Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy

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Overview

“[A] fascinating and accessible account . . . In his entertaining book, Mr. Eilenberger shows that his magicians’ thoughts are still worth collecting, even if, with hindsight, we can see that some performed too many intellectual conjuring tricks.” —Wall Street Journal

A grand narrative of the intertwining lives of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Cassirer, major philosophers whose ideas shaped the twentieth century


The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity. Meanwhile, Heidegger, having managed to avoid combat in war by serving as a meteorologist, is carefully cultivating his career. Finally, Cassirer is working furiously on the margins of academia, applying himself to his writing and the possibility of a career at Hamburg University. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama, which will unfold across the next decade. The lives and ideas of this extraordinary philosophical quartet will converge as they become world historical figures. But as the Second World War looms on the horizon, their fates will be very different.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780525559672
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date: 08/18/2020
Sold by: Penguin Group
Format: eBook
Pages: 432
File size: 27 MB
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About the Author

Wolfram Eilenberger is an internationally bestselling author and philosopher. He is the founding editor of Philosophie Magazin and hosts the television program Sternstunde Philosophie on the Swiss public broadcasting network SRF. In 2018, he published Time of the Magicians in Germany. The book instantly became a bestseller there, as well as in Italy and Spain, and won the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France. It has been translated into more than twenty languages. Eilenberger has been a prolific contributor of essays and articles to many publications, among them Die ZeitDer Spiegel, and Cicero, and has taught at the University of Toronto, Indiana University Bloomington, and Berlin University of the Arts.

Table of Contents

I Prologue: The Magicians 1

The Arrival of God

High Fliers

Maintaining One's Composure

The Davos Myth

Human Questions

Without Foundation

Two Visions

At a Crossroads

Where Is Benjamin?

Fail Better

Does My Life Need a Goal?

The One-Man Republic

II Leaps: 1919 29

What to Do?

A Refuge

Critical Days

Romantic Theses

New Self-Awareness

Flights

The Transformation

Ethical Acts

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams

An Interesting Condition

Exposed Flanks

A World Without a View

The Primal Scientist

No Alibi

The New Realm

Fidelity to the Event

German Virtues

Unloved

Electrified

III Languages: 1919-1920 61

Figuratively Speaking

Viennese Bridges

Poetic Precision

Against the World

Three Dots in The Hague

Pictures of Facts

The Barber

Russell on the Ladder

Why the World Does Not Exist

Under Pressure

The Obscured Gaze

Lonely Together

Two Oddballs

Worlds Ahead

The Breakthrough of Authenticity

Something in Media

Flappers

The Task

Radical Translation

Cult and Sound

Goèthe in Hamburg

The Fundamental Phenomenon

The Will to Multiplicity

Onward

Does the Language Exist?

IV Culture: 1922-1923 115

A Hut of One's Own

Strange Callings

Existential Health Check

Stormy Weather

Wars of Attrition

Bad Neighbors

Good Neighbors

Utopia on the Bookshelf

The Outcome of Myth

The New Enlightenment

Across the River

In the Maelstrom

The Third Man

Goethe in Weimar

More Light

Freedom or Fate

Choice or Decision

The Divorced Republic

Leap of Salvation

Redeeming Transcendence

Ruthlessness

Three-Quarters Understood

In Therapy

Top Down

V You: 1923-1925 163

The Idiot

It's Complicated

Hospitality

From Hamburg to Bellevue

Snake Experiments

Tunnel and Light

Weimar Topples

Mighty Fortresses

Being an Event

You, Demon

In the Midst of Being

To Think the Hardest Thing

Amor Mundi

Hunger Cures

Goodbye Deutschland

Grapes and Almonds

New Beginnings

VI Freedom: 1925-1927 205

Red Stars

Critical Prologues

A Case for Adam

Grief Work

Remembered Perception

Tristes Tropiques

Critical Album

Palestine or Communism

Neighbors

To Work

Exposing the Question

The Time of Dasein

Philosophizing with a Hammer: The Study of Equipment

Sturm und Angst

That Certain Something: Running Ahead into Death

The Hamburg School

The Hidden Origin

Plurality of Outcome

Self-Fashioning Through Openness

The Fault in Our Stars

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Engineers of Speech

A Little List

The Responsibility Principle

A Fainting Fit

VII Arcades: 1926-1928 263

Technical Talent

For Gods Alone

A Circle Without a Master

Much to Learn You Still Have

Instability

Moscow or Bust

The Hell of Other People

A Man Without a Framework

Party for One

High Seas

In the Eye of the Storm

An Emergency in Frankfurt

Individual and Republic

Building Work

Age of the Demon

After Being

Foundation and Abyss

Back to the Origin

Homecoming!

Dizzy Heights

VIII Time: 1929 317

Slaloming

Among People

On the Eve

Relax!

Verbal Storms: The Davos Debate

Licking Wounds

Spring Awakenings

The Three-Hundred-Penny Opera

The Doors

Breathless

Gaslight

The Self-Destructive Personality

Hot Dogs

The Hiker

A Day Off

Internal Difficulties

Back to the Everyday

Naples in Cambridge

Useful Reminders

The City of Words

Against the Wall

Epilogue 363

Acknowledgments 367

List of Works 369

Notes 373

Selected Bibliography 387

Photograph Credits 397

Index 401

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