Illuminations
Essays and Reflections
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Illuminations
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Narrated by:
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Stefan Rudnicki
About this listen
Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history.
Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin’s life in a dark historical era. Leon Wieseltier’s preface explores Benjamin’s continued relevance for our times.
©1955 Originally published in Germany by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. © 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. English translation © 1968 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Introduction © 1968 by Hannah Arendt (P)2021 by Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Collection of Sand
- By: Italo Calvino
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
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Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Italo Calvino's unbounded curiosity and masterly imagination are displayed in peak form in Collection of Sand, the last of his works published during his lifetime. Here he applies his graceful intellect to the delights of the visual world in essays on subjects ranging from cuneiform and antique maps to Mexican temples and Japanese gardens.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful prose, topics, and narration
- By Drew on 06-02-19
By: Italo Calvino
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Love and Saint Augustine
- By: Hannah Arendt, Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott - editor, Judith Chelius Stark - editor
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
In Love and Saint Augustine, political science professor Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and philosophy professor Judith Chelius Stark make this important early work accessible for the first time. Here is a completely corrected and revised English translation that incorporates Arendt's own substantial revisions and provides additional notes based on letters, contracts, and other documents as well as the recollections of Arendt's friends and colleagues.
By: Hannah Arendt, and others
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On Revolution
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 235
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 204
Hannah Arendt's penetrating observations on the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of our political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the 18th-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the 20th century, Arendt traces the changing face of revolution and its relationship to war while underscoring the crucial role such events will play in the future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Insightful Analysis of Differing Revolutions
- By Roger on 01-10-18
By: Hannah Arendt
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Speaking Out
- Lectures and Speeches, 1937-1958
- By: Albert Camus
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 4
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Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Speaking Out: Lectures and Speeches, 1937-1958 brings together, for the first time, 34 public statements from across Albert Camus’ career that reveal his radical commitment to justice around the world and his role as a public intellectual. From his 1946 lecture at Columbia University about humanity’s moral decline to his strident appeal during the Algerian conflict for a civilian truce between Algeria and France to his speeches on Dostoevsky and Don Quixote, this essential collection reflects the scope of Camus’ political and cultural influence.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Summary of His Philosophy
- By Tom on 08-29-24
By: Albert Camus
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Anti-Oedipus
- Capitalism and Schizophrenia
- By: Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Michel Foucault - preface, and others
- Narrated by: Jon Orsini
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
When it first appeared in France, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and "a work of heretical madness" by others. In it, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media, and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person's unwillingness to be cut off from the group. What's more, those who suffer from mental disorders may not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense, because they are by nature isolated from society.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Not read in usual way,but Praxis that works on you
- By Anonymous User on 12-27-23
By: Gilles Deleuze, and others
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Matter and Memory
- By: Henri Bergson
- Narrated by: Michael Lunts
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story5 out of 5 stars 8
Matter and Memory, (Matière et Mémoire), published in 1896, was the second book written by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), one of the leading French philosophers of his age. It followed Time and Free Will (1889) and helped to establish him as a major force in anti-mechanistic thought, opposing the trend towards uncompromisingly secular and scientific views. However, when Matter and Memory appeared, Bergson was 39 and had yet to become the hugely influential figure he became in the first decades of the 20th century.
By: Henri Bergson
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Creative Evolution
- By: Henri Bergson
- Narrated by: Michael Lunts
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1
First published in French in 1907, Henri Bergson's L'évolution créatrice is a scintillating and radical work by one of the great French philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This outstanding new translation, the first for over a hundred years, brings one of Bergson's most important and ambitious works to a new generation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I recommend this recording of the book, not the other one!
- By M.Biblioswine on 01-09-24
By: Henri Bergson
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Between Past and Future
- Eight Exercises in Political Thought
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story5 out of 5 stars 41
Hannah Arendt's insightful observations of the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, constitute an impassioned contribution to political philosophy. In Between Past and Future, Arendt describes the perplexing crises modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill the vital essence of these concepts and use them to regain a frame of reference for the future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Just stunning
- By Peter Stephens on 02-26-18
By: Hannah Arendt
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Against Interpretation and Other Essays
- By: Susan Sontag
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
Originally published in 1966, Susan Sontag's first collection of essays is a modern classic and includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation", as well as, her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Levi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Against interpretation, like, literally.
- By Dulce Mattos on 08-14-19
By: Susan Sontag
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The Use of Pleasure
- Volume 2 of The History of Sexuality
- By: Michel Foucault, Robert Hurley - translator
- Narrated by: Elliot Fitzpatrick
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
The brilliantly original French thinker who died in 1984 gives an analysis of how the ancient Greeks perceived sexuality. Throughout The Use of Pleasure Foucault analyzes an irresistible array of ancient Greek texts on eroticism as he tries to answer basic questions: How in the West did sexual experience become a moral issue? And why were other appetites of the body, such as hunger, and collective concerns, such as civic duty, not subjected to the numberless rules and regulations and judgments that have defined, if not confined, sexual behavior?
By: Michel Foucault, and others
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Taming the Rascal Multitude
- Essays, Interviews, and Lectures 1997-2014
- By: Noam Chomsky
- Narrated by: Michael Albert, Donald Corren
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 5
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4
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Story5 out of 5 stars 4
Taming the Rascal Multitude is a judicious selection of essays and interviews from Z Magazine from 1997 to 2014. In each, Chomsky takes up some question of the moment. As such, in sum, the essays provide a historical overview of the history that preceded Trump and the reaction to Trump. The essays situate what followed even without having known what would follow. They explicate what preceded the current era and provide a step-by-step revelation, or how-to, for successfully comprehending social events and relations.
By: Noam Chomsky
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Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
- The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock 'N' Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N' Roll
- By: Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 18
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 16
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung contains the wild and brilliant writings of Lester Bangs—the most outrageous and popular rock critic of the 1970s—edited and with an introduction by the reigning dean of rock critics, Greil Marcus.
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5 out of 5 stars
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He Bangs! He Bangs!
- By Charlie Wonder on 08-31-22
By: Lester Bangs, and others
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Time and Free Will
- An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
- By: Henri Bergson
- Narrated by: Michael Lunts
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story5 out of 5 stars 23
Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was the leading French philosopher of the first half of the 20th century. Near the end of his life when he was forced to register with the police in Nazi occupied France he wrote: ‘Academic. Philosopher. Nobel prize winner. Jew.’ Time and Free Will, his doctoral thesis, was published as a book in 1889 and attacks and rejects the mechanistic view of causality described in Kant’s version of space and time and proceeds to attempt to define free-will and consciousness by separating space and time.
By: Henri Bergson
What listeners say about Illuminations
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- GayIsGreat
- 06-07-23
Narrator’s voice is low and often unvaried in pitch, making it very hard to hear in a car
But the essays are wonderful. Grateful to finally have these in audio. Pls keep the theory and philosophy coming!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Daniel Benedict
- 01-22-22
Excellent all around
Absolutely wonderful. Transcendent. Will be reading more Walter Benjamin at my first opportunity. Narration was very good as well.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 12-08-21
finally
finally some Walter Benjamin, there hasn't been a scrap of his work on here and I for one I'm grateful to finally be able to listen to some it was incredible
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4 people found this helpful