Images of History
Kant, Benjamin, Freedom, and the Human Subject
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc
Published:4th Aug '16
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Developing work in the theories of action and explanation, Eldridge argues that moral and political philosophers require accounts of what is historically possible, while historians require rough philosophical understandings of ideals that merit reasonable endorsement. Both Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin recognize this fact. Each sees a special place for religious consciousness and critical practice in the articulation and revision of ideals that are to have cultural effect, but they differ sharply in the forms of religious-philosophical understanding, cultural criticism, and political practice that they favor. Kant defends a liberal, reformist, Protestant stance, emphasizing the importance of liberty, individual rights, and democratic institutions. His fullest picture of movement toward a moral culture appears in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason, where he describes conjecturally the emergence of an ethical commonwealth. Benjamin defends a politics of improvisatory alertness and consciousness-raising that is suspicious of progress and liberal reform. He practices a form of modernist, materialist criticism that is strongly rooted in his encounters with Kant, Hölderlin, and Goethe. His fullest, finished picture of this critical practice appears in One-Way Street, where he traces the continuing force of unsatisfied desires. By drawing on both Kant and Benjamin, Eldridge hopes to avoid both moralism (standing on sharply specified normative commitments at all costs) and waywardness (rejecting all settled commitments). And in doing so, he seeks to make better sense of the commitment-forming, commitment-revising, anxious, reflective and sometimes grownup acculturated human subjects we are.
I found this book to be highly original and provocative in the way it creates a force field of interpretations around Kant and Benjamin's seemingly diverse pursuits. Drawing on each separately and together, Eldridge provides a compelling and convincing picture of what it means to be human and how to actualize freedom in history. * The Review of Metaphysics *
Richard Eldridge has written a sustained reflection on the question of the historical actualization of human freedom and on the character of a genuinely historical human agency. The focus of the book on Kant and Benjamin brings out the rigor of Benjamins reflections by construing them as a response to the Kantian moment in philosophy. At the same time, by establishing this affinity between Kant and Benjamin, Eldridge allows us to conceive of the extension and pertinence of Kants thinking to our image of modernity. Eldridges book is a significant contribution to the renewed interest in problems of the philosophy of history and their relevance for contemporary moral and political philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition. The approach that Eldridge presents and in particular the continuity that he finds with the Kantian project offers a distinct and important alternative reading to recent appropriations of Benjamins work in continental philosophy. * Eli Friedlander, Tel Aviv University *
What is the relation between the contingency of our historical situation and the universal ambitions of our moral and political norms? Just that there must always be a relation, each forever putting the other to the test. Richard Eldridge's penetrating examination of the philosophies of history of Kant and Benjamin illuminates this simple but profound insight. * Paul Guyer, Brown University *
Deftly bridging the rationalist/Continental divide, Eldridge accommodates the fact or fiction, modernist/postmodernist potential antagonisms and focuses on confounding given/constructed historical storied landscapes of Western culture. He demonstrates how the philosophical confrontations of rationalist Immanuel Kant and postmodernist Walter Benjamin contrast but are not necessarily in opposition...Despite the potentially existential malaise brought on by history, Eldridge remains optimistic as new possibilities of disclosure reveal themselves to individuals in lived historical experiences, enlivening a sense of freely chosen self-identity. * J. Gough,Athabasca University,Choice *
ISBN: 9780190605322
Dimensions: 145mm x 211mm x 25mm
Weight: 408g
256 pages