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More Than Life: Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin on Art
Contributor(s): Symons, Stéphane (Author)
ISBN: 0810135779     ISBN-13: 9780810135772
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
OUR PRICE:   $34.60  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: September 2017
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | European - German
- Philosophy | History & Surveys - Modern
Dewey: 193
LCCN: 2017017807
Physical Information: 0.5" H x 6" W x 9" (0.70 lbs) 240 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Germany
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
More Than Life: Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin on Art is the first book to trace the philosophical relation between Georg Simmel and his one-time student Walter Benjamin, two of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century.

Reading Simmel's work, particularly his essays on Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rodin, alongside Benjamin's concept of Unscheinbarkeit (inconspicuousness) and his writings on Charlie Chaplin, More Than Life demonstrates that both Simmel and Benjamin conceive of art as the creation of something entirely new rather than as a mimetic reproduction of a given. The two thinkers diverge in that Simmel emphasizes the presence of a continuous movement of life, whereas Benjamin highlights the priority of discontinuous, interruptive moments.

With the aim of further elucidating Simmel and Benjamin's ideas on art, St phane Symons presents a number of in-depth analyses of specific artworks that were not discussed by these authors. Through an insightful examination of both the conceptual affinities and the philosophical differences between Simmel and Benjamin, Symons reconstructs a crucial episode in twentieth-century debates on art and aesthetics.