Time of the Magicians: The Great Decade of Philosophy, 1919-1929 - Hardcover

Eilenberger, Wolfram

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241352169 ISBN 13: 9780241352168

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2020

Synopsis

AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020

A gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth century

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.

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?

About this title

About the Author

Wolfram Eilenberger was the founder and for many years Editor-in-Chief of Philosophie Magazin. He has taught philosophy at the University of Toronto, Indiana University, the Berlin University of the Arts and ETH Zürich. His previous books include a study of the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin and guides to the application of philosophy in everyday life. This book, his ninth, was a bestseller on publication in Germany, where it won the prestigious Bayerischer Buchpreis, as well as Spain and Italy, and it has been translated into more than twenty languages.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241352169
• ISBN 13: 9780241352168
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432