Peter Fenves
Biographic Data
| ID | 359308 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Fenves |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Fenves |
| SIGNATURE | FENVES P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northwestern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9518-8912 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Beyond (European) Philosophy: From Leibniz—via Schmalenbach—to Benjamin
The essay begins by demonstrating that Benjamin drew his interpretation of Leibniz's metaphysics from a little-known book by Herman Schmalenbach. In contrast to the typical view, according to which Leibniz is a proponent of the principle of continuity, Schmalenbach argues that his metaphysics is rooted in a fascination with the discontinuity of whole numbers. Benjamin transforms this view by replacing whole numbers with whole names. The essay the…
Detour and Dao: Benjamin, with Jullien, contra the Ontology of the Event
Taking its point of departure from Jullien's primary claim in The Silent Transformations that ancient Greek ontology propels European thought into 'the vertigo of the event,' the article turns toward a European thinker whom Jullien does not mention in this context, namely Walter Benjamin, and asks whether his work, too, succumbs to this vertigo. The choice of Benjamin as a 'test case' is governed by two factors: while his work is widely associate…
Chapter 3 Technica Speciosa: Some Notes on the Ambivalence of Technics in Kant and Weber
Experimenting: Essays with Samuel Weber
The work of Samuel Weber has greatly influenced writers and thinkers across the arts and humanities: including literary, critical, and cultural theory; media, communication, theater, and cultural studies; new media and technology; psychoanalysis; and philosophy. His remarkable and inaugural texts have been especially important to the deconstructive tradition, given his early recognition of the importance of the writings of Jacques Derrida. Taught…
As on the First Day: Nine Notes on Heidegger's "First Elaboration" of his Ursprung des Kunstwerkes
"As on the First Day":Nine Notes on Heidegger's "First Elaboration" of his Ursprung des Kunstwerkes Peter Fenves (bio) The relation between phenomenology and modern German poetry is a primary concern of Rochelle Tobias' scholarly work. The following set of nine notes are concerned with this relation, and they seek an oblique response to a question she poses in her analysis of a roundabout altercation between Heidegger, Benjamin, and Lacoue-Labart…
The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time
Intervention, Encroachment
This article shows that Walter Benjamin's initial characterization of the “sphere of moral relations” as divided by two mutually exclusive poles, law and justice, without a mediating third term such as “ethical life” or “moral education,” generates the basis for his critique of violence. After describing how this characterization of moral relations both reproduces and inverts the underlying schema of Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, the article outl…
Benjamin, Studying, China
The essay begins by showing that Benjamin had a diffuse yet intense interest in Chinese thought and literature during his student years, when he read and discussed a range of Chinese texts, from Laozi’s to Gu Hongming’s. The culmination of his youthful studies of China occurs with his critical reception of Jan de Groot’s Universism, which provides him with the nucleus of his later essay “Doctrine of the Similar.” The essay concludes with an analy…
Toward messianic nature. From Cohen to Benjamin
Questo saggio discute l’espansione e trasformazione da parte di Benjamin del concetto coheniano di esperienza sulla base della supposizione - chiamata qui ipotesi - che l’esperienza sia costitutivamente continua. Dopo aver proposto questa ipotesi nel suo saggio Sul della filosofia futura, Benjamin scrive due aggiunte che insieme suggeriscono come (Lehre) della scienza fisica possa essere in continuita con la dottrina che viene dalla religione. Il…
The Problem of Popularization in Benjamin, Schrödinger, and Heidegger circa 1935
The essay seeks to show how Benjamin and Heidegger addressed the problem of popularization in the mid-1930s. Locating the source of their respective responses to the problem in Kant's distinction between “scholastic” and “popular” language, the essay analyzes congruent passages in the writings of Benjamin and Heidegger where the problem transcends any simple solution, according to which popularization occurs whenever experts find illustrations ca…
From Nietzsche's Philosophy of History to Kant's-and Back
Reflecting on Anthony Jensen's Nietzsche's Philosophy of History, this essay describes Jensen's account of the three-stage development of Nietzsche's historiographical practices and metahistorical positions: from his early philological writings, through The Birth of Tragedy, and into the mature philosophy of history that Jensen uncovers in Toward the Genealogy of Morality and Ecce Homo, which, so Jensen argues, consists in ontological realism com…
Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism and the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780-1820
Renewed Question: Whether a Philosophy of History is Possible
Renewed Question:Whether a Philosophy of History is Possible Peter Fenves (bio) The title of this essay is drawn, in part, from the title of the second chapter of Kant’s Streit der Fakultäten (Conflict of the Faculties), which is concerned with the conflict between the “lower” faculty of philosophy and the “higher” faculty of law. Despite the fact that Kant is unconcerned with any actual representatives of the faculty of law, and despite the addi…
Diverging Correspondences Concerning the Problem of Identity: Russell-Wittgenstein and Benjamin-Scholem
Diverging Correspondences Concerning the Problem of Identity:Russell-Wittgenstein and Benjamin-Scholem Peter Fenves (bio) At the end of his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, having reached the limit of what can be done by means of "ordinary language," Bertrand Russell makes the following claim as he seeks to circumscribe the field under discussion by capturing the distinction between mathematical and non-mathematical propositions: "[the fo…
At the Confluence of Etymology and Thinking: A Response to Jean-Luc Nancy
At the Confluence of Etymology and Thinking: A Response to Jean-Luc Nancy Peter Fenves (bio) While searching for the original meanings of the river names of Germany, the etymologist soon discovers that in many cases the names derive from words meaning "river." So prevalent is this semantic phenomenon that it can be found even in the case of confluent rivers. Thus, the name Rhein, Anglicized as "Rhine," derives from the same complex of words that …
Late Kant: Towards Another Law of the Earth
Immanuel Kant spent many of his younger years working on what are generally considered his masterpieces: the three Critiques. But his work did not stop there: in later life he began to reconsider subjects such as anthropology, and topics including colonialism, race and peace. In Late Kant, Peter Fenves becomes one of the first to thoroughly explore Kant's later writings and give them the detailed scholarly attention they deserve. In his opening c…
Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin
Research Article| February 01 2003 Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin Peter Fenves Peter Fenves Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google boundary 2 (2003) 30 (1): 67–87. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-30-1-67 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Peter Fenves; Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin. boundary 2 1 February 2003; 30 (1): 67–87. doi:…
Continuing the Fiction: From Leibniz' "petite fable" to Kafka's In der Strafkolonie
Theodicy has failed. This is hardly news, of course. In 1791 Kant had announced as much in his essay "Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee." 1 The philosophical-juridical project Leibniz launched in his Essais de Théodicée failed to do what it promised: vindicate the justice of God in the court of finite reason. With the announcement of this failure, Kant was hardly making news, for the theodicical project had long b…
Taking Stock of the Kantian Sublime
Les dilemmes et les difficultes des diverses variantes du rationalisme et du positivisme durant les vingt dernieres annees ont abouti soit a la renaissance de la metaphysqiue soit a la reapparition et la reaffirmation du sublime
A Peculiar Fate: Metaphysics and World History in Kant
Allegories of History: Literary Historiography after Hegel
From empiricism to the experience of freedom
Image and Chatter: Adorno's Construction of Kierkegaard
Antonomasia: Leibniz and the Baroque
Leibniz knows no antinomies, only antonomasia. Neither a law nor a principle stands in conflict with another equally valid one; rather, a name takes the place of a concept and a concept replaces a name. Language and thought-not reason and intuition-find themselves at odds. Yet antonomasia, unlike antinomia, never comes down to a critical decision. Although the labyrinth of freedom to which Leibniz refers throughout his writings has often been see…
Autopsies of Faith in Kierkegaard's Philosophiske Smuler
can put my own life on line, I can in all seriousness jest [i alAlvor spoge] with my own life-not with another's.'' Thus Johannes Climacus closes the Preface to Philosophiske Smuler and cuts off all communication with his fellow human beings: jest and seriousness become the modes of being through which he, in his isolation, relates to his own life, and this self-relation is determined in language as the interrogative mood. He has put his life int…
Late Kant: Towards Another Law of the Earth
Immanuel Kant spent many of his younger years working on what are generally considered his masterpieces: the three Critiques. But his work did not stop there: in later life he began to reconsider subjects such as anthropology, and topics including colonialism, race and peace. In Late Kant, Peter Fenves becomes one of the first to thoroughly explore Kant's later writings and give them the detailed scholarly attention they deserve. In his opening c…
Detour and Dao: Benjamin, with Jullien, contra the Ontology of the Event
Taking its point of departure from Jullien's primary claim in The Silent Transformations that ancient Greek ontology propels European thought into 'the vertigo of the event,' the article turns toward a European thinker whom Jullien does not mention in this context, namely Walter Benjamin, and asks whether his work, too, succumbs to this vertigo. The choice of Benjamin as a 'test case' is governed by two factors: while his work is widely associate…
Benjamin, Studying, China
The essay begins by showing that Benjamin had a diffuse yet intense interest in Chinese thought and literature during his student years, when he read and discussed a range of Chinese texts, from Laozi’s to Gu Hongming’s. The culmination of his youthful studies of China occurs with his critical reception of Jan de Groot’s Universism, which provides him with the nucleus of his later essay “Doctrine of the Similar.” The essay concludes with an analy…
Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin
Research Article| February 01 2003 Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin Peter Fenves Peter Fenves Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google boundary 2 (2003) 30 (1): 67–87. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-30-1-67 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Peter Fenves; Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin. boundary 2 1 February 2003; 30 (1): 67–87. doi:…
From empiricism to the experience of freedom
Antonomasia: Leibniz and the Baroque
Leibniz knows no antinomies, only antonomasia. Neither a law nor a principle stands in conflict with another equally valid one; rather, a name takes the place of a concept and a concept replaces a name. Language and thought-not reason and intuition-find themselves at odds. Yet antonomasia, unlike antinomia, never comes down to a critical decision. Although the labyrinth of freedom to which Leibniz refers throughout his writings has often been see…
Autopsies of Faith in Kierkegaard's Philosophiske Smuler
can put my own life on line, I can in all seriousness jest [i alAlvor spoge] with my own life-not with another's.'' Thus Johannes Climacus closes the Preface to Philosophiske Smuler and cuts off all communication with his fellow human beings: jest and seriousness become the modes of being through which he, in his isolation, relates to his own life, and this self-relation is determined in language as the interrogative mood. He has put his life int…
Marx's Doctoral Thesis on Two Greek Atomists and the Post-Kantian Interpretations
L'Imperatif categorique
Marx's Doctoral Thesis on Two Greek Atomists and the Post-Kantian Interpretations
Autopsies of Faith in Kierkegaard's Philosophiske Smuler
can put my own life on line, I can in all seriousness jest [i alAlvor spoge] with my own life-not with another's.'' Thus Johannes Climacus closes the Preface to Philosophiske Smuler and cuts off all communication with his fellow human beings: jest and seriousness become the modes of being through which he, in his isolation, relates to his own life, and this self-relation is determined in language as the interrogative mood. He has put his life int…
Antonomasia: Leibniz and the Baroque
Leibniz knows no antinomies, only antonomasia. Neither a law nor a principle stands in conflict with another equally valid one; rather, a name takes the place of a concept and a concept replaces a name. Language and thought-not reason and intuition-find themselves at odds. Yet antonomasia, unlike antinomia, never comes down to a critical decision. Although the labyrinth of freedom to which Leibniz refers throughout his writings has often been see…
Image and Chatter: Adorno's Construction of Kierkegaard
A Peculiar Fate: Metaphysics and World History in Kant
Allegories of History: Literary Historiography after Hegel
From empiricism to the experience of freedom
Taking Stock of the Kantian Sublime
Les dilemmes et les difficultes des diverses variantes du rationalisme et du positivisme durant les vingt dernieres annees ont abouti soit a la renaissance de la metaphysqiue soit a la reapparition et la reaffirmation du sublime
Continuing the Fiction: From Leibniz' "petite fable" to Kafka's In der Strafkolonie
Theodicy has failed. This is hardly news, of course. In 1791 Kant had announced as much in his essay "Über das Mißlingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee." 1 The philosophical-juridical project Leibniz launched in his Essais de Théodicée failed to do what it promised: vindicate the justice of God in the court of finite reason. With the announcement of this failure, Kant was hardly making news, for the theodicical project had long b…
Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin
Research Article| February 01 2003 Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin Peter Fenves Peter Fenves Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google boundary 2 (2003) 30 (1): 67–87. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-30-1-67 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Peter Fenves; Of Philosophical Style—from Leibniz to Benjamin. boundary 2 1 February 2003; 30 (1): 67–87. doi:…
Late Kant: Towards Another Law of the Earth
Immanuel Kant spent many of his younger years working on what are generally considered his masterpieces: the three Critiques. But his work did not stop there: in later life he began to reconsider subjects such as anthropology, and topics including colonialism, race and peace. In Late Kant, Peter Fenves becomes one of the first to thoroughly explore Kant's later writings and give them the detailed scholarly attention they deserve. In his opening c…
At the Confluence of Etymology and Thinking: A Response to Jean-Luc Nancy
At the Confluence of Etymology and Thinking: A Response to Jean-Luc Nancy Peter Fenves (bio) While searching for the original meanings of the river names of Germany, the etymologist soon discovers that in many cases the names derive from words meaning "river." So prevalent is this semantic phenomenon that it can be found even in the case of confluent rivers. Thus, the name Rhein, Anglicized as "Rhine," derives from the same complex of words that …
Diverging Correspondences Concerning the Problem of Identity: Russell-Wittgenstein and Benjamin-Scholem
Diverging Correspondences Concerning the Problem of Identity:Russell-Wittgenstein and Benjamin-Scholem Peter Fenves (bio) At the end of his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, having reached the limit of what can be done by means of "ordinary language," Bertrand Russell makes the following claim as he seeks to circumscribe the field under discussion by capturing the distinction between mathematical and non-mathematical propositions: "[the fo…
Renewed Question: Whether a Philosophy of History is Possible
Renewed Question:Whether a Philosophy of History is Possible Peter Fenves (bio) The title of this essay is drawn, in part, from the title of the second chapter of Kant’s Streit der Fakultäten (Conflict of the Faculties), which is concerned with the conflict between the “lower” faculty of philosophy and the “higher” faculty of law. Despite the fact that Kant is unconcerned with any actual representatives of the faculty of law, and despite the addi…
From Nietzsche's Philosophy of History to Kant's-and Back
Reflecting on Anthony Jensen's Nietzsche's Philosophy of History, this essay describes Jensen's account of the three-stage development of Nietzsche's historiographical practices and metahistorical positions: from his early philological writings, through The Birth of Tragedy, and into the mature philosophy of history that Jensen uncovers in Toward the Genealogy of Morality and Ecce Homo, which, so Jensen argues, consists in ontological realism com…
Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism and the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780-1820
The Problem of Popularization in Benjamin, Schrödinger, and Heidegger circa 1935
The essay seeks to show how Benjamin and Heidegger addressed the problem of popularization in the mid-1930s. Locating the source of their respective responses to the problem in Kant's distinction between “scholastic” and “popular” language, the essay analyzes congruent passages in the writings of Benjamin and Heidegger where the problem transcends any simple solution, according to which popularization occurs whenever experts find illustrations ca…
Toward messianic nature. From Cohen to Benjamin
Questo saggio discute l’espansione e trasformazione da parte di Benjamin del concetto coheniano di esperienza sulla base della supposizione - chiamata qui ipotesi - che l’esperienza sia costitutivamente continua. Dopo aver proposto questa ipotesi nel suo saggio Sul della filosofia futura, Benjamin scrive due aggiunte che insieme suggeriscono come (Lehre) della scienza fisica possa essere in continuita con la dottrina che viene dalla religione. Il…
Benjamin, Studying, China
The essay begins by showing that Benjamin had a diffuse yet intense interest in Chinese thought and literature during his student years, when he read and discussed a range of Chinese texts, from Laozi’s to Gu Hongming’s. The culmination of his youthful studies of China occurs with his critical reception of Jan de Groot’s Universism, which provides him with the nucleus of his later essay “Doctrine of the Similar.” The essay concludes with an analy…
Intervention, Encroachment
This article shows that Walter Benjamin's initial characterization of the “sphere of moral relations” as divided by two mutually exclusive poles, law and justice, without a mediating third term such as “ethical life” or “moral education,” generates the basis for his critique of violence. After describing how this characterization of moral relations both reproduces and inverts the underlying schema of Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, the article outl…
The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time
As on the First Day: Nine Notes on Heidegger's "First Elaboration" of his Ursprung des Kunstwerkes
"As on the First Day":Nine Notes on Heidegger's "First Elaboration" of his Ursprung des Kunstwerkes Peter Fenves (bio) The relation between phenomenology and modern German poetry is a primary concern of Rochelle Tobias' scholarly work. The following set of nine notes are concerned with this relation, and they seek an oblique response to a question she poses in her analysis of a roundabout altercation between Heidegger, Benjamin, and Lacoue-Labart…
Chapter 3 Technica Speciosa: Some Notes on the Ambivalence of Technics in Kant and Weber
Experimenting: Essays with Samuel Weber
The work of Samuel Weber has greatly influenced writers and thinkers across the arts and humanities: including literary, critical, and cultural theory; media, communication, theater, and cultural studies; new media and technology; psychoanalysis; and philosophy. His remarkable and inaugural texts have been especially important to the deconstructive tradition, given his early recognition of the importance of the writings of Jacques Derrida. Taught…
Philosophy (21 works) · Epistemology (19 works) · Art (8 works) · Literature (8 works) · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation (8 works) · History (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Political science (5 works)