Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger and the Great Decade of Philosophy

Time of the Magicians

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

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

Magnificent, elegantly composed and beautifully narrated

Eilenberger's survey of high thoughts and low politics among German-language philosophers of the 1920s is a salutary tale for today, not just a gripping panorama of century-old dreams and feuds

Accessible and deeply human ... He draws these four intellectual magi out of the shadows of their writings

Like any great story, Eilenberger's is not made up, but retrieved. Events have a way of narrating themselves when they encounter a gifted storyteller

A book of riches - full of stories as well as ideas, all brought together with a fine light touch

The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and align 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 unparalleled burst of intellectual creativity and with it an entire era, from post-war exuberance to economic crisis and the emergence of National Socialism. 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?

The Haunted Present

Wolfram Eilenberger is a founding editor of Philosophie Magazin and host of the Sternstunde Philosophie television programme. He has taught philosophy at the University of Toronto, Indiana University, the Berlin University of the Arts and ETH Zürich. His most recent book, Time of the Magicians, was a runaway bestseller on publication in Germany, where it won the prestigious Bayerischer Buchpreis, as well as in Spain and Italy, and has been translated into more than thirty languages.

Wolfram Eilenberger

Shaun Whiteside

Ambitious, enthralling ... this is a wonderful book

The ceaseless intellectual questing of all four makes for fascinating reading

Illuminates the times through which these philosophers developed their ideas - and vice versa

Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy

The year is 1933. Hannah Arendt escapes Berlin, seeking refuge among the stateless gathering in Paris. Simone de Beauvoir reimagines the dance between consciousness and the world outside in a Rouen café. Ayn Rand labours in Hollywood exile on the novel she believes destined to reignite the flame of liberty in her adoptive nation. Simone Weil, disenchanted with the revolution's course in Russia, devotes her entire being to the plight of the oppressed. Over the next decade, one of the darkest in Europe's history, these four philosophers will conceive in parallel ideas that would circle the globe in the second half of the century, reshaping it. 
 
The Visionaries follows in its protagonists' footsteps from Leningrad to New York, Spain at civil war to France under occupation, as each is uprooted by totalitarianism's ascendence. It shows them facing the injustices, unfreedom and unfathomable violence of their time as women, refugees, activists, resistance fighters - but above all as thinkers. Wolfram Eilenberger expertly distils the radical, brilliant philosophies each lived as well as developed, showing the two to be part of the same story, all testament to thought's redemptive power.

Wolfram Eilenberger

Praise for The Visionaries

Ambitious, enthralling ... this is a wonderful book

The ceaseless intellectual questing of all four makes for fascinating reading

Illuminates the times through which these philosophers developed their ideas - and vice versa

Ambitious, enthralling ... this is a wonderful book

The ceaseless intellectual questing of all four makes for fascinating reading

Illuminates the times through which these philosophers developed their ideas - and vice versa

Ambitious, enthralling ... this is a wonderful book

The ceaseless intellectual questing of all four makes for fascinating reading

Illuminates the times through which these philosophers developed their ideas - and vice versa

Books by Wolfram Eilenberger

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter