Constellation - by James McFarland

About the Book

Elaborates the relationship between the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and the cultural critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) through close readings of their respective texts as an example of the precariousness of cultural transmission in the present.

Book Synopsis

Constellation is the first extended exploration of the relationship between Walter Benjamin, the Weimar-era revolutionary cultural critic, and the radical philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The affinity between these noncontemporaneous thinkers serves as a limit case manifesting the precariousness and potentials of cultural transmission in a disillusioned present.

In five chapters, Constellation presents the changing figure of Nietzsche as Benjamin encountered him: an inspiration to his student activism, an authority for his skeptical philology, a manifestation of his philosophical nihilism, a companion in his political exile, and ultimately a subversive collaborator in his efforts to think beyond the hopeless temporality--new and always the same--of the present moment in history.

Review Quotes

"Not only does McFarland evince himself as an original and compelling interpreter of Nietzsche and Benjamin. He strings key passages together in such a way that his exegetical performance fans out toward both authors, configuring them in an inexorable interface of shared interpretation and critique."-----Henry Sussman, Yale University

About the Author

James McFarland is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Vanderbilt University.