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

Four intellectuals hash out puzzling new worldviews after WWI in this spirited yet murky historical study. Philosophie Magazin editor Eilenberger (Finnen von Sinnen) follows the evolving thoughts of four German-speaking philosophers through the 1920s: Ludwig Wittgenstein, who dissected the meaning of language (or lack thereof); Walter Benjamin, a philosophy PhD and journalist who theorized about art, technology, and urban experience; Martin Heidegger, whose Being and Time probed the impact of death and anxiety on the soul; and Heidegger’s antagonist, Ernst Cassirer, who philosophized about symbols and metaphysics. The author weaves in colorful biographical sketches—Wittgenstein gave away a fortune and became a schoolteacher; Benjamin dissipated himself in affairs, drugs, and misfired writing projects—but primarily focuses on common themes in their writings, such as the tension between freedom and determinism, and the drive to escape convention and lead an authentic life. In Whiteside’s serviceable translation, Eilenberger gamely tries to elucidate his subjects’ famously knotty ideas, but the results—“Man is the only creature that is open to the experience of nothingness at the ground of being,” he writes, paraphrasing Heidegger—often confirm just how difficult to parse those concepts were. Still, this comprehensive and well-informed treatment deserves credit for bringing four major philosophers down from the heights of abstraction. (Aug.)