Download or read book Utopia from Thomas More to Walter Benjamin written by Miguel Abensour and published by Univocal Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Utopia poses a question. Not simply in the sense of a problem to be resolved and at the same time eliminated . . . but in the sense that, within the economy of the human condition, utopia, the aim of social alterity--of all social otherness--is ceaselessly being reborn, coming back to life despite all the blows rained down upon it, as if human resistance had taken up residence within it." For the French philosopher Miguel Abensour, the fictional genre of utopia has provided thinkers and artists a fertile ground to explore for the past 500 years, both as a way to imagine new emancipatory practices of shared existence and as a tyrannical imposition of power. Here, Abensour's project is to examine the idea of utopia in two different but powerful moments in its trajectory: first, utopia's beginning, when Thomas More sought a path for justice through a world in transformation, and second, when utopia faced its greatest danger, the moment that Walter Benjamin called "catastrophe."
Download or read book Imaginary Communities written by Phillip Wegner and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-06-04 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing from literary history, social theory, and political critique, this far-reaching study explores the utopian narrative as a medium for understanding the social space of the modern nation-state. Considering the narrative utopia from its earliest manifestation in Thomas More's sixteenth-century work Utopia to some of the most influential utopias of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this book is an astute study of a literary genre as well as a nuanced dialectical meditation on the history of utopian thinking as a quintessential history of modernity. As he unravels the dialectics at work in the utopian narrative, Wegner gives an ambitious synthetic discussion of theories of modernity, considering and evaluating the ideas of writers such as Ernst Bloch, Louis Marin, Gilles Deleuze, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Henri Lefebvre, Paul de Man, Karl Mannheim, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jürgen Habermas, Slavoj Zizek, and Homi Bhabha.
Download or read book The Utopian Function of Art and Literature written by Ernst Bloch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1989-03-06 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays in aesthetics by the philosopher Ernst Bloch that belong to the tradition of cultural criticism represented by Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin. The aesthetic essays of the philosopher Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) belong to the rich tradition of cultural criticism represented by Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin. Bloch was a significant creative source for these thinkers, and his impact is nowhere more evident than in writings on art. Bloch was fascinated with art as a reflection of both social realities and human dreams. Whether he is discussing architecture or detective novels, the theme that drives his work is always the same—the striving for "something better," for a "homeland" that is more socially aware, more humane, more just. The book opens with an illuminating discussion between Bloch and Adorno on the meaning of utopia; then follow twelve essays written between 1930 and 1973 on topics such as aesthetic theory, genres such as music, painting, theater, film, opera, poetry, and the novel, and perhaps most important, popular culture in the form of fairy tales, detective stories, and dime novels. The MIT Press has previously published Ernst Bloch's Natural Law and Human Dignity and his magnum opus, The Principle of Hope. The Utopian Function of Art and Literature is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.
Download or read book Thomas More s Utopia written by Thomas More and published by BookRix. This book was released on 2019-05-22 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. There is no private property on Utopia, with goods being stored in warehouses and people requesting what they need. There are also no locks on the doors of the houses, which are rotated between the citizens every ten years. Agriculture is the most important job on the island. Every person is taught it and must live in the countryside, farming for two years at a time, with women doing the same work as men. Parallel to this, every citizen must learn at least one of the other essential trades: weaving (mainly done by the women), carpentry, metalsmithing and masonry. There is deliberate simplicity about these trades; for instance, all people wear the same types of simple clothes and there are no dressmakers making fine apparel. All able-bodied citizens must work; thus unemployment is eradicated, and the length of the working day can be minimised: the people only have to work six hours a day (although many willingly work for longer). More does allow scholars in his society to become the ruling officials or priests, people picked during their primary education for their ability to learn. All other citizens are however encouraged to apply themselves to learning in their leisure time. Slavery is a feature of Utopian life and it is reported that every household has two slaves. The slaves are either from other countries or are the Utopian criminals. These criminals are weighed down with chains made out of gold. The gold is part of the community wealth of the country, and fettering criminals with it or using it for shameful things like chamber pots gives the citizens a healthy dislike of it. It also makes it difficult to steal as it is in plain view. The wealth, though, is of little importance and is only good for buying commodities from foreign nations or bribing these nations to fight each other. Slaves are periodically released for good behaviour. Jewels are worn by children, who finally give them up as they mature. Other significant innovations of Utopia include: a welfare state with free hospitals, euthanasia permissible by the state, priests being allowed to marry, divorce permitted, premarital sex punished by a lifetime of enforced celibacy and adultery being punished by enslavement. Meals are taken in community dining halls and the job of feeding the population is given to a different household in turn. Although all are fed the same, Raphael explains that the old and the administrators are given the best of the food. Travel on the island is only permitted with an internal passport and any people found without a passport are, on a first occasion, returned in disgrace, but after a second offence they are placed in slavery. In addition, there are no lawyers and the law is made deliberately simple, as all should understand it.
Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-02-29 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIV16th-century classic by English ecclesiastic and scholar envisioned a tolerant, patriarchal island kingdom free of private property, violence, bloodshed and vice. Forerunner of many later attempts. /div
Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by e-artnow. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries.
Download or read book Three Early Modern Utopias written by Thomas More and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique edition of three early modern utopian texts, using a contemporary translation of More's Utopia and examining the Renaissance world view as shown by these writers. The edition includes the illustrative material that accompanied early editions of Utopia, full chronologies of the authors, notes, and glossary.
Download or read book Utopia Limited written by Anahid Nersessian and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-09 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is utopia if not a perfect impossible world? Anahid Nersessian reveals the basic misunderstanding of that ideal. Applying the lessons of art to the rigors of life on an imperiled planet, she enlists the Romantics to redefine utopia as an investment in limitation—not a perfect world but one where we get less than we hoped but more than we had.
Download or read book Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries written by Ivan Boldyrev and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ernst Bloch and His Contemporaries is a much needed concise yet comprehensive overview of Ernst Bloch's early and later thought. It fills an important gap in research on the history of German thought in the 20th century by reconstructing the contexts of Bloch's philosophy, while focusing on his contemporaries - Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno. Ernst Bloch's influential ideas include his theory of utopian consciousness, his resolute inclination to merge aesthetics and politics, rehabilitation of hope, and atheistic conception of Christianity. Although Bloch's major early texts, Spirit of Utopia and Traces, have recently been translated into English, and there has been renewed interest in Bloch over the last 15 years, he is still relatively unknown compared to other left German-Jewish intellectuals. Ivan Boldyrev places Bloch's often enigmatic prose within contexts more familiar to English-speaking readers, and outlines the most important messages in Bloch's legacy still relevant today to European intellectual discourse, in particular aesthetics and philosophy of history.
Download or read book Walter Benjamin written by Bernd Witte and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanded and revised, as well as translated, from the 1985 German edition, details the thought of Benjamin (1892-1940), an all-around European intellectual most active between the wars. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book One Way Street written by Walter Benjamin and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic collection of Walter Benjamin's essays, including some of his most celebrated writing Walter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions. This collection, introduced by Susan Sontag, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work over a twenty-year period, and thus does full justice to the richness and the multi-dimensional nature of his thought. Included in these pages are aphorisms and townscapes, esoteric meditation and reminiscences of childhood, and reflections on language, psychology, aesthetics and politics.
Download or read book Utopia written by Thomas More and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-02-08 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utopia (Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia) is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More (1478-1535) published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs. Many aspects of More's description of Utopia are reminiscent of life in monasteries. Utopia was begun while More was an envoy in the Low Countries in May 1515. More started by writing the introduction and the description of the society which would become the second half of the work and on his return to England he wrote the "dialogue of counsel", completing the work in 1516. In the same year, it was printed in Leuven under Erasmus's editorship and after revisions by More it was printed in Basel in November 1518. It was not until 1551, sixteen years after More's execution, that it was first published in England as an English translation by Ralph Robinson. Gilbert Burnet's translation of 1684 is probably the most commonly cited version. The work seems to have been popular, if misunderstood: the introduction of More's Epigrams of 1518 mentions a man who did not regard More as a good writer. The eponymous title Utopia has since eclipsed More's original story and the term is now commonly used to describe an idyllic, imaginary society. Although he may not have directly founded the contemporary notion of what has since become known as Utopian and dystopian fiction, More certainly popularised the idea of imagined parallel realities, and some of the early works which owe a debt to Utopia must include The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, Description of the Republic of Christianopolis by Johannes Valentinus Andreae, New Atlantis by Francis Bacon and Candide by Voltaire. The politics of Utopia have been seen as influential to the ideas of Anabaptism and communism.[citation needed] While utopian socialism was used to describe the first concepts of socialism, later Marxist theorists tended to see the ideas as too simplistic and not grounded on realistic principles. The religious message in the work and its uncertain, possibly satiric, tone has also alienated some theorists from the work. An applied example of More's Utopia can be seen in Vasco de Quiroga's implemented society in Michoacán, Mexico, which was directly inspired by More's work.
Download or read book Body and Image Space written by Sigrid Weigel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-12-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade has seen a new wave of interest in philosophical and theoretical circles in the writings of Walter Benjamin. In Body-and Image-Space Sigrid Weigel, one of Germany's leading feminist theorists and a renowned commentator on the work of Walter Benjamin, argues that the reception of his work has so far overlooked a crucial aspect of his thought - his use of images. Weigel shows that it is precisely his practice of thinking in images that holds the key to understanding the full complexity, richness and topicality of Benjamin's theory.
Download or read book The Last Utopia written by Samuel Moyn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-05 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.
Download or read book The Storyteller written by Walter Benjamin and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful collection of the legendary thinker’s short stories The Storyteller gathers for the first time the fiction of the legendary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, best known for his groundbreaking studies of culture and literature, including Illuminations, One-Way Street and The Arcades Project. His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, and delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling and fortune-telling, and explore the themes that defined Benjamin. The novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables and riddles in this collection are brought to life by the playful imagery of the modernist artist and Bauhaus figure Paul Klee.
Download or read book Sediments of Time written by Reinhart Koselleck and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sediments of Time features the most important essays by renowned German historian Reinhart Koselleck not previously available in English, several of them essential to his theory of history. The volume sheds new light on Koselleck's crucial concerns, including his theory of sediments of time; his theory of historical repetition, duration, and acceleration; his encounters with philosophical hermeneutics and political and legal thought; his concern with the limits of historical meaning; and his views on historical commemoration, including that of the Second World War and the Holocaust. A critical introduction addresses some of the challenges and potentials of Koselleck's reception in the Anglophone world.
