The Gift of Language: Memory and Promise in Adorno, Benjamin.Heidegger and Rosenzweig (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers) - Softcover

Duttmann, Alexander Garcia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0485121611 ISBN 13: 9780485121612

Publisher: The Athlone Press, 2000

Synopsis

This text focuses on the relevance of the proper name in the conceptions of language and history that inform the thought of Adorno, Benjamin, Heidegger and Rosenzweig. Their interest in the proper name is because it does not simply operate as a conventional linguistic sign. A specific experience of the Jewish religious tradition (Adorno, Benjamin, Rosenzweig) and a vision of poetry resulting from the reading of Hoelderlin (Heidegger) lead to the idea of an absolute singularity, it is a singularity that resists all conceptual identificaiton and the proper name expresses this singularity in language. In this analysis, history is conceived as a movement that both betrays and tends towards the absolute singularity that manifests itself in the unsayable, i.e. in the name of God, or in poetical language. questions of gesture, translation and melancholia and the moment of apparition in the work of art are comprehensible within Dr Duttmann's discussion, which should be of interest to students of language, philosophy and theology.

About this title

About the Author

<div>Alexander Garcia Duttmann is Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths University of London, UK, and author of The Gift of Language and Memory of Thought, published in the Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers series.</div>

Edition details

• Publisher: The Athlone Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0485121611
• ISBN 13: 9780485121612
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 154