Vilém Flusser: Writings (2002)

Ten years after his death, Vilém Flusser’s reputation as one of Europe’s most original modern philosophers continues to grow. Increasingly influential in Europe and Latin America, the Prague-born intellectual’s thought has until now remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. His innovative writings theorize—and ultimately embrace—the epochal shift that humanity is undergoing from what he termed “linear thinking” (based on writing) toward a new form of multidimensional, visual thinking embodied by digital culture. For Flusser, these new modes and technologies of communication make possible a society (the “telematic” society) in which dialogue between people becomes the supreme value.

The first English-language anthology of Flusser’s work, this volume displays the extraordinary range and subtlety of his intellect. A number of the essays collected here introduce and elaborate his theory of communication, influenced by thinkers as diverse as Martin Buber, Edmund Husserl, and Thomas Kuhn. While taking dystopian, posthuman visions of communication technologies into account, Flusser celebrates their liberatory and humanizing aspects. For Flusser, existence was akin to being thrown into an abyss of absurd experience or “bottomlessness”; becoming human required creating meaning out of this painful event by consciously connecting with others, in part through such technologies. Other essays present Flusser’s thoughts on the future of writing, the revolutionary nature of photography, the relationship between exile and creativity, and his unconventional concept of posthistory. Taken together, these essays confirm Flusser’s importance and prescience within contemporary philosophy.

Edited by Andreas Ströhl
Translated by Erik Eisel
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2002
Electronic Meditations series, Vol 6
ISBN 0816635641, 9780816635641
229 pages

review (Sean Cubitt, Leonardo Reviews)

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-7-17)

Walter Benjamin: The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1936-) [FR, DE, CZ, RU, SK, ES, PT, EN]

“Benjamin‘s famous ‘Work of Art’ essay sets out his boldest thoughts–on media and on culture in general–in their most realized form, while retaining an edge that gets under the skin of everyone who reads it. In this essay the visual arts of the machine age morph into literature and theory and then back again to images, gestures, and thought.

This essay, however, is only the beginning of a vast collection of writings that the editors have assembled to demonstrate what was revolutionary about Benjamin’s explorations on media. Long before Marshall McLuhan, Benjamin saw that the way a bullet rips into its victim is exactly the way a movie or pop song lodges in the soul.

This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the ‘Work of Art’ essay–the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media. The collection tracks Benjamin’s observations on the media as they are revealed in essays on the production and reception of art; on film, radio, and photography; and on the modern transformations of literature and painting. The volume contains some of Benjamin’s best-known work alongside fascinating, little-known essays–some appearing for the first time in English. In the context of his passionate engagement with questions of aesthetics, the scope of Benjamin’s media theory can be fully appreciated.”

Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin
Translated by Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, Howard Eiland, and others
Publisher The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge/MA and London, 2008
ISBN 0674024451, 9780674024458
448 pages

Wikipedia (EN)

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media (English, 2008, updated on 2019-12-9)

Versions and translations of the essay “Work of Art..”:
L’œuvre d’art à l’époque de sa reproduction méchanisée (French, trans. Pierre Klossowski, 1936, updated on 2013-1-12)
Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (German, 1963, added on 2014-3-10)
Umělecké dílo v době své technické reprodukovatelnosti (Czech, trans. Věra Saudková, 1979, added on 2014-3-10)
Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Dritte Fassung (German, 1980, added on 2014-3-10)
Proizvedenie iskusstva v epokhu ego tekhnicheskoy vosproizvodimosti. Izbrannye esse (Russian, trans. S.A. Romashko, 1996, added on 2013-1-12)
Umelecké dielo v epoche svojej technickej reprodukovateľnosti (Slovak, trans. Adam Bžoch, 1999, added on 2014-3-10)
La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica. Urtext (Spanish, trans. Andrés E. Weikert, 2003, added on 2014-3-10)
A obra de arte na época da sua possibilidade de reprodução técnica. 3ª versão (Portuguese, trans. João Barrento, 2006, added on 2014-3-10)

For more versions of the essay see Benjamin’s bibliography on Monoskop wiki.

Vilém Flusser: Towards A Philosophy of Photography (1983–) [DE, EN, PT, ES, HU, CZ, RU]

“Media philosopher Vilém Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography. An analysis of the medium in terms of aesthetics, science and politics provided him with new ways of understanding both the cultural crises of the past and the new social forms nascent within them. Flusser showed how the transformation of textual into visual culture (from the linearity of history into the two-dimensionality of magic) and of industrial into post-industrial society (from work into leisure) went hand in hand, and how photography allows us to read and interpret these changes with particular clarity.”

Publisher European Photography, 1983
ISBN 3923283016
58 pages

New English edition
Translated by Anthony Mathews
Publisher Reaktion Books, London, 2000
ISBN 1861890761, 9781861890764
94 pages

Review: Sean Cubitt (Leonardo, 2004).

Publisher (EN)

Für eine Philosophie der Fotografie (German, 1983, no OCR, added on 2013-9-26)
Towards A Philosophy of Photography (English, ed. Derek Bennett, 1984, added on 2013-12-14)
Filosofia da caixa preta. Ensaios para uma futura filosofia da fotografia (Portuguese, trans. Vilém Flusser, 1985, unpaginated, updated on 2014-2-13)
Hacia una filosofía de la fotografía (Spanish, trans. Eduardo Molina, 1990, no OCR, added on 2013-9-26)
A fotográfia filozófiája (Hungarian, trans. Panka Veress and István Sebesi, 1990, HTML, added on 2014-2-14)
Za filosofii fotografie (Czech, trans. Božena Koseková and Josef Kosek, 1994, removed on 2025-11-22 upon request of European Photography)
Towards A Philosophy of Photography (English, trans. Anthony Mathews, 2000, updated on 2012-9-18)
Za filosofiyu fotografii (Russian, trans. G. Khaydarova, 2008, added on 2014-2-14)