Time of the Magicians - Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger Great Decade of

AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR br>br>A gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth centurybr>br>The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein, scion of one of Europe''s wealthiest families, signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes with Husserl''s phenomenological school. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture on a cramped Berlin tram. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama. Over the next decade the lives and thought of this quartet will converge and intertwine, as each gains world-historical significance, between them remaking philosophy.br>br>Time of the Magicians brings to life this miraculous burst of intellectual creativity, unparalleled in philosophy''s history, and with it an entire era, from post-war exuberance to economic crisis and the emergence of National Socialism. With great art, Wolfram Eilenberger traces the paths of these titanic figures through the tumult. He captures their personalities as well as their achievements, and illuminates with singular clarity the philosophies each embodied as well as espoused. It becomes an intellectual adventure story, a captivating journey through the greatest revolution in Western thought told through its four protagonists, each with their own penetrating gaze and answer to the question which has animated philosophy from the very beginning: What are we?>

Report

A tremendous feat of scholarship but also a technical masterpiece, knitting together the four men's love lives, money troubles, ontological anxieties and the wider ferment of the Weimar republic with uncommon dexterity Oliver Moody The Times

Product details

• Authors: Wolfram Eilenberger
• Assisted by: Shaun Whiteside (Translation), Whiteside Shaun (Translation)
• Publisher: Penguin Books Uk
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 24.02.2022
• EAN: 9780141988580
• ISBN: 978-0-14-198858-0
• No. of pages: 432
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 198 mm x 25 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: antiquity to present day; History of Ideas, European History, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century, PHILOSOPHY / Movements / General, PHILOSOPHY / Individual Philosophers, Western philosophy from c 1800, Topics in philosophy, c 1919 to c 1939 (Inter-war period), c 1918 to c 1939 (Inter-war period)