Augenblick

Augenblick, meaning literally 'In the blink of an eye', describes a 'decisive moment' in time that is both fleeting yet momentously eventful, even epoch-makingly significant. In this book Koral Ward investigates the development of the concept into one of the core ideas in Western existential philosophy alongside such concepts as anxiety and individual freedom. Ward examines the whole extent of the idea of the 'decisive moment', in which an individual's entire life-project is open to a radical reorientation. From its inception in Kierkegaard's works to the writings of Jaspers and Heidegger, she draws on a vast array of sources beyond just the standard figures of 19th and 20th century Continental philosophy, finding ideas and examples in photography, cinema, music, art, and the modern novel. Chapter One Of Time and The Eternal, Søren Kierkegaard’s Moment, Øieblik; Chapter Two The Gateway named Augenblick: its place in Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of Eternal Return; Chapter Three Karl Jaspers’ ‘pure eye’ of the ‘fleeting moment’; Chapter Four Martin Heidegger’s Augenblick as ‘moment of vision’, and the Redemption of Being; Chapter Five Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Images à la Sauvette, Images on the Run], and the Image as Still; Chapter Six A Decisive Epoch and the ‘Existential Moment’, der Augenblick der Existenz ] in Art; Chapter 7 Conclusion;