet bereits in Benjamins Frühwerk die Grundgedanken vorformuli...

Kant’s The Critique of Judgment laid the groundwork of modern aesthetics when it appeared in 1790. Eli Friedlander’s reappraisal emphasizes the internal connection of judgment and meaning, showing how the pleasure in judging is intimately related to our capacity to draw meaning from our encounter with beauty.

Friedland presents the Laws, Plato's longest dialogue, as a drama that must be interpreted with close and sustained attention to each of its three characters. He argues that Megillos, seen by most commentators as the most obtuse character in the dialogue, is in fact a man of few words but of surprising capacity for reflection. This capacity, and the crisis to which it brings him, is key to understanding the Laws' exploration of human nature, permanently drawn both to what is beyond and ben...

The theme of the philosopher as therapist dominates Nietzsche's entire opus, from his earliest writings to the Zarathustra period and beyond. Nietzsche wishes to hasten the coming and future sanctification of a new type of synthetic human being, and his entire teaching is shaped by his own struggles against illness.Yet few Nietzsche scholars have paid this crucial therapeutic element of his thought sufficient attention.This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field is c...