Harvard University Press Publicity Blog

"Falling out of one's role with art"

That's the title of a new interview with Samuel Weber, author of Benjamin's -abilities, published in Issue 4 of the journal Parrhesia.

"A shattering of tradition"

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (2nd version)" (1935-36, unpublished in this form during Benjamin's lifetime):

"One might focus these aspects of the artwork in the concept of the aura, and go on to say: what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past—a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity. Both processes are intimately related to the mass movements of our day."

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media is available now from HUP.

Above: Drawing of Benjamin by Ralph Steadman, 2006.

Don't be smug, it's unattractive

Barry Gewen, on the New York Times Book Review's "Paper Cuts" blog:

It’s hardly news that religious sentiments emerge out of deeply felt emotions. It’s only our modern secularists and rationalists — like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali — who can claim to ground their lives wholly in the dictates of reason and scientific fact. Yet here comes the noted philosopher Charles Taylor, winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize, to tell the rationalists not to be smug. In his difficult, digressive, repetitious, exasperating and indispensable book “A Secular Age,” Taylor insists that the secularists operate out of a belief system of their own, just as believers do. They’ve merely exchanged one set of assumptions about the cosmos and the meaning of life for another.

More at "Paper Cuts."

Rawls on baseball--"the best of all games"

From the Boston Review we learn of a letter written by philosopher John Rawls outlining the reasons why baseball is "the best of all games." Rawls, the author of six HUP books, including the near-canonical A Theory of Justice, was not only one of our leading philosophers but also an avid student of the game and a frequent star of departmental softball games here at Harvard.

And the winner is...

Congratulations to Charles Taylor, whose 2007 book A Secular Age has won Christianity Today's Book Award for History/Biography.

HUP authors named "most influential" Princeton alums

We see from Princeton Alumni Weekly that three HUP authors are mentioned in connection with their project to seek out the "most influential" Princeton alumni of all time. So congrats to John Rawls (six-time HUP author who likely needs no introduction--PAW calls him "the most articulate defender of liberalism since John Stuart Mill"), Gary Becker (a leading economist of our time), and world-renowned architect Robert Venturi. Hard to argue with choices like that.

And now, a greatest-hits selection from our three honorees:

John Rawls--Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

Gary Becker--Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social Environment

Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown--Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time

Boredom as opiate and subversion

Over at our Off the Page blog, Aviad Kleinberg, author of Flesh Made Word: Saints' Stories and the Western Imagination and the forthcoming The Seven Deadly Sins: A Very Partial List, has written a superlative essay on "the cultural uses of boredom." Excellent Friday reading.

Walter Benjamin's archive published

Peter Conrad's review of Verso's new edition of Walter Benjamin's archive serves as a poignant reflection on the man himself and his ambition to exhume a forgotten European past before it vanished for good under the heavy boot of fascism. Don't forget that we're issuing the latest in our collection of Benjamin volumes this May, and this time it's the big one. "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" is Benjamin's most well-known work, a document that serves as a foundation for modern criticism, and probably one of the most endlessly-cited pieces written during the 20th Century.

Our new edition, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, collects the strongest version of this seminal essay, along with Benjamin's other writings on media, many appearing here for the first time in English. And carrying on with our tradition of making Benjamin's writings look as good as they read, we've illustrated the cover with a fantastic drawing of Benjamin by none other than Ralph Steadman of "Fear and Loathing" fame.

A Secular Age hits the blogosphere

"The Immanent Frame," the Social Science Research Council’s new blog on secularism, religion, and the public sphere, has chosen to kick off its posting with a series dedicated to Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. "The Immanent Frame" boasts a roster of well-regarded authors, including Robert Bellah, our own Akeel Bilgrami, and Taylor himself. In the weeks ahead, they will be continuing their focus on A Secular Age, debating Jürgen Habermas’s recent work on religion in the public sphere, opening a discussion of Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God, and pursuing the question of secular criticism--with forthcoming posts from Gil Anidjar, Talal Asad, Robert Bellah, Rajeev Bhargava, Craig Calhoun, Hent de Vries, Amy Hollywood, Janet Jakobsen, Hans Joas, Tomoko Masuzawa, Thomas McCarthy, Ann Pellegrini, Leigh Schmidt, and others.

Accolades

For this week, they include:

• My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams chosen as an "Editor's Choice" in the upcoming issue of the New York Times Book Review, following up on last week's review in that publication.

• Charles Taylor's A Secular Age selected as one of Publishers Weekly's "Best Books of the Year," a selection of the 150 best books out of the more than 6,000 the magazine reviewed this year.

||| More on My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams.

||| More on A Secular Age.