Homo Temporalis

<p><b><i>Homo Temporalis</i></b><b> focuses on the importance of temporal concepts for four German Jewish thinkers who profoundly shaped twentieth-century intellectual history: Martin Buber Walter Benjamin Hannah Arendt and Paul Celan.</b> By analyzing the concept of time Nitzan Lebovic explores Buber's stress on the temporality of the dialogue between I and Thou; Benjamin's now-time and dialectics in standstill; Arendt's understanding of democracy as natality or a permanent revolution; and the breathturn that informs Celan's poetry. Framing the reception of German Jewish thinking in the second half of the twentieth century as a parallel story to the rise of the modern humanities <i>Homo Temporalis</i> also highlights how these foundational temporal concepts illuminate the causes of the present crisis in the humanities and its disciplinary limitations in the age of biopolitics and the Anthropocene.</p>