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Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy
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 still fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin, whose life is characterized by false starts and unfinished projects, 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, as a scion of one of the wealthiest industrial families in Europe, in search of absolute spiritual clarity. Meanwhile, Heidegger, having managed to avoid combat in war by serving instead as a meteorologist, is carefully cultivating his career, aligning himself with the great Edmund Husserl and renouncing his prior Catholic associations. Finally, Cassirer is working furiously on the margins of academia, applying himself intensely 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.
Wolfram Eilenberger stylishly traces the paths of these remarkable and turbulent lives, which feature not only philosophy but some of the most important economists, politicians, journalists, and artists of the century, including John Maynard Keynes, Hannah Arendt, and Bertrand Russell. In doing so, he tells a gripping story about some of history's most ambitious and passionate thinkers, and illuminates with rare clarity and economy their brilliant ideas, which all too often have been regarded as enigmatic or opaque.
The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is still fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin, whose life is characterized by false starts and unfinished projects, 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, as a scion of one of the wealthiest industrial families in Europe, in search of absolute spiritual clarity. Meanwhile, Heidegger, having managed to avoid combat in war by serving instead as a meteorologist, is carefully cultivating his career, aligning himself with the great Edmund Husserl and renouncing his prior Catholic associations. Finally, Cassirer is working furiously on the margins of academia, applying himself intensely 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.
Wolfram Eilenberger stylishly traces the paths of these remarkable and turbulent lives, which feature not only philosophy but some of the most important economists, politicians, journalists, and artists of the century, including John Maynard Keynes, Hannah Arendt, and Bertrand Russell. In doing so, he tells a gripping story about some of history's most ambitious and passionate thinkers, and illuminates with rare clarity and economy their brilliant ideas, which all too often have been regarded as enigmatic or opaque.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published March 18, 2018
About the author
Wolfram Eilenberger
20 books78 followersWolfram Eilenberger, born 1972, is an internationally bestselling, award-winning writer and philosopher.
In 2018, he published Time of the Magicians (Zeit der Zauberer) in Germany. The book instantly became a bestseller there, as well as in countries such as Italy, and Spain. It has been translated into thirty languages.
In November 2018 it won the prestigious Bayerischer Buchpreis, in 2019 the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France. It was also shortlisted for several other awards, both nationally and internationally. The book also received wide critical acclaim in the US and UK.
Eilenberger has been a prolific contributor of essays and articles to many publications, among them Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, and El País. He has taught at the University of Toronto, Indiana University Bloomington, the ETH Zürich and Berlin University of the Arts.
Eilenberger is one of the program directors of the phil.cologne, Germany's biggest philosophy festival, and moderator of the TV program Sternstunde Philosophie (Swiss Television). He also holds a DFB football trainer’s licence and appears regularly as a soccer expert on German TV and radio.
He is married to the linguist and former Finnish national basketball player Pia Päiviö, and he lives with his family in Berlin.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 284 reviews
September 5, 2021
Fucking BRILLIANT!!!
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November 1, 2020Käthe Kollwitz - The Survivors, 1923
Four very, very different philosophers living through and reacting to an extended economic, social and political crisis preliminary to a global disaster of rare proportions - such is the focus of Zeit der Zauberer: Das große Jahrzehnt der Philosophie 1919 - 1929 (2018; already available in English translation under the title Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy). Despite the somewhat unusual topic and the author's earnest attempts to elucidate what are often enough rather abstruse ideas, the book has already been translated into a dozen languages. Perhaps the author's liberal dissemination of sexual gossip about the four central figures - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin and Ernst Cassirer - and his all too frequent use of a (at least for me) grating prose style informed by popular journalism have something to do with it. Perhaps the fact that the first three mentioned led lives that were, shall we say, unusual also contributed to the book's success.
In any case, given my interest in philosophy and fascination with the Weimar Republic, reading this book was foreordained.
After four years of nightmarish death the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires collapsed and the remnants of an entire generation returned from the war to unemployment, scarce supplies of comestibles and political upheaval that quickly escalated into violence. The stunned survivors of trench warfare had to try to pick up the threads of their lives in the most unfavorable conditions(*) and, naturally, returned with doubts about, if not total rejection of the value system with which they were originally socialized.
Though of the four central figures only Wittgenstein had actually fought (he finished the war in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp)(**), all would try to diagnose the source of the failure of the pre-war order and would come up with vastly different conclusions, pace Eilenberger's strained attempts to find commonalities.
Eilenberger traces the lives and the development of the thought of these philosophers in a surprisingly even-handed manner, despite the differences in their personalities, ways of life and ideas. I recall that as a young man I had hoped that philosophy would provide me with the Truth, but a near-lifetime of occupation with philosophers' writings has made it clear that hope was vain. Instead, it has been an education in the vast range of possibilities human beings with the correspondingly vast spectrum of cultures, life experiences, indeed even personalities have earnestly cobbled together. (***) To my mind, Eilenberger's text illustrates how all three shape one's philosophy. I'll finish with a quote in this connection whose sentiment I would like to endorse:
als ob Philosophen Ingenieure der Seele wären anstatt schöpferisch Suchende in einem offenen Raum ohne letztes Fundament oder sichernde Decken
[as if philosophers were engineers of the soul instead of creative seekers in an open room without final foundation or securing ceilings]
(*) Some, like Erich Maria Remarque, had gone directly from High School to the front and so were obliged to create their adult lives from scratch.
(**) Initially passed over for medical reasons, Heidegger was sent to the army's weather service late in the war; Benjamin twice succeeded in convincing his draft board that he had disqualifying medical problems; the significantly older Cassirer spent the war teaching at a university in Berlin.
(***) Nonetheless, this long occupation has greatly helped me find some of my own "truths" in light of my particular culture, life experience and personality.
October 16, 2019
Eine clevere Idee, man nehme sich vier Biographien von bedeutenden deutschsprachigen Philosophen, klaube die besten Anekdoten heraus und unterstelle, dass die in einem Jahrzehnt etwas Bedeutendes geleistet haben, was irgendwie zusammenhängt. Nun ja. Zumindest „wussten die voneinander“. Vielleicht.
Ein bisschen Biographie, ein kleines bisschen Philosophie, die niemandem wehtut, das ideale Buch für den gelangweilten Feuilltonleser, der sich schon immer mal mit Philosophie beschäftigen wollte, aber zu behäbig ist, um die Werke selbst zu lesen oder auch nur anständige Biographien. Und man kann so schön Name-dropping betreiben, wir sind schließlich im Berlin der 20er Jahre: Josephine Baker, Max Reinhard, Harden, Gropius werden im Tagebuch erwähnt. In wessen Tagebuch? Im Tagebuch des Grafen Kessler. Kessler? Ja, aber Benjamin hätte diesen Tagebucheintrag machen können! Ja, dann.
Zweifelhaft. Aber wie ist die Ausführung? Sagen wir, es gibt handwerkliche Schwächen. Wittgenstein wird uns als Milliardärssohn vorgestellt. Ein Anachronismus (Rockefeller gilt als der erste Milliardär), aber Eilenberger denkt ja auch, dass die Währung damals der Schilling war. Jedenfalls habe Wittgenstein 1919 keinen „Schilling“ zur Veröffentlichung des Tractatus beisteuern wollen. Tatsächlich wurde der Schilling erst 1925 in Österreich eingeführt, just in jenem Jahr, in dem nach Eilenberger die NSDAP gegründet wurde (S. 282)! Man fasst es nicht. Gibt es keinen Faktencheck?
Aber das ist kleinlich, oder? Und ist es kleinlich, dass ich mich daran störe, wenn Eilenberger in Bezug auf Wittgenstein von sinnlosen Sätzen spricht, wenn unsinnige gemeint sind? Einmal sind es sogar „sinnfreie“ Sätze. Sinnlos ist ein Terminus Technicus. Da sollte sich Schludrigkeit verbieten. Vermutlich würde er Heideggers „Zeug“ auch nicht „Kram“ nennen, um etwas sprachliche Abwechslung zu bringen. Die unsinnig-sinnlos Unterscheidung ist fundamental, Eilenberger dagegen teilt uns lieber immer wieder und wieder mit, dass Wittgenstein sich unverstanden fühlte. Was wollte Wittgenstein denn sagen? Im Zweifel, irgendwas therapeutisches. Keiner erwartet eine echte Interpretation, aber etwas mehr hätte es schon sein dürfen.
Gut, immerhin lerne ich etwas über Walter Benjamin, und die Schilderung des Disputs von Davos finde ich auch gelungen, und dankenswerterweise wird auch ganz am Schluss noch Heideggers Verstrickung mit dem Nationalsozialismus deutlich. Ich hatte befürchtet, die Beschränkung auf die 20er Jahre wäre geschehen, um dieses heikle Thema auszusparen.
3/10
Ein bisschen Biographie, ein kleines bisschen Philosophie, die niemandem wehtut, das ideale Buch für den gelangweilten Feuilltonleser, der sich schon immer mal mit Philosophie beschäftigen wollte, aber zu behäbig ist, um die Werke selbst zu lesen oder auch nur anständige Biographien. Und man kann so schön Name-dropping betreiben, wir sind schließlich im Berlin der 20er Jahre: Josephine Baker, Max Reinhard, Harden, Gropius werden im Tagebuch erwähnt. In wessen Tagebuch? Im Tagebuch des Grafen Kessler. Kessler? Ja, aber Benjamin hätte diesen Tagebucheintrag machen können! Ja, dann.
Zweifelhaft. Aber wie ist die Ausführung? Sagen wir, es gibt handwerkliche Schwächen. Wittgenstein wird uns als Milliardärssohn vorgestellt. Ein Anachronismus (Rockefeller gilt als der erste Milliardär), aber Eilenberger denkt ja auch, dass die Währung damals der Schilling war. Jedenfalls habe Wittgenstein 1919 keinen „Schilling“ zur Veröffentlichung des Tractatus beisteuern wollen. Tatsächlich wurde der Schilling erst 1925 in Österreich eingeführt, just in jenem Jahr, in dem nach Eilenberger die NSDAP gegründet wurde (S. 282)! Man fasst es nicht. Gibt es keinen Faktencheck?
Aber das ist kleinlich, oder? Und ist es kleinlich, dass ich mich daran störe, wenn Eilenberger in Bezug auf Wittgenstein von sinnlosen Sätzen spricht, wenn unsinnige gemeint sind? Einmal sind es sogar „sinnfreie“ Sätze. Sinnlos ist ein Terminus Technicus. Da sollte sich Schludrigkeit verbieten. Vermutlich würde er Heideggers „Zeug“ auch nicht „Kram“ nennen, um etwas sprachliche Abwechslung zu bringen. Die unsinnig-sinnlos Unterscheidung ist fundamental, Eilenberger dagegen teilt uns lieber immer wieder und wieder mit, dass Wittgenstein sich unverstanden fühlte. Was wollte Wittgenstein denn sagen? Im Zweifel, irgendwas therapeutisches. Keiner erwartet eine echte Interpretation, aber etwas mehr hätte es schon sein dürfen.
Gut, immerhin lerne ich etwas über Walter Benjamin, und die Schilderung des Disputs von Davos finde ich auch gelungen, und dankenswerterweise wird auch ganz am Schluss noch Heideggers Verstrickung mit dem Nationalsozialismus deutlich. Ich hatte befürchtet, die Beschränkung auf die 20er Jahre wäre geschehen, um dieses heikle Thema auszusparen.
3/10
September 25, 2020
Arguably within the 20th century the two most important non-fiction books written in the 20th century were Being and Time by Heidegger and the Tractatus by Wittgenstein in addition as this book mentions the two most zeitgeist 1920s defining fictional books would have been Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. This book does what almost no modern books do, it assumes its readers really wants to understand and never talks down to them and provides a roadmap for connecting complex thought without dumbing down the story since the only way we can get out of the paradox of existence is to first understand that we are in it. As when that ugly neighbor shouts ‘go back to Palestine’ what does it really mean (or in today’s America ‘go back to Mexico’ since all Mexican’s are rapist, or at least our Fuhrer shouts that incoherently)?
Fortunately for me, I had just finished reading Mann’s Magic Mountain and have just (as of last week) finished Proust’s In Search of Lost Time series, and because of Time of Magicians I ended up reading Cassirer’s first volume of Philosophy of Symbolic Forms because I wanted to see where he was really coming from. It made the sequel for this book all the more interesting, in particular the debate between Heidegger and Cassirer and what he was really getting at. The students attending the debate cleverly mocked Cassirer by performing a skit by just repeating ‘Humboldt, Kant, Humboldt, Kant’, quite funny while being cutting with its accuracy.
Heidegger will sit with his mother while she is dying and she will say ‘son, I can no longer prayer for your goodness, I must only think of myself now since death is coming imminently for me’. That is Being and Time in a nutshell. Cassirer’s neighbor during the formation of the Nazi ethos will say ‘Go back to Palestine you Jews’, it hurts Toni (his wife) as it should because for the ignorant Nazi slurring it thinks of Palestine as a dung heap, while Toni sees if for an unfulfilled dream of a promise of happiness. That is Cassirer’s symbolic meaning belief in a nutshell. Wittgenstein understands that the questions and the answers are prattle and we are trapped with why is there something rather than nothing until the abyss stares at us as we only remember our memories of what was as we hope for what will be and all is unknowable except for when he hits a student too hard who almost dies and Wittgenstein leaves town that very day because it was not prattle but real. Benjamin looks for meaning in all the wrong places and plans on killing himself until he reads Tristram Shandy and laughs out loud, not a bad reason not to kill yourself and a fairly good place to find meaning for yourself.
Heidegger is a Nazi at heart. There’s a funny line within this book. Hanna Arendt was his student when she was 19 and he was 35, and then he had an affair with her. That alone is somewhat creepy by itself, but his behavior towards all around him allowed Hanna Arendt to say for when it comes to character Heidegger didn’t have a ‘bad character’ he has ‘no character whatsoever’. Funny, but true. All one needs to do is carefully read B&T to figure out Heidegger is a Nazi and is channeling ‘a sublimation of the individual for the sake of a mythical consensus’ which he explicitly will embrace within his Introduction to Metaphysics and within his special lecture praising Hitler at Freiburg University both of which are documented in this book. ‘Authenticity’ for Heidegger meant being a good Nazi, following the cultural determinism of Oswald Spengler, and embracing the special unique character of the German Volk since ‘national socialism is racism’ and pride in one’s culture reigns supreme when it is ones’ own culture at least to the twisted mind of Nazis or Trump followers. For those who have not recently read Mein Kampf and have forgotten, Hitler will say Nazis are National Socialist and national socialism is racism and by socialism he means the social revolution of the German Volk not by economical class but by pure Aryan race through superior genetics. At Trump’s Nuremburg rally in Minnesota two days ago (about 9/23/2020) he commented on the ‘superior genes’ they all had as the audience stopped thinking and decided to cheer madly their Fuhrer, I mean their leader.
It’s too bad. I would love to have sided with Cassirer over the fascist Heidegger but while Cassirer was well aware of the Spengler inspired ‘cultural determination’ and what a danger it meant, he trips himself up with universals that limit his being able to fully grasp the 1920s and what was transpiring and how the real evil was unfolding over time. When one reads The Magic Mountain, one realizes that Mann starts to realize that there is a storm brewing and in the early parts of his novel which took ten years to write he falls into a Cassirer trap of not seeing what is really going on, but he does change the tone in the latter part of the novel.
The world is made up of facts (Wittgenstein) or the world is feelings through our attunement with the world (Heidegger). The first will say there is no worldview while we exist within the world, the second will say there is at least one ontological foundation. Heidegger was quoted to have said, but not within this book, that he couldn’t get past the first line of the Tractatus. It’s too bad because when as this book will show, they both are trying to get at the question why is there something rather than nothing and Cassirer and Benjamin are in the word game to play too but they are mostly on the edges of the conversation.
Overall, a very good book to help the modern-day reader understand why 1920s German thought is still relevant to today and gives me hope that there are other modern books out there which assume the reader really wants to know and understand our special place in time and how time is a process which leads to irony being jealous of authenticity.
Fortunately for me, I had just finished reading Mann’s Magic Mountain and have just (as of last week) finished Proust’s In Search of Lost Time series, and because of Time of Magicians I ended up reading Cassirer’s first volume of Philosophy of Symbolic Forms because I wanted to see where he was really coming from. It made the sequel for this book all the more interesting, in particular the debate between Heidegger and Cassirer and what he was really getting at. The students attending the debate cleverly mocked Cassirer by performing a skit by just repeating ‘Humboldt, Kant, Humboldt, Kant’, quite funny while being cutting with its accuracy.
Heidegger will sit with his mother while she is dying and she will say ‘son, I can no longer prayer for your goodness, I must only think of myself now since death is coming imminently for me’. That is Being and Time in a nutshell. Cassirer’s neighbor during the formation of the Nazi ethos will say ‘Go back to Palestine you Jews’, it hurts Toni (his wife) as it should because for the ignorant Nazi slurring it thinks of Palestine as a dung heap, while Toni sees if for an unfulfilled dream of a promise of happiness. That is Cassirer’s symbolic meaning belief in a nutshell. Wittgenstein understands that the questions and the answers are prattle and we are trapped with why is there something rather than nothing until the abyss stares at us as we only remember our memories of what was as we hope for what will be and all is unknowable except for when he hits a student too hard who almost dies and Wittgenstein leaves town that very day because it was not prattle but real. Benjamin looks for meaning in all the wrong places and plans on killing himself until he reads Tristram Shandy and laughs out loud, not a bad reason not to kill yourself and a fairly good place to find meaning for yourself.
Heidegger is a Nazi at heart. There’s a funny line within this book. Hanna Arendt was his student when she was 19 and he was 35, and then he had an affair with her. That alone is somewhat creepy by itself, but his behavior towards all around him allowed Hanna Arendt to say for when it comes to character Heidegger didn’t have a ‘bad character’ he has ‘no character whatsoever’. Funny, but true. All one needs to do is carefully read B&T to figure out Heidegger is a Nazi and is channeling ‘a sublimation of the individual for the sake of a mythical consensus’ which he explicitly will embrace within his Introduction to Metaphysics and within his special lecture praising Hitler at Freiburg University both of which are documented in this book. ‘Authenticity’ for Heidegger meant being a good Nazi, following the cultural determinism of Oswald Spengler, and embracing the special unique character of the German Volk since ‘national socialism is racism’ and pride in one’s culture reigns supreme when it is ones’ own culture at least to the twisted mind of Nazis or Trump followers. For those who have not recently read Mein Kampf and have forgotten, Hitler will say Nazis are National Socialist and national socialism is racism and by socialism he means the social revolution of the German Volk not by economical class but by pure Aryan race through superior genetics. At Trump’s Nuremburg rally in Minnesota two days ago (about 9/23/2020) he commented on the ‘superior genes’ they all had as the audience stopped thinking and decided to cheer madly their Fuhrer, I mean their leader.
It’s too bad. I would love to have sided with Cassirer over the fascist Heidegger but while Cassirer was well aware of the Spengler inspired ‘cultural determination’ and what a danger it meant, he trips himself up with universals that limit his being able to fully grasp the 1920s and what was transpiring and how the real evil was unfolding over time. When one reads The Magic Mountain, one realizes that Mann starts to realize that there is a storm brewing and in the early parts of his novel which took ten years to write he falls into a Cassirer trap of not seeing what is really going on, but he does change the tone in the latter part of the novel.
The world is made up of facts (Wittgenstein) or the world is feelings through our attunement with the world (Heidegger). The first will say there is no worldview while we exist within the world, the second will say there is at least one ontological foundation. Heidegger was quoted to have said, but not within this book, that he couldn’t get past the first line of the Tractatus. It’s too bad because when as this book will show, they both are trying to get at the question why is there something rather than nothing and Cassirer and Benjamin are in the word game to play too but they are mostly on the edges of the conversation.
Overall, a very good book to help the modern-day reader understand why 1920s German thought is still relevant to today and gives me hope that there are other modern books out there which assume the reader really wants to know and understand our special place in time and how time is a process which leads to irony being jealous of authenticity.
Read
February 26, 2021I thought I would let this settle for a couple of days before I reviewed it, but to my dismay it has evaporated rather than settled. I did read carefully, and at times I felt that I was getting the gist, but it didn’t stick. My college philosophy course didn’t get into the 20th century, and my reading since hasn’t tackled these ideas in a head-on way, just slanted at them.
This is not Eilenberger’s fault. He has set himself the daunting tasks of articulating how the very complex philosophies of four deep thinkers developed, as well as sketching their lives and interactions. He wants consider how World War I and their temperaments affected the environment in which they examined life. Then he has to delineate the divergences among their solutions to similar questions. If you have some background in phenomenology, you’ll probably be okay.
More reading is clearly in order to really root the ideas of these four philosophers in my brain. I’m not sure whether rereading this, or moving on to writers coming at the men from other viewpoints would be best. But I do come away with the interesting way that their struggling with the questions of being and thinking intertwined in the early twentieth century, and had a major impact on other thinkers who recognized the power of these men’s intellects.
I know that I would have totally enjoyed a day with Amy Warburg and the Cassirers. A neo-Kantian in the midst of approaching catastrophe. While Heidegger makes my skin crawl. I’m sure this has been quoted many times, but Eilenberger cites his one-time lover Hannah Arendt: “Heidegger did not have a bad character, in fact he had none at all.” Benjamin is the one whose actual work I am most likely to read; The Arcades Project is on my shelves already. As is the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which I bought last month in a crazy fit of New Year’s optimism that I was going to get back on track with my project of completing most of Philip Ward’s A Lifetime's Reading: Five Hundred Great Books to be Enjoyed over 50 Years before I die. (Which, having gotten my first jab, I am hoping is later rather than sooner.) I suspect I’ll have more success with a few pages of Arcades each day than one paragraph of Wittgenstein a week. (Not to mention my dismay when I read in the Eilenberger that Wittgenstein abandoned its ideas later in his life. Now reading it seems really only useful for specialists.)
Back to the book. Eilenberger uses the debate between Cassirer and Heidegger at a Davos conference in 1929 as the organizing principle for his depiction of the contest between their views of the world. Cassirer the celebrant of culture, Heidegger as the advocate of back to survival living. At one point he sums up their positions:
The trouble is, as much as I want to live the creative, humanist life as Cassirer urges, I feel every day that I am being thrust irretrievably into Heidegger’s hell.
This is not Eilenberger’s fault. He has set himself the daunting tasks of articulating how the very complex philosophies of four deep thinkers developed, as well as sketching their lives and interactions. He wants consider how World War I and their temperaments affected the environment in which they examined life. Then he has to delineate the divergences among their solutions to similar questions. If you have some background in phenomenology, you’ll probably be okay.
More reading is clearly in order to really root the ideas of these four philosophers in my brain. I’m not sure whether rereading this, or moving on to writers coming at the men from other viewpoints would be best. But I do come away with the interesting way that their struggling with the questions of being and thinking intertwined in the early twentieth century, and had a major impact on other thinkers who recognized the power of these men’s intellects.
I know that I would have totally enjoyed a day with Amy Warburg and the Cassirers. A neo-Kantian in the midst of approaching catastrophe. While Heidegger makes my skin crawl. I’m sure this has been quoted many times, but Eilenberger cites his one-time lover Hannah Arendt: “Heidegger did not have a bad character, in fact he had none at all.” Benjamin is the one whose actual work I am most likely to read; The Arcades Project is on my shelves already. As is the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which I bought last month in a crazy fit of New Year’s optimism that I was going to get back on track with my project of completing most of Philip Ward’s A Lifetime's Reading: Five Hundred Great Books to be Enjoyed over 50 Years before I die. (Which, having gotten my first jab, I am hoping is later rather than sooner.) I suspect I’ll have more success with a few pages of Arcades each day than one paragraph of Wittgenstein a week. (Not to mention my dismay when I read in the Eilenberger that Wittgenstein abandoned its ideas later in his life. Now reading it seems really only useful for specialists.)
Back to the book. Eilenberger uses the debate between Cassirer and Heidegger at a Davos conference in 1929 as the organizing principle for his depiction of the contest between their views of the world. Cassirer the celebrant of culture, Heidegger as the advocate of back to survival living. At one point he sums up their positions:
Which of the two directions should judgment take?
What the philosopher Cassirer wanted: Cast off your anxiety as creative cultural beings, liberate yourself from your original constraints and limitations.
What the philosopher Heidegger wanted: Cast off culture as a rotten aspect of your essence, and sink as the groundlessly thrown beings that you are, each in your own way, back into the truly liberating origin of your existence: the Nothing and anxiety!
The trouble is, as much as I want to live the creative, humanist life as Cassirer urges, I feel every day that I am being thrust irretrievably into Heidegger’s hell.
December 13, 2018
Het werkt een beetje deprimerend dit overzicht van een decennium leven en werk van vier reuzen uit de Duitse filosofie in het interbellum. Tussen de zijnsleer (wat is er? wat is de aard der dingen?) en de kennisleer (wat kunnen we weten en hoe weten we wat echt is) is er de taal als belangrijkste instrument van mensen om het over de werkelijkheid te hebben. Maar hoe zit het juist met die relatie tussen taal en werkelijkheid. Is taal symbolisch? Kunnen we in taal dingen zeggen waarbij woord en werkelijkheid ondubbelzinnig samenvallen? Eilenberger laat zien hoe Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Benjamin en Cassirer elk op hun manier ploeteren in dat moeras. Het is deprimerend omdat deze fundamentele vragen zonder antwoord voorafgaan aan alle verdere menselijke activiteit: sociaal, economisch, wetenschappelijk, ... en die dus op losse schroeven zet. Voor de vroege Wittgenstein lijkt het nog net mogelijk om een aantal wiskundige, exact wetenschappelijke uitspraken te doen, maar over de rest moet men zwijgen, zoals de gekende boutade gaat.
Tegelijkertijd gaat er wel een zekere troost van uit voor wie stilaan hopeloos wordt van de Babylonische verwarring in een tijd van exploderende sociale media en de vermenging van academie en journalistiek met ideologie. We weten: het zijn noodzakelijkerwijs beperkte, niet éénduidige perspectieven en de propageerders ervan weten dat niet, vandaar hun heftige stelligheid.
Voor mensen zoals ik, die met een aan zekerheid grenzende waarschijnlijkheid, er nooit zullen toe komen om deze filosofen zelf te lezen, maar toch geinteresseerd zijn, lijkt Eilenberger een goede gids. Met veel flair wijst hij de weg in de bij wijlen toch wel complexe denkwerelden van de tovenaars. Grote intellecten zijn het, die eeuwen denkwerk van hun voorgangers moeiteloos kunnen overschouwen, synthetiseren en verbinden met hun eigen tijd. Dat laatste is niet onbelangrijk want de periode 1919-1929 is, zo weten we nu, het voorspel van donkere bladzijden uit de Duitse geschiedenis. Hun engagement om oplossingen te vinden om met heldere taal juiste inzichten te kunnen vertolken was broodnodig in een tijd die aan een razend tempo nieuwe -ismen produceerde en stijf stond van ideologische propaganda. Misschien loont het voor onze tijd om eens te gaan kijken hoe zij zich uit de slag trokken.
Eten en drinken dus voor wie wat wil weten over taal- en kennisfilosofie, over een bijzondere periode in intellectuele geschiedenis van Duitstalig Europa en ja, ook over leven en welzijn van het bijzondere viertal. Wie wil weten hoe het zat met Heidegger en Hannah Arendt, de bizarre persoonlijkheid van Wittgenstein en dergelijke komt ook aan zijn trekken.
Het boek is zuiver chronologisch opgevat, begint in 1919 en eindigt in 1929. Het verhaal verspringt van Wenen naar Freiburg, Hamburg, Berlijn of naar waar de protagonisten zich op een bepaald ogenblik bevinden. Soms hakken we hout met Heidegger in het Zwarte Woud. Dat verhalende element maakt het verschil tussen “sein” en “dasein” wat draaglijker maar niet noodzakelijk duidelijker.
Dat brengt ons bij de taal van het boek: de stukken over moeilijke filosofie zijn hier ook moeilijk. Maar de vertaling uit het Duits leest verder vlot. Niet te droog want Eilenberger houdt wel van het viertal, dat voel je. Toch een aanrader dus, voor wie een (kleine) inspanning wil leveren.
Tegelijkertijd gaat er wel een zekere troost van uit voor wie stilaan hopeloos wordt van de Babylonische verwarring in een tijd van exploderende sociale media en de vermenging van academie en journalistiek met ideologie. We weten: het zijn noodzakelijkerwijs beperkte, niet éénduidige perspectieven en de propageerders ervan weten dat niet, vandaar hun heftige stelligheid.
Voor mensen zoals ik, die met een aan zekerheid grenzende waarschijnlijkheid, er nooit zullen toe komen om deze filosofen zelf te lezen, maar toch geinteresseerd zijn, lijkt Eilenberger een goede gids. Met veel flair wijst hij de weg in de bij wijlen toch wel complexe denkwerelden van de tovenaars. Grote intellecten zijn het, die eeuwen denkwerk van hun voorgangers moeiteloos kunnen overschouwen, synthetiseren en verbinden met hun eigen tijd. Dat laatste is niet onbelangrijk want de periode 1919-1929 is, zo weten we nu, het voorspel van donkere bladzijden uit de Duitse geschiedenis. Hun engagement om oplossingen te vinden om met heldere taal juiste inzichten te kunnen vertolken was broodnodig in een tijd die aan een razend tempo nieuwe -ismen produceerde en stijf stond van ideologische propaganda. Misschien loont het voor onze tijd om eens te gaan kijken hoe zij zich uit de slag trokken.
Eten en drinken dus voor wie wat wil weten over taal- en kennisfilosofie, over een bijzondere periode in intellectuele geschiedenis van Duitstalig Europa en ja, ook over leven en welzijn van het bijzondere viertal. Wie wil weten hoe het zat met Heidegger en Hannah Arendt, de bizarre persoonlijkheid van Wittgenstein en dergelijke komt ook aan zijn trekken.
Het boek is zuiver chronologisch opgevat, begint in 1919 en eindigt in 1929. Het verhaal verspringt van Wenen naar Freiburg, Hamburg, Berlijn of naar waar de protagonisten zich op een bepaald ogenblik bevinden. Soms hakken we hout met Heidegger in het Zwarte Woud. Dat verhalende element maakt het verschil tussen “sein” en “dasein” wat draaglijker maar niet noodzakelijk duidelijker.
Dat brengt ons bij de taal van het boek: de stukken over moeilijke filosofie zijn hier ook moeilijk. Maar de vertaling uit het Duits leest verder vlot. Niet te droog want Eilenberger houdt wel van het viertal, dat voel je. Toch een aanrader dus, voor wie een (kleine) inspanning wil leveren.
October 24, 2024
During the first World War, Walter Benjamin was excused from military service due to health reasons. Ernst Cassirer continues working as the head of the philosophy department at Hamburg University. Martin Heidegger, meanwhile, serves as a meteorologist for the German army. After serving in the Austro-Hungarian army and while a prisoner in Italy, Ludwig Wittgenstein writes his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
“6:52 We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.
….Wittgenstein's philosophical approach was a severely scientific one, but his morality was existential. A good life is based not on objective grounds but on radically subjective decisions. It cannot be meaningfully said what a good life consists of; it must show itself in real, everyday execution.”
After the war, the Weimar Republic experiences hyperinflation and has difficulty meeting the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Benjamin obtains his doctorate of philosophy and works as a translator and art critic. He later writes "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an essay on the nature of authenticity in a world of reproductions. Cassirer works in the private library of the art historian, Aby Warburg, and writes the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, exploring the use of myths and symbols to understand human existence. Heidegger, a professor at the University of Marburg, develops his ideas on “Dasein”, or existence in the world, in his work Being in Time. Wittgenstein relinquishes his inheritance and becomes a primary school teacher in rural Austria. He later returns to Cambridge, receives a doctorate of philosophy and becomes a professor at the University of Cambridge.
“Well, God has arrived, I met him on the 5:15 train," John Maynard Keynes wrote in a letter dated January 18, 1929. Keynes, at the time probably the most important economist in the world, met Wittgenstein by chance the day after his return to England.”
As the Second World War looms and then rages on, Benjamin leaves Germany, was turned back at the French-Spanish border and in despair overdoses on morphine. Cassirer flees to England, then Sweden and finally settles in the US. Heidegger joins the Nazi Party and was made the Rector of the University of Freiburg. Wittgenstein, meanwhile, serves as a hospital porter and a research technician.
Of all that I learned from these four prominent philosophers’ biographies, the oddest story was one about Walter Benjamin. To avoid military service during WW1, Benjamin persuades his wife Dora to hypnotize him into thinking that he was suffering from sciatica. He fails his physical and was excused from military service. But if that wasn’t strange enough, for some time after he was unable to pursue gainful employment due to flareups of the sciatic nerve.
“6:52 We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.
….Wittgenstein's philosophical approach was a severely scientific one, but his morality was existential. A good life is based not on objective grounds but on radically subjective decisions. It cannot be meaningfully said what a good life consists of; it must show itself in real, everyday execution.”
After the war, the Weimar Republic experiences hyperinflation and has difficulty meeting the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Benjamin obtains his doctorate of philosophy and works as a translator and art critic. He later writes "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an essay on the nature of authenticity in a world of reproductions. Cassirer works in the private library of the art historian, Aby Warburg, and writes the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, exploring the use of myths and symbols to understand human existence. Heidegger, a professor at the University of Marburg, develops his ideas on “Dasein”, or existence in the world, in his work Being in Time. Wittgenstein relinquishes his inheritance and becomes a primary school teacher in rural Austria. He later returns to Cambridge, receives a doctorate of philosophy and becomes a professor at the University of Cambridge.
“Well, God has arrived, I met him on the 5:15 train," John Maynard Keynes wrote in a letter dated January 18, 1929. Keynes, at the time probably the most important economist in the world, met Wittgenstein by chance the day after his return to England.”
As the Second World War looms and then rages on, Benjamin leaves Germany, was turned back at the French-Spanish border and in despair overdoses on morphine. Cassirer flees to England, then Sweden and finally settles in the US. Heidegger joins the Nazi Party and was made the Rector of the University of Freiburg. Wittgenstein, meanwhile, serves as a hospital porter and a research technician.
Of all that I learned from these four prominent philosophers’ biographies, the oddest story was one about Walter Benjamin. To avoid military service during WW1, Benjamin persuades his wife Dora to hypnotize him into thinking that he was suffering from sciatica. He fails his physical and was excused from military service. But if that wasn’t strange enough, for some time after he was unable to pursue gainful employment due to flareups of the sciatic nerve.
March 5, 2019
Reading books that are told by unreliable narrators can be a lot of fun. If we're speaking about fiction. An unreliable narrator in non-fiction is usually much less fun. How am I to believe that Eilenberger's accounts of the philosophical works of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Cassirer, and Benjamin are accurate, if I read sentences beginning with "In den Frühlingstagen des magischen Jahres 1929..." ("In the spring days of the magical year 1929", p. 32). There are certainly a lot of adjectives that I can imagine to be suitable attributes of the year 1929. Magical is not one of them. If Eilenberger thinks 1929 was magical, then can I still believe in what he says about the lives and works of the aforementioned philosophers? (Certainly "magical" is a suitable word if you consider the overall title of the book, "Zeit der Zauberer" / "Time of the magicians". But I wouldn't blame a writer for a book title, as that could be the result of a marketing strategy of the publishing house.)
Another painful passage to the interested reader: Eilenberger abruptly quotes from the diaries of Harry Graf Kessler (p. 385) and then justifies that with: "Those lines could have been written by Benjamin." "So what?", I say. Oh, and by the way: Benjamin could have attended the philosophical summit at Davos in 1929, where Cassirer and Heidegger had a public disputation. If he would. This is all very construed.
But the basic idea behind the book is not bad. To take four philosophers and follow their career and work during a given decade can work as a prism to illuminate something. And at its best moments, it really works out here. When I suspended my disbelief, I enjoyed the descriptions of the developments of Heidegger's and Wittgenstein's ideas. But then again you see: This book requires a certain amount a fiction reader's attitude. And I could fully understand, if you didn't want your non-fiction to have this requirement.
Another painful passage to the interested reader: Eilenberger abruptly quotes from the diaries of Harry Graf Kessler (p. 385) and then justifies that with: "Those lines could have been written by Benjamin." "So what?", I say. Oh, and by the way: Benjamin could have attended the philosophical summit at Davos in 1929, where Cassirer and Heidegger had a public disputation. If he would. This is all very construed.
But the basic idea behind the book is not bad. To take four philosophers and follow their career and work during a given decade can work as a prism to illuminate something. And at its best moments, it really works out here. When I suspended my disbelief, I enjoyed the descriptions of the developments of Heidegger's and Wittgenstein's ideas. But then again you see: This book requires a certain amount a fiction reader's attitude. And I could fully understand, if you didn't want your non-fiction to have this requirement.
October 11, 2020
This book just came out in translation last month. It gives short accounts of the lives and mostly early works of three of the major figures in early twentieth-century philosophy, the Ludwig Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, Walter Benjamin up to the founding of the Frankfort School, and Martin Heidegger up to just after the publication of Being and Time. The only older figure is Ernst Cassirer, at the height of his career and publishing the multiple volumes of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. The book opens with a prologue in 1929, then goes back to 1919 and proceeds year by year, with the four figures alternating, then ends (apart from a brief epilogue about their later careers) with the disputation between Cassirer and Heidegger at Davos which crystallized the half-century separation and virtual isolation of the Analytic and Continental traditions.
The book is a popularization, written for the general reader with an interest in modern philosophy -- I doubt whether it will find the same degree of success here that the original version seems to have had in Europe. It doesn't require any previous knowledge of the four philosophers (I have taken courses in Wittgenstein and Heidegger, but have only read one or two books each by Benjamin and Cassirer.) If it is occasionally difficult, that is because the thought of these four is often difficult.
Eilenberger begins with the situation of Germany and Austria after the First World War (all four subjects of the book were from Germany or Austria), defeated, economically in chaos, and intellectually in despair, and argues that these four thinkers are responding to the breakdown of confidence in the culture of the period with a radically individualist type of philosophy of life (less so in the case of Cassirer, who often seems to be included simply as a foil to the other three, as an established academic philosopher, and isn't dealt with as thoroughly or sympathetically as the other three -- unfortunately, because he is in some ways the most interesting of the four.) He shows how they interpret the "crisis" of philosophy and "failure" of the modern world in similar ways, and quotes from their writings and personal letters which often use the same or very similar phrases. The emphasis is on how similar they are, how they were dealing with the same questions even if the answers were different and how they interacted with each other before the split at Davos.
It is obvious that Eilenberger has his own views and judgements on the four; he devotes the most space to the views of Heidegger and seems to be most sympathetic to his philosophy of existentialism (although very unsympathetic to him as a person, for good reasons), emphasizes those aspects of Wittgenstein and Benjamin that he can fit in with Heidegger but portrays them as mentally disturbed losers, and likes Cassirer as a person but isn't really interested in his philosophy, because he is too rational and objective and doesn't talk about Angst or unmotivated "authentic" choices. In short, we are seeing them all through a certain lens, which isn't necessarily the lens I would prefer seeing them through. The book was quite interesting both for the biographical material which I didn't know much about and because it showed how these figures who are usually not brought into contact were really part of the same development.
The book is a popularization, written for the general reader with an interest in modern philosophy -- I doubt whether it will find the same degree of success here that the original version seems to have had in Europe. It doesn't require any previous knowledge of the four philosophers (I have taken courses in Wittgenstein and Heidegger, but have only read one or two books each by Benjamin and Cassirer.) If it is occasionally difficult, that is because the thought of these four is often difficult.
Eilenberger begins with the situation of Germany and Austria after the First World War (all four subjects of the book were from Germany or Austria), defeated, economically in chaos, and intellectually in despair, and argues that these four thinkers are responding to the breakdown of confidence in the culture of the period with a radically individualist type of philosophy of life (less so in the case of Cassirer, who often seems to be included simply as a foil to the other three, as an established academic philosopher, and isn't dealt with as thoroughly or sympathetically as the other three -- unfortunately, because he is in some ways the most interesting of the four.) He shows how they interpret the "crisis" of philosophy and "failure" of the modern world in similar ways, and quotes from their writings and personal letters which often use the same or very similar phrases. The emphasis is on how similar they are, how they were dealing with the same questions even if the answers were different and how they interacted with each other before the split at Davos.
It is obvious that Eilenberger has his own views and judgements on the four; he devotes the most space to the views of Heidegger and seems to be most sympathetic to his philosophy of existentialism (although very unsympathetic to him as a person, for good reasons), emphasizes those aspects of Wittgenstein and Benjamin that he can fit in with Heidegger but portrays them as mentally disturbed losers, and likes Cassirer as a person but isn't really interested in his philosophy, because he is too rational and objective and doesn't talk about Angst or unmotivated "authentic" choices. In short, we are seeing them all through a certain lens, which isn't necessarily the lens I would prefer seeing them through. The book was quite interesting both for the biographical material which I didn't know much about and because it showed how these figures who are usually not brought into contact were really part of the same development.
November 28, 2020
This is a group biography of four German philosophers in the interwar period. This is compelling intellectual history, akin to Louis Menand’s “The Metaphysical Club” or recent books on the Austrian School of Economics or on the Vienna Circle. These books can be valuable in placing the key ideas of the focal people in historical context and providing a menu of sorts if someone wants to read more deeply. They are not substitutes for the works of the key people, but should lead to reading some of those works, depending on individual tastes, of course. This type of group biography is especially valuable if there are issues of accessibility that might deter new readers from investing time in a new area. On top of that, philosophy works are generally more difficult and intense to read, so if a book helps to get people started in an area, that is a good outcome. The philosophers profiled in Wolfram Ellenberger’s book are more difficult to read than most to read and certainly an acquired taste.
The intuition here concerns how changes in philosophical ideas are more likely to occur in times of great turmoil, where there has been much suffering and where established ways of living, working, and thinking have been disrupted without being replaced by new ideas or systems of ideas. So not surprisingly, the period of interest in this book is 1919-1929 and the geographic focus is on Europe and Britain after WW1. Between the political, economic, and cultural disruptions, it is quite reasonable to focus on thinkers who did not see much at all reasonable around them. Ellenberger follows these “Magicians” for ten years, from the end of WW1 and the huge disruptions that followed to a key philosophy conference at Davis in 1929, during which Heidegger and Cassirer had a famous argument/lecture. These men, and the focus is generally on men, are involved in their world, for better or worse, and not just academic placeholders - the book is not hospitable to academic philosophy - study and writing that occurs in the context of a university setting. These now famous individuals were transient scholars looking for positions for a large part of the decade. Of the four, I appreciated the parts on Cassirer and Benjamin the most, I suppose from lack of prior encounters. The parts on Wittgenstein and Heidegger cover better traveled ground but they are generally accessible. There is also some nice trivia to be had.
I am not quite sure what the overall punchline is, but that is OK. It was a difficult time and 1933 was well on its way. The idea that broad societal conflict will prompt more innovative philosophical thinking is not really that controversial. That was critical to “The Metaphysical Club” too after the US Civil War. Ellenberger tells these stories well and ties events together at the end.
The intuition here concerns how changes in philosophical ideas are more likely to occur in times of great turmoil, where there has been much suffering and where established ways of living, working, and thinking have been disrupted without being replaced by new ideas or systems of ideas. So not surprisingly, the period of interest in this book is 1919-1929 and the geographic focus is on Europe and Britain after WW1. Between the political, economic, and cultural disruptions, it is quite reasonable to focus on thinkers who did not see much at all reasonable around them. Ellenberger follows these “Magicians” for ten years, from the end of WW1 and the huge disruptions that followed to a key philosophy conference at Davis in 1929, during which Heidegger and Cassirer had a famous argument/lecture. These men, and the focus is generally on men, are involved in their world, for better or worse, and not just academic placeholders - the book is not hospitable to academic philosophy - study and writing that occurs in the context of a university setting. These now famous individuals were transient scholars looking for positions for a large part of the decade. Of the four, I appreciated the parts on Cassirer and Benjamin the most, I suppose from lack of prior encounters. The parts on Wittgenstein and Heidegger cover better traveled ground but they are generally accessible. There is also some nice trivia to be had.
I am not quite sure what the overall punchline is, but that is OK. It was a difficult time and 1933 was well on its way. The idea that broad societal conflict will prompt more innovative philosophical thinking is not really that controversial. That was critical to “The Metaphysical Club” too after the US Civil War. Ellenberger tells these stories well and ties events together at the end.
May 24, 2020
Wer von Cassirer, Benjamin, Heidegger und Wittgenstein nichts weiß, braucht schon eine Portion Interesse und Lernvermögen, um dem Autor zu folgen. Umgekehrt sind dessen "Erläuterungen zur Philosophie" nicht sehr ergiebig für jemanden, der sich in der Materie auskennt. Aber immerhin bleiben die biografischen Details, die Interesse wecken können. Ich habe zwar diverse Texte der vier Philosophie- "Heroen" gelesen, aber bis auf Benjamins Verhältnis zu Brecht und Heideggers Affaire mit Hannah Arendt war ich in den Biografien nicht eben bewandert. Und so stellte ich - wie schon im Falle von Florian Illes "1913" (das hier wohl Pate stand) - fest, dass ein gewisses Interesse an "Klatsch und Tratsch" jedem Menschen, also auch mir, zu eigen sein scheint. Warum auch nicht? Und so sind es eben diese Momente, die das Buch für Philosophie- Interessierte empfehlens- und lesenswert machen.
Davon ab macht die Lektüre klar, wie sehr der Autor - hierin ganz seinen Protagonisten folgend - im Banne der Metaphysik gefangen bleibt und deren Horizont nicht zu übersteigen vermag. Zwar arbeitet Eilenberger das Ungenügen der vier Autoren am erkenntnistheoretischen Zugang Kants zu den "letzten Fragen" gut heraus, aber die Sackgasse der Auflösung aller derartigen Fragen im Sprachproblem (des Sagbaren) bei Wittgenstein oder der Ontologie einer Seinsvergewisserung bei Heidegger kann auch er nicht umgehen. Allenfalls bei der Behandlung des Ringens von Benjamin mit marxistischen Zugängen scheint die Lösung auf: Eine konsequente Philosophie der Praxis! "Der Mensch" (was immer diese Abstraktion bedeuten soll) erfährt sich nicht wirklich in seiner Geworfenheit in die Zeit und nur höchst unliebsamerweise im Angesicht der existentiellen Situation der Todesangst (wie Heidegger meint), sondern vor allem in seiner gesellschaftlich vermittelten Tätigkeit als "Stoffwechsel mit der Natur" (Marx) und im Austausch mit Anderen. Hier entfaltet er sein "Gattungswesen" (Marx), das den Einzeln so sehr prägt, wie er es mitschafft. Freilich nicht nur in "symbolischen Formen" (geistigen Werken, wie Cassirer und damals auch Benjamin meinen), sondern ganz handfest in der Produktion von Lebensmitteln, die je nach Art ihres Umfangs und den Teilhabemöglichkeiten am materiellen Reichtum darüber entscheiden, wie sehr auch Kultur- und Kunst, Architektur usw. menschenbildend wirken können. Es ist das Elend der Deutschen bis heute, dass sie in ihren Reflexionen vom Robinson ausgehen, dem prinzipiell alle Möglichkeiten offen stehen. Wenigstens hatte Benjamin erkannt, dass dem Proletarier die Möglichkeit zu betrachtendem Müßiggang nicht offen steht und dass es schwerlich dessen Schuld ist, wenn er nicht durch die Großstadt bummeln und über deren Veränderungen nachsinnen kann. Heidegger seinerseits verachtete sich in der Kontemplation und verherrlichte das ihm nie zugängliche Kriegserlebnis. Er selber verschaffte sich - hierin ganz modern - die gemeinten "Grenzsituationen" im alpinen Abfahrtslauf. Anders gesagt: Der Typ brauchte den "Kick" und wäre nie auf die Idee gekommen, ihn in der Alltagsarbeit der Schauer- Leute im Hafen oder derjenigen der Bauarbeiter zu suchen. Darin besteht der hoffnungslose "Idealismus" der nach-oder neukantianischen deutschen Philosophie auch von Cassirer letztlich bis hin zu Adorno, Horkheimer & Co. Sartre hätte helfen können, denn der sah - anders als das Robinson- Ego Heidegger - wenigstens den "Anderen" als grundlegende Voraussetzung eines Weltbezugs und kam zum "Engagement" als der Vermittlungsform vom Ich zum Du als "Wir".
Kollektivismus allerdings war und ist den Deutschen ein Ekel und es ist schade, dass Eilenberger eine diesbezügliche Kritik kaum leistet, weil er ganz im Horizont des Denkens seiner Protagonisten gefangen bleibt. Ein System wie das von Heidegger beeindruckt aber durch seine Geschlossenheit und ist von Innen heraus nicht zu erschüttern, schon gar nicht dann, wenn man die Prämissen teilt. Da hilft nur radikale Horizontüberschreitung, Verfremdung meinetwegen, oder Konfrontation mit ganz anderen Denkweisen, was freilich für den gewählten Zeitraum schwierig ist. Allenfalls scheint das dazu nötige Potential bei Benjamin auf, dessen Positionen vom Autor jedoch weitgehend im Unklaren belassen werden (was freilich seinem damaligen Stand "im Übergang" entsprach). Daher bleibt er wesentlich ein Alibi- Linker. Horizontüberschreitung hätte bedeutet, sich der marxistisch- materialistischen Herausforderung zu stellen, die jedoch erst um die Mitte des Jahrzehnts einsetzt (Lukacs/ Korsch, dann mit Abstrichen Bloch, Horkheimer/Adorno und endlich Gramsci und Sartre z.B.). Im Dialog der wirklich divergierenden, weniger in dem der im Ansatz übereinstimmenden Denkformen, hätten Leistungen und Grenzen diskutiert und gewürdigt werden können. Freilich müsste dann der zeitliche Rahmen um 1930 liegen.
Was soll's? Aus heutiger Sicht ist der Stein des Weisen immer noch nicht gefunden, weshalb man sich mühen sollte, Kontroversen fruchtbar zu machen. Das war Eilenbergers Absicht ganz und gar nicht und deshalb muss man sich zufrieden geben mit dem, was er leistet: Eine im Ganzen ordentliche und brauchbare Zusammenschau von philosophischen Antworten auf eine drängende Problemlage und ihre Überschreitung in Richtung Kulturphilosophie (Cassirer und Benjamin) bzw. Sprachphilosophie/ analytische Philosophie bei Wittgenstein. Heidegger, für Eilenberger das Maß der ihn hier interessierenden Dinge, wird u.a. als Erneuerer der philosophischen Sprache vorgeführt, ist aber in dieser Eigenschaft für mich - politisch und moralisch ohnehin diskreditiert - von allen der Unfruchtbarste, weil steril. Zu hart? Sicher. Aber ich zumindest brauche seine Ontologie nicht.
Fazit: Es gibt Bücher, die sind gelungen, weil sie intelligent unterhalten. Das trifft auf "Zeit der Zauberer" gewiss zu. Solche, die dabei auch noch Probleme diskutieren und sie in einer Art behandeln, von der man lernen kann, sind sicher "große", weil wichtige Literatur. Werke freilich, die Generationen Nachfolgender entzünden und zu zustimmenden, ablehnenden oder über die ursprüngliche Problemlage hinausführenden Debatten anregen, sind singulär. Auf sie kommt es an; sie sind der "Kanon". Eilenberger hat ein solches Buch nicht geschrieben, aber gezeigt, dass Heidegger und Wittgenstein solche Werke gelungen sind, auch wenn ich deren Inhalt nicht mehr wirklich spannend finden kann. Cassirer wird vorgeführt als das, was er war: Damals schon ein Klassiker, von dem man "Bildung" bekommt. Allerdings wesentlich im Rahmen eines Kulturbegriffs, der vor allem als Ansammlung geistiger Leistungen und damit als Apologie der bürgerlichen Klasse erscheint. Vor allem Benjamin bleibt freilich eine Provokation des Geistes, nur eben nicht mit den Überlegungen zur Sprachphilosophie, wie sie zu dem von Eilenberger gewählten Zeitpunkt vorlagen. Dass jedes von der konkreten menschlichen Praxis ausgehende Denken diese Praxis als "vorgängig" setzen, mithin akzeptieren muss, dass "Kultur", "Denken" und "Sprache" (sofern man die von "Kultur" absondern will) selbst "Praxis" sind, erkennt Benjamin erst rund 10 Jahre später. Wie man man das Verhältnis eines Nichtidentisch- Identischen denken kann, dazu gibt das Buch mit Blick auf Benjamin nur Hinweise. Andere sind freilich nicht einmal so weit gekommen. Eilenbergers Buch kann beim Leser Nachdenken darüber auslösen und das ist verdienstvoll genug, um es trotz der geschilderten Defizite uneingeschränkt zur Lektüre zu empfehlen. Empfehlenswert für alle, die ein bisschen philosophisch vorgebildet und/ oder wirklich interessiert sind. Die eine oder andere neue Einsicht springt schon dabei raus.
Davon ab macht die Lektüre klar, wie sehr der Autor - hierin ganz seinen Protagonisten folgend - im Banne der Metaphysik gefangen bleibt und deren Horizont nicht zu übersteigen vermag. Zwar arbeitet Eilenberger das Ungenügen der vier Autoren am erkenntnistheoretischen Zugang Kants zu den "letzten Fragen" gut heraus, aber die Sackgasse der Auflösung aller derartigen Fragen im Sprachproblem (des Sagbaren) bei Wittgenstein oder der Ontologie einer Seinsvergewisserung bei Heidegger kann auch er nicht umgehen. Allenfalls bei der Behandlung des Ringens von Benjamin mit marxistischen Zugängen scheint die Lösung auf: Eine konsequente Philosophie der Praxis! "Der Mensch" (was immer diese Abstraktion bedeuten soll) erfährt sich nicht wirklich in seiner Geworfenheit in die Zeit und nur höchst unliebsamerweise im Angesicht der existentiellen Situation der Todesangst (wie Heidegger meint), sondern vor allem in seiner gesellschaftlich vermittelten Tätigkeit als "Stoffwechsel mit der Natur" (Marx) und im Austausch mit Anderen. Hier entfaltet er sein "Gattungswesen" (Marx), das den Einzeln so sehr prägt, wie er es mitschafft. Freilich nicht nur in "symbolischen Formen" (geistigen Werken, wie Cassirer und damals auch Benjamin meinen), sondern ganz handfest in der Produktion von Lebensmitteln, die je nach Art ihres Umfangs und den Teilhabemöglichkeiten am materiellen Reichtum darüber entscheiden, wie sehr auch Kultur- und Kunst, Architektur usw. menschenbildend wirken können. Es ist das Elend der Deutschen bis heute, dass sie in ihren Reflexionen vom Robinson ausgehen, dem prinzipiell alle Möglichkeiten offen stehen. Wenigstens hatte Benjamin erkannt, dass dem Proletarier die Möglichkeit zu betrachtendem Müßiggang nicht offen steht und dass es schwerlich dessen Schuld ist, wenn er nicht durch die Großstadt bummeln und über deren Veränderungen nachsinnen kann. Heidegger seinerseits verachtete sich in der Kontemplation und verherrlichte das ihm nie zugängliche Kriegserlebnis. Er selber verschaffte sich - hierin ganz modern - die gemeinten "Grenzsituationen" im alpinen Abfahrtslauf. Anders gesagt: Der Typ brauchte den "Kick" und wäre nie auf die Idee gekommen, ihn in der Alltagsarbeit der Schauer- Leute im Hafen oder derjenigen der Bauarbeiter zu suchen. Darin besteht der hoffnungslose "Idealismus" der nach-oder neukantianischen deutschen Philosophie auch von Cassirer letztlich bis hin zu Adorno, Horkheimer & Co. Sartre hätte helfen können, denn der sah - anders als das Robinson- Ego Heidegger - wenigstens den "Anderen" als grundlegende Voraussetzung eines Weltbezugs und kam zum "Engagement" als der Vermittlungsform vom Ich zum Du als "Wir".
Kollektivismus allerdings war und ist den Deutschen ein Ekel und es ist schade, dass Eilenberger eine diesbezügliche Kritik kaum leistet, weil er ganz im Horizont des Denkens seiner Protagonisten gefangen bleibt. Ein System wie das von Heidegger beeindruckt aber durch seine Geschlossenheit und ist von Innen heraus nicht zu erschüttern, schon gar nicht dann, wenn man die Prämissen teilt. Da hilft nur radikale Horizontüberschreitung, Verfremdung meinetwegen, oder Konfrontation mit ganz anderen Denkweisen, was freilich für den gewählten Zeitraum schwierig ist. Allenfalls scheint das dazu nötige Potential bei Benjamin auf, dessen Positionen vom Autor jedoch weitgehend im Unklaren belassen werden (was freilich seinem damaligen Stand "im Übergang" entsprach). Daher bleibt er wesentlich ein Alibi- Linker. Horizontüberschreitung hätte bedeutet, sich der marxistisch- materialistischen Herausforderung zu stellen, die jedoch erst um die Mitte des Jahrzehnts einsetzt (Lukacs/ Korsch, dann mit Abstrichen Bloch, Horkheimer/Adorno und endlich Gramsci und Sartre z.B.). Im Dialog der wirklich divergierenden, weniger in dem der im Ansatz übereinstimmenden Denkformen, hätten Leistungen und Grenzen diskutiert und gewürdigt werden können. Freilich müsste dann der zeitliche Rahmen um 1930 liegen.
Was soll's? Aus heutiger Sicht ist der Stein des Weisen immer noch nicht gefunden, weshalb man sich mühen sollte, Kontroversen fruchtbar zu machen. Das war Eilenbergers Absicht ganz und gar nicht und deshalb muss man sich zufrieden geben mit dem, was er leistet: Eine im Ganzen ordentliche und brauchbare Zusammenschau von philosophischen Antworten auf eine drängende Problemlage und ihre Überschreitung in Richtung Kulturphilosophie (Cassirer und Benjamin) bzw. Sprachphilosophie/ analytische Philosophie bei Wittgenstein. Heidegger, für Eilenberger das Maß der ihn hier interessierenden Dinge, wird u.a. als Erneuerer der philosophischen Sprache vorgeführt, ist aber in dieser Eigenschaft für mich - politisch und moralisch ohnehin diskreditiert - von allen der Unfruchtbarste, weil steril. Zu hart? Sicher. Aber ich zumindest brauche seine Ontologie nicht.
Fazit: Es gibt Bücher, die sind gelungen, weil sie intelligent unterhalten. Das trifft auf "Zeit der Zauberer" gewiss zu. Solche, die dabei auch noch Probleme diskutieren und sie in einer Art behandeln, von der man lernen kann, sind sicher "große", weil wichtige Literatur. Werke freilich, die Generationen Nachfolgender entzünden und zu zustimmenden, ablehnenden oder über die ursprüngliche Problemlage hinausführenden Debatten anregen, sind singulär. Auf sie kommt es an; sie sind der "Kanon". Eilenberger hat ein solches Buch nicht geschrieben, aber gezeigt, dass Heidegger und Wittgenstein solche Werke gelungen sind, auch wenn ich deren Inhalt nicht mehr wirklich spannend finden kann. Cassirer wird vorgeführt als das, was er war: Damals schon ein Klassiker, von dem man "Bildung" bekommt. Allerdings wesentlich im Rahmen eines Kulturbegriffs, der vor allem als Ansammlung geistiger Leistungen und damit als Apologie der bürgerlichen Klasse erscheint. Vor allem Benjamin bleibt freilich eine Provokation des Geistes, nur eben nicht mit den Überlegungen zur Sprachphilosophie, wie sie zu dem von Eilenberger gewählten Zeitpunkt vorlagen. Dass jedes von der konkreten menschlichen Praxis ausgehende Denken diese Praxis als "vorgängig" setzen, mithin akzeptieren muss, dass "Kultur", "Denken" und "Sprache" (sofern man die von "Kultur" absondern will) selbst "Praxis" sind, erkennt Benjamin erst rund 10 Jahre später. Wie man man das Verhältnis eines Nichtidentisch- Identischen denken kann, dazu gibt das Buch mit Blick auf Benjamin nur Hinweise. Andere sind freilich nicht einmal so weit gekommen. Eilenbergers Buch kann beim Leser Nachdenken darüber auslösen und das ist verdienstvoll genug, um es trotz der geschilderten Defizite uneingeschränkt zur Lektüre zu empfehlen. Empfehlenswert für alle, die ein bisschen philosophisch vorgebildet und/ oder wirklich interessiert sind. Die eine oder andere neue Einsicht springt schon dabei raus.
August 29, 2019
Me encanto la idea del libro, eso me hizo comprarlo, y el concepto del libro no defrauda para nada. Seguir la vida y el trabajo de cuatro filósofos de la talla de los protagonistas durante una década llena de momentos destacados es un camino maravilloso. Pero narrativamente se me hizo muy, muy pesado y lento.
July 31, 2021
I liked this book so much. it gave me a sense as if I’ve lived with these great philosophers, despite further familiarising me with their philosophy especially of Heidegger, Cassirer and Benjamin. This book also changed the way I thought about Wittgenstein and his Philosophy!
Despite lot of difference in their ideas at the same time this book shows a common method of philosophizing among them. It shows the way all of them were affected by condition of Europe at that time.
At the same time it portrays the effect of First World War I, upon each and every mode of being, living and thinking in Europe at that time including the effects upon these magicians and their philosophy!
Despite lot of difference in their ideas at the same time this book shows a common method of philosophizing among them. It shows the way all of them were affected by condition of Europe at that time.
At the same time it portrays the effect of First World War I, upon each and every mode of being, living and thinking in Europe at that time including the effects upon these magicians and their philosophy!
October 1, 2023
What is a Human Being?
The book covers the integrum period of 1919 – 1929 between two dark ages, viz., the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Great Depression followed by the Second World War and the Holocaust. Only the epilogue of the book tentatively moves beyond 1929 to carry forward the subsequent lives of the four magicians. Each of the thinkers arrived at the similar conclusion via divergent paths, viz., that the modern emphasis on consciousness whereby we imagine ourselves to be entirely free and independent only hides the process of personal repression and social destruction. Sill true today.
The First Magician (God Himself):
Wittgenstein’s philosophy boils down to a set of unassailable and definite nonsensical propositions. The entire point is that philosophy is nonsense and just a set of tautologies in a language game. His philosophy says nothing meaningful because nothing meaningful can be said, that is the entire point. Understanding the nonsense of philosophy that purports to convey an understanding of the world finally brings one to properly understanding the world and philosophy. Wittgenstein’s ‘philosophy’ thus shows us that there are no true or meaningful questions or problems of philosophy, there are only different ways of speaking about questions and problems. Going through a sequence of meaningless and nonsense propositions, and realizing this, is what brings one to the correct view of the world as all “…that is the case”. One must first climb the ladder of nonsense thoughts and then push it away to see the world as it really is from this new high perch of thinking through the world. In the end, one must realize that statements can only be made about present states of affairs but nothing meaningful can be said about the nature of the world ‘as a whole’ because it is the sum accumulation of all such present states – that this is just such a statement about the world ‘as a whole’ is precisely the point, nothing philosophically meaningful can be said about the world ‘as a whole’. But of course, this is now a meaningful statement, ad infinitum… God thus spoke and said philosophy has nothing to offer in terms of meaning in human existence. Such an approach has the potential for clearing away the ideologies, religions and superstitions making claims about the reality of the world ‘as a whole’. Thus, God’s work among mere mortals was finished. What Wittgenstein was approaching was the end of metaphysics, not the end of philosophy. Thus, God created analytical philosophy. He later realized this. God had to admit He was wrong after all. Of course, the nickname of God comes from the famous lines of the prominent Cambridge Apostle John Maynard Keynes, “Well, God arrived, I met him of the 5:15 train.”
The Second Magician (The King):
Martin Heidegger aka Party Member 3,125,894 was an official member of the Nazi Party, 1933 – 1945. He found the intense meaning and moments of significance for which he was intensely searching in the volk solidarity of Nazi ideology. The nickname of King comes from Heidegger’s famous student and sapiosexual lover, Hannah Arendt. The King of the Metaphysicians decreed the end of metaphysics, not of philosophy contrary to the command of God. Instead, the King asked, what is the task of philosophy? The purpose is for people to learn how to stop avoiding themselves. To realize that we become trapped in our worldview to the extent we do not realize it is a worldview. With our worldview (religious, scientific, materialist, mythical, dialectical, spiritual, etc.), we see existence as disclosed to us, so we do not question that existence is disclosed to us thus leaving it truly undisclosed. We thus become trapped in our everyday existence. There must be a prior disclosure of the world before any of our worldviews take shape for us to form any worldviews. This is where Descartes went wrong. It cannot be true as Descartes claimed, “I think therefore I am”. Descartes needs to be reversed and restated as “I am therefore I think” because I must first ‘be’ (exist) in order to think. Further, truth can only reside in the finitude and temporality of the human condition. For an infinite being, truth as a concept has no meaning because everything is already included in infinity. For example, the distinction between subject and object is created to disclose something fundamentally true about existence but this fundamental division of existence is only possible because existence itself is first disclosed to us in such a way to make the subject and object distinction possible. Heidegger pointed out that we need the objective world in order to be subjects, we (subjects) cannot be separated from the objects, subject and object are necessarily tied together as parts of the same reality, not opposed to each other or separate realities. Knowledge of one’s finitude and subjection to the rule of time is the ultimate philosophical truth decreed the King. Heidegger’s essential claim was that we do not and cannot appreciate the now of any moment, at any moment in time we are trying to live in the future of the given moment, activity or task in which we are engaged in the moment of now. How can we just ‘be’ as such when we are caught in time? There is a deep contradiction in the human condition, of human existence itself. We cannot remain extant while living. Time and existence create the contradiction. Time (our lives) is a process whereas existence is a preservation. Time (a process) and existence (a permeance) create a contradiction, a contradiction between the desire for permanence within the reality of finite time. That is, the fundamental contradiction in the human condition is existence (which creates an expectation of permanence) while being rooted in time (which creates the reality of finitude). For physics, space-time is a single phenomenon but with the addition of human subjectivity, space and time come apart and create the contradiction. The only meaning of time for human beings is the finitude it communicates to us about our existence. In my opinion, religion was invented to overcome or resolve this contradiction, but there is no separate internal space of experience that separates the thinking ‘being’ from external reality. No human can be authentic without this realization. Each is thrown unasked into existence at a time and a place without not so much as a “by your leave”. The King spent his entire reign seeking a language for this whereas God said no language can be meaningful in such a way. The signs and symbols of the third magician were just a distraction from our authenticity and the meaning of ‘being’ according to the King. God declared that any attempt at authenticity and meaning through language would lead to nonsense or worse. Looks like God was right after all if you ever read Heidegger.
The Third Magician (Myth Maker):
Ernst Cassirer, the work-a-day, every day radically stable quintessential intellectual academic bureaucrat, is really the magician from a mythical or romantic time past facing a new era and a parting of the way as twentieth-century philosophy began to develop. He came from a bygone time of aristocratic etiquette in philosophy with a commitment to mediation and moderation but was now faced with the brutish brash boldness decreed by the new King. His antiquated aristocratic etiquette allowed him to see the danger in the cult of authenticity and the quest for the essential core of the person or ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ which manifested itself in such pernicious ideas as ‘national character’ with blood and soil patriotism. It was precisely such chauvinism that encouraged the shaping of the darkest intellectual turned political force in Europe which seduced the King into becoming Party Member 3,125,894. Cassirer saw these ideas as opposed to freedom in both thought and action. Cassirer was the ‘boring’ anti-ism outdated and antiquated thinker. But he saw that rigid interpretive frameworks for thought leads to rigid thinking and a fundamentally erroneous account of the human capacity for understanding. Philosophically, this leads to such narrow paradigms as scholasticism, physicalism, logicism and dare I say it, fascism and communism. Cassirer saw analytical philosophy to be as rigid and incapable of conceptually keeping up with modernity just as scholasticism was rigid and incapable of keeping up with the Renaissance. Both were about the fetishization of fine differences in already secure foundations. This is how philosophy retards progress instead of leading it. Cassirer saw that freedom and necessity were not mutually exclusive but have the same origin in human knowledge of the world set free from mystical Medieval thinking. The risk is that culture relapses into myth makings, just at a higher level. Politically, this leads to such pernicious schemes as fascism, militarism and communism. By 1928, Cassirer increasing became more than an academic philosopher, he became the outstanding symbol for the dying liberal republican values in Germany. For Cassirer, an essential part of being human was the use of signs and symbols, this how humans add meaning to life and structure to our existence. Signs and symbols include language, math, art, music etc. These signs and symbols need interpretation, and this interpretive process is the creation of culture. The use of a different language, along with its signs and symbols, provides one with a different worldview or conception of the world versus any given alternative language. A specific language provides a specific mode or way of understating the world and deriving what is real. This can go so far as to dictate action in the world. Different languages create different interpretive frameworks for reality. For example, how does one see or think about a bridge differently if it is gendered male in French but female in German and not gender specific in English. Cultural myth is also the origin of symbolic representation satisfying the basic human need for orientation and guidance. Language does not merely describe sensory experience; it also creates it. Going further, symbolic representation in art, science, myth, and religion creates different priorities and shapes the world to appear differently for each of us. Cassirer saw myth, religion, art, mathematics, law and even technology as languages. We retain a primal layer of thought that is essentially mythical which still influences our understanding of the world in the present. We are only able to fully explain the world, the universe, and every aspect of our existence with a combination of objective facts, scientific theories as well as myths as needed to fill the blanks while never acknowledging the myths. There is no inner self or essence. There is thus no way to see ‘realty itself’ or the ‘thing-in-itself” whatever these are supposed to be. There is no pure undistorted reality. These are nonstarters for Cassirer. Reality is a relational and contextual matter. For Cassirer, the end of metaphysics or philosophy only means the beginning of more myth to fill the void. ‘Character’ as such is the result of actions and actions do not flow from some magical notions of character, personal or national. In the end, Earnt Cassirer’s personal myth was that he was a patriotic German, until he was informed that he was Jew and had to flee Germany for Switzerland and ended up in the U.S.
The Fourth Magician (A Human):
If the question is, “what is a human being?” then to my way of thinking, the wholly worldly Walter Benjamin was the most human of the four magicians and ended life as a martyr of philosophy. Though officially a suicide, his martyrdom was another Nazi murder. He offers us the truly human process of thinking about thinking and the constant evolution of the self as a person through self-reflection, originality, criticism and thus growth. For example, his insight into language was that it functioned as vehicle for self-awareness and understanding of ourselves in relation to the world, not just as a convention of communication. Language is the revelation of ‘being’, not a mere means of mundane communication or a mere convention for naming things. When we name things, we define things. For example, when we give a ‘dead object’ type names to living aspects of nature, we treat nature as a dead object of which we are free to dispose of at our whim. We in effect, silence nature and objectify ourselves. Due to this, language cannot be used to explain language. He dared to see this poverty in the philosophical thinking of his time. Benjamin was ahead of his time and thus rejected by his time. What indeed does it mean to be human after the credibility of progress coming from the Enlightenment has been destroyed by science-based murder on an industrial scale leaving the empty shell of modernity? What it means to be human is to ask an unanswerable question, but this is precisely the metaphysical questions the first magician, God himself, says we cannot ask. Benjamin was a skilled writer who could write well on any subject but his efforts, as well as the man himself, were of course rejected. He was too original, too independent, too unconventional, too controversial and he was all too human for the times. Often, that which is ignored by the wider society is of the most value. When intellectuals are slandered, the abyss of barbarism opens as we are seeing in our culture with Christian fanatics, conspiracy theory drones, and anti-intellectual zealots who deny science and attack experts. Benjamin’s magical power was to use the reality-saturated observations of his life in his writing, no matter how pedestrian the observation, to reveal something deep about the world itself, its past, its present and its future. Unlike the other magicians seeking explanations, Benjamin never sought balance and accepted as well as explored the simultaneous tensions and contradictions at the margins of the human condition.
The book covers the integrum period of 1919 – 1929 between two dark ages, viz., the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Great Depression followed by the Second World War and the Holocaust. Only the epilogue of the book tentatively moves beyond 1929 to carry forward the subsequent lives of the four magicians. Each of the thinkers arrived at the similar conclusion via divergent paths, viz., that the modern emphasis on consciousness whereby we imagine ourselves to be entirely free and independent only hides the process of personal repression and social destruction. Sill true today.
The First Magician (God Himself):
Wittgenstein’s philosophy boils down to a set of unassailable and definite nonsensical propositions. The entire point is that philosophy is nonsense and just a set of tautologies in a language game. His philosophy says nothing meaningful because nothing meaningful can be said, that is the entire point. Understanding the nonsense of philosophy that purports to convey an understanding of the world finally brings one to properly understanding the world and philosophy. Wittgenstein’s ‘philosophy’ thus shows us that there are no true or meaningful questions or problems of philosophy, there are only different ways of speaking about questions and problems. Going through a sequence of meaningless and nonsense propositions, and realizing this, is what brings one to the correct view of the world as all “…that is the case”. One must first climb the ladder of nonsense thoughts and then push it away to see the world as it really is from this new high perch of thinking through the world. In the end, one must realize that statements can only be made about present states of affairs but nothing meaningful can be said about the nature of the world ‘as a whole’ because it is the sum accumulation of all such present states – that this is just such a statement about the world ‘as a whole’ is precisely the point, nothing philosophically meaningful can be said about the world ‘as a whole’. But of course, this is now a meaningful statement, ad infinitum… God thus spoke and said philosophy has nothing to offer in terms of meaning in human existence. Such an approach has the potential for clearing away the ideologies, religions and superstitions making claims about the reality of the world ‘as a whole’. Thus, God’s work among mere mortals was finished. What Wittgenstein was approaching was the end of metaphysics, not the end of philosophy. Thus, God created analytical philosophy. He later realized this. God had to admit He was wrong after all. Of course, the nickname of God comes from the famous lines of the prominent Cambridge Apostle John Maynard Keynes, “Well, God arrived, I met him of the 5:15 train.”
The Second Magician (The King):
Martin Heidegger aka Party Member 3,125,894 was an official member of the Nazi Party, 1933 – 1945. He found the intense meaning and moments of significance for which he was intensely searching in the volk solidarity of Nazi ideology. The nickname of King comes from Heidegger’s famous student and sapiosexual lover, Hannah Arendt. The King of the Metaphysicians decreed the end of metaphysics, not of philosophy contrary to the command of God. Instead, the King asked, what is the task of philosophy? The purpose is for people to learn how to stop avoiding themselves. To realize that we become trapped in our worldview to the extent we do not realize it is a worldview. With our worldview (religious, scientific, materialist, mythical, dialectical, spiritual, etc.), we see existence as disclosed to us, so we do not question that existence is disclosed to us thus leaving it truly undisclosed. We thus become trapped in our everyday existence. There must be a prior disclosure of the world before any of our worldviews take shape for us to form any worldviews. This is where Descartes went wrong. It cannot be true as Descartes claimed, “I think therefore I am”. Descartes needs to be reversed and restated as “I am therefore I think” because I must first ‘be’ (exist) in order to think. Further, truth can only reside in the finitude and temporality of the human condition. For an infinite being, truth as a concept has no meaning because everything is already included in infinity. For example, the distinction between subject and object is created to disclose something fundamentally true about existence but this fundamental division of existence is only possible because existence itself is first disclosed to us in such a way to make the subject and object distinction possible. Heidegger pointed out that we need the objective world in order to be subjects, we (subjects) cannot be separated from the objects, subject and object are necessarily tied together as parts of the same reality, not opposed to each other or separate realities. Knowledge of one’s finitude and subjection to the rule of time is the ultimate philosophical truth decreed the King. Heidegger’s essential claim was that we do not and cannot appreciate the now of any moment, at any moment in time we are trying to live in the future of the given moment, activity or task in which we are engaged in the moment of now. How can we just ‘be’ as such when we are caught in time? There is a deep contradiction in the human condition, of human existence itself. We cannot remain extant while living. Time and existence create the contradiction. Time (our lives) is a process whereas existence is a preservation. Time (a process) and existence (a permeance) create a contradiction, a contradiction between the desire for permanence within the reality of finite time. That is, the fundamental contradiction in the human condition is existence (which creates an expectation of permanence) while being rooted in time (which creates the reality of finitude). For physics, space-time is a single phenomenon but with the addition of human subjectivity, space and time come apart and create the contradiction. The only meaning of time for human beings is the finitude it communicates to us about our existence. In my opinion, religion was invented to overcome or resolve this contradiction, but there is no separate internal space of experience that separates the thinking ‘being’ from external reality. No human can be authentic without this realization. Each is thrown unasked into existence at a time and a place without not so much as a “by your leave”. The King spent his entire reign seeking a language for this whereas God said no language can be meaningful in such a way. The signs and symbols of the third magician were just a distraction from our authenticity and the meaning of ‘being’ according to the King. God declared that any attempt at authenticity and meaning through language would lead to nonsense or worse. Looks like God was right after all if you ever read Heidegger.
The Third Magician (Myth Maker):
Ernst Cassirer, the work-a-day, every day radically stable quintessential intellectual academic bureaucrat, is really the magician from a mythical or romantic time past facing a new era and a parting of the way as twentieth-century philosophy began to develop. He came from a bygone time of aristocratic etiquette in philosophy with a commitment to mediation and moderation but was now faced with the brutish brash boldness decreed by the new King. His antiquated aristocratic etiquette allowed him to see the danger in the cult of authenticity and the quest for the essential core of the person or ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ which manifested itself in such pernicious ideas as ‘national character’ with blood and soil patriotism. It was precisely such chauvinism that encouraged the shaping of the darkest intellectual turned political force in Europe which seduced the King into becoming Party Member 3,125,894. Cassirer saw these ideas as opposed to freedom in both thought and action. Cassirer was the ‘boring’ anti-ism outdated and antiquated thinker. But he saw that rigid interpretive frameworks for thought leads to rigid thinking and a fundamentally erroneous account of the human capacity for understanding. Philosophically, this leads to such narrow paradigms as scholasticism, physicalism, logicism and dare I say it, fascism and communism. Cassirer saw analytical philosophy to be as rigid and incapable of conceptually keeping up with modernity just as scholasticism was rigid and incapable of keeping up with the Renaissance. Both were about the fetishization of fine differences in already secure foundations. This is how philosophy retards progress instead of leading it. Cassirer saw that freedom and necessity were not mutually exclusive but have the same origin in human knowledge of the world set free from mystical Medieval thinking. The risk is that culture relapses into myth makings, just at a higher level. Politically, this leads to such pernicious schemes as fascism, militarism and communism. By 1928, Cassirer increasing became more than an academic philosopher, he became the outstanding symbol for the dying liberal republican values in Germany. For Cassirer, an essential part of being human was the use of signs and symbols, this how humans add meaning to life and structure to our existence. Signs and symbols include language, math, art, music etc. These signs and symbols need interpretation, and this interpretive process is the creation of culture. The use of a different language, along with its signs and symbols, provides one with a different worldview or conception of the world versus any given alternative language. A specific language provides a specific mode or way of understating the world and deriving what is real. This can go so far as to dictate action in the world. Different languages create different interpretive frameworks for reality. For example, how does one see or think about a bridge differently if it is gendered male in French but female in German and not gender specific in English. Cultural myth is also the origin of symbolic representation satisfying the basic human need for orientation and guidance. Language does not merely describe sensory experience; it also creates it. Going further, symbolic representation in art, science, myth, and religion creates different priorities and shapes the world to appear differently for each of us. Cassirer saw myth, religion, art, mathematics, law and even technology as languages. We retain a primal layer of thought that is essentially mythical which still influences our understanding of the world in the present. We are only able to fully explain the world, the universe, and every aspect of our existence with a combination of objective facts, scientific theories as well as myths as needed to fill the blanks while never acknowledging the myths. There is no inner self or essence. There is thus no way to see ‘realty itself’ or the ‘thing-in-itself” whatever these are supposed to be. There is no pure undistorted reality. These are nonstarters for Cassirer. Reality is a relational and contextual matter. For Cassirer, the end of metaphysics or philosophy only means the beginning of more myth to fill the void. ‘Character’ as such is the result of actions and actions do not flow from some magical notions of character, personal or national. In the end, Earnt Cassirer’s personal myth was that he was a patriotic German, until he was informed that he was Jew and had to flee Germany for Switzerland and ended up in the U.S.
The Fourth Magician (A Human):
If the question is, “what is a human being?” then to my way of thinking, the wholly worldly Walter Benjamin was the most human of the four magicians and ended life as a martyr of philosophy. Though officially a suicide, his martyrdom was another Nazi murder. He offers us the truly human process of thinking about thinking and the constant evolution of the self as a person through self-reflection, originality, criticism and thus growth. For example, his insight into language was that it functioned as vehicle for self-awareness and understanding of ourselves in relation to the world, not just as a convention of communication. Language is the revelation of ‘being’, not a mere means of mundane communication or a mere convention for naming things. When we name things, we define things. For example, when we give a ‘dead object’ type names to living aspects of nature, we treat nature as a dead object of which we are free to dispose of at our whim. We in effect, silence nature and objectify ourselves. Due to this, language cannot be used to explain language. He dared to see this poverty in the philosophical thinking of his time. Benjamin was ahead of his time and thus rejected by his time. What indeed does it mean to be human after the credibility of progress coming from the Enlightenment has been destroyed by science-based murder on an industrial scale leaving the empty shell of modernity? What it means to be human is to ask an unanswerable question, but this is precisely the metaphysical questions the first magician, God himself, says we cannot ask. Benjamin was a skilled writer who could write well on any subject but his efforts, as well as the man himself, were of course rejected. He was too original, too independent, too unconventional, too controversial and he was all too human for the times. Often, that which is ignored by the wider society is of the most value. When intellectuals are slandered, the abyss of barbarism opens as we are seeing in our culture with Christian fanatics, conspiracy theory drones, and anti-intellectual zealots who deny science and attack experts. Benjamin’s magical power was to use the reality-saturated observations of his life in his writing, no matter how pedestrian the observation, to reveal something deep about the world itself, its past, its present and its future. Unlike the other magicians seeking explanations, Benjamin never sought balance and accepted as well as explored the simultaneous tensions and contradictions at the margins of the human condition.
August 26, 2018
Ich habe das Buch gerne gelesen, denn es liest sich leicht (manchmal wie ein Bericht oder eine Aneinanderreihung von Anekdoten) und es regt auch zum Nachdenken an bzw. dazu sich intensiver mit den unterschiedlichen Ansätzen zu beschäftigen. Ich bin mir aber unschlüssig inwieweit es richtig ist die 4 Männer und ihr Denken und Wirken auf die 20iger Jahre zu beschränken. Hier fehlt mir etwas die kritische Auseinandersetzung. Aber ich bin Laie, nicht vom Fach und nur interessierte Leserin, weshalb meine Beurteilung eher auch einem Bauchgefühl und nicht Wissen entspricht. ;-)
November 1, 2018
Un libro bellissimo che riesce a tenere insieme 4 esperienze filosofiche diverse ma legate: Cassirer, Heidegger, Benjamin e Wittgenstein. I 4 filosofi, i rapporti di pensiero e materiali tra di loro, la loro vita negli anni '20, anni di crisi in Europa.
Due parole sulla storia tra Walter Benjamin e Asja Lacis qui:
https://medium.com/@rienva/asja-e-wal...
Due parole sulla storia tra Walter Benjamin e Asja Lacis qui:
https://medium.com/@rienva/asja-e-wal...
June 15, 2019
RESENHA EM BREVE
November 7, 2021
My chief regret about Time of the Magicians:Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy is that it came to an end. This interweaving of four philosophers' lives is compelling and very well-written, setting each of them in context both pre-WWI and post-WWI. I won't attempt to reprise the kernel of each contribution to philosophy in any detail, but I must say that I found that most of the approaches described here smack of a kind of lunacy.
Cassirer was a "normal" man, a true philosopher who worked in academe and made huge efforts to link the cultures and functions of society around the globe. In a sense he was a polymath who could have been viewed as an anthropologist and might be were he at work today. There are great passages here focused on his collaboration with Aby Warburg, apparently luring Warburg out of his own lunacy in a Swiss retreat (think Magic Mountain) and enabling him to return to work at his astounding library in Hamburg with its magnificent oval reading room. Ultimately, Cassirer was driven out of his post in Berlin for his Jewishness, landed in Hamburg, received a carte blanche opportunity to revise the philosophy department in Frankfurt, turned that down, and then was pushed into exile in Switzerland and finally, Yale. But he seems to have retained his sanity nonetheless.
Heidegger would superficially appear the least of the lunatics, but his intensity and ambition, as manifested both in his life and his work, gives him a good claim on other-worldliness. If you have read his work, you know that his technique was to shape concepts like "there-being" (dasein) as means to a landing place for humans who have been "thrown" into the world, arrive full of anxiety, and can only achieve a kind of peace by reconciling with the temporal nature of their existence, i.e., death. He led a double life in the sense that he had a wife for family purposes and lovers for erotic purposes and a job in academe for financial purposes and a "hut" (what a hut!) in the mountains for philosophizing. Always a prickly character, he ultimately aligned himself with the Nazis as a university rector, and what can one say? There's no excuse.
Eilenberger, the author, has a lot of fun with poor Walter Benjamin, who couldn't get a job or hold onto one, or a home that satisfied him, or a lover as an alternative to his wife, or money...he always had money problems. The acute feature of Benjamin's work is its marvelous deconstruction of the world in which we live. Eilenberger gives him credit as the founder of critical theory and the Frankfurt School, but if that's true, he did it, as he did most things, off-the-cuff and on-the-run. In a sense we can think of Heidegger as a philosopher determined to dig into what comes before the reality "set" in which we live; Benjamin is a master of of observing that set and delineating its features (when he finished something he was writing), and Wittgenstein, our last crazy, was, at least initially, the mystic master of what we can determine to be reality and what we can't, what is the case, as he puts it, and what isn't the case.
Like Benjamin, Wittgenstein was a wanderer. He studied in England, endured WWI, abandoned Vienna, his home city, for the Austrian provinces where he taught public school, and he was poor because...well, because he was a multi-millionaire who gave all his money to his siblings. No one really understood Wittgenstein. Betrand Russell didn't. The Vienna Circle didn't (and they thought they were somehow his followers.) John Maynard Keynes didn't. But everyone was fascinated by his mixture of logic and intellectual asceticism. Unlike Heidegger Wittgenstein most definitely did not believe that there was any accessible philosophical foreground to human existence. If there were, he believed no one could speak of it.
There's one observation in this book that unravels Heidegger rather simply. He strove for a state of existence that transcended, or disposed of, what had come to be the technologically-minded bourgeoisie. And in fact he appears to have had some encounters with eastern masters of meditation, which does lead to a shucking-off of the meaningless claptrap of being that defines so many of us so much of the time. But he wouldn't confess or admit that the leap of zen into tranquil nothingness had influenced him a great deal. HIs ideas were always his ideas. He was a jealous god.
Cassirer was a "normal" man, a true philosopher who worked in academe and made huge efforts to link the cultures and functions of society around the globe. In a sense he was a polymath who could have been viewed as an anthropologist and might be were he at work today. There are great passages here focused on his collaboration with Aby Warburg, apparently luring Warburg out of his own lunacy in a Swiss retreat (think Magic Mountain) and enabling him to return to work at his astounding library in Hamburg with its magnificent oval reading room. Ultimately, Cassirer was driven out of his post in Berlin for his Jewishness, landed in Hamburg, received a carte blanche opportunity to revise the philosophy department in Frankfurt, turned that down, and then was pushed into exile in Switzerland and finally, Yale. But he seems to have retained his sanity nonetheless.
Heidegger would superficially appear the least of the lunatics, but his intensity and ambition, as manifested both in his life and his work, gives him a good claim on other-worldliness. If you have read his work, you know that his technique was to shape concepts like "there-being" (dasein) as means to a landing place for humans who have been "thrown" into the world, arrive full of anxiety, and can only achieve a kind of peace by reconciling with the temporal nature of their existence, i.e., death. He led a double life in the sense that he had a wife for family purposes and lovers for erotic purposes and a job in academe for financial purposes and a "hut" (what a hut!) in the mountains for philosophizing. Always a prickly character, he ultimately aligned himself with the Nazis as a university rector, and what can one say? There's no excuse.
Eilenberger, the author, has a lot of fun with poor Walter Benjamin, who couldn't get a job or hold onto one, or a home that satisfied him, or a lover as an alternative to his wife, or money...he always had money problems. The acute feature of Benjamin's work is its marvelous deconstruction of the world in which we live. Eilenberger gives him credit as the founder of critical theory and the Frankfurt School, but if that's true, he did it, as he did most things, off-the-cuff and on-the-run. In a sense we can think of Heidegger as a philosopher determined to dig into what comes before the reality "set" in which we live; Benjamin is a master of of observing that set and delineating its features (when he finished something he was writing), and Wittgenstein, our last crazy, was, at least initially, the mystic master of what we can determine to be reality and what we can't, what is the case, as he puts it, and what isn't the case.
Like Benjamin, Wittgenstein was a wanderer. He studied in England, endured WWI, abandoned Vienna, his home city, for the Austrian provinces where he taught public school, and he was poor because...well, because he was a multi-millionaire who gave all his money to his siblings. No one really understood Wittgenstein. Betrand Russell didn't. The Vienna Circle didn't (and they thought they were somehow his followers.) John Maynard Keynes didn't. But everyone was fascinated by his mixture of logic and intellectual asceticism. Unlike Heidegger Wittgenstein most definitely did not believe that there was any accessible philosophical foreground to human existence. If there were, he believed no one could speak of it.
There's one observation in this book that unravels Heidegger rather simply. He strove for a state of existence that transcended, or disposed of, what had come to be the technologically-minded bourgeoisie. And in fact he appears to have had some encounters with eastern masters of meditation, which does lead to a shucking-off of the meaningless claptrap of being that defines so many of us so much of the time. But he wouldn't confess or admit that the leap of zen into tranquil nothingness had influenced him a great deal. HIs ideas were always his ideas. He was a jealous god.
March 27, 2021
Thoroughly enjoyable and a brisk read. I’m not sure how much German readers would already know about the four protagonists (the work is a translation from the German), but for English readers familiar with the biographies cited by Eilenberger at the end of the book as his main sources, there is not much here that is new or surprising. His take on Benjamin was somewhat unsympathetic, I thought, but otherwise readers will obtain concisely drawn and empathetic profiles of the central figures. However, the book will do little to motivate readers to investigate the works that brought fame/notoriety to Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Benjamin, and Cassirer; readers may wonder whether this was less the time of magicians and more the time of prestidigitators, given the philosophical cons apparently being perpetrated during the period under examination. This is a failing on the author’s part, I think, although it would require a work of at least twice this length to convey to revolutionary nature of Heidegger’s work or the originality of Wittgenstein’s thought. 3.7 stars.
June 5, 2022
Η μαγεία της Γερμανικής Φιλοσοφίας του 19ου αιώνα σε λίγες σελίδες, δεν έχει υπάρξει κάτι πιο επιδραστικό από τότε στην σύγχρονη σκέψη, οι Γερμανοί και οι Ρώσοι συγγραφείς εκείνου του αιώνα έβαλαν τον πήχη πολύ ψηλά.
June 25, 2021
Frekar vel upp sett bók, þar sem höfundinum tekst afar vel að gera ýmsar tengingar í sambandi við hugmyndir þessar fjóru heimspekina líkt og þeir séu í raun allir að hugsa um það sama einungis út frá mismunandi sjónarhornum. Það er hinsvegar þýðingin sem er á köflum alveg virkilega slöpp. Þýðandinn skilur eftir mörg ensk orð óþýdd þrátt fyrir að þau hafi viðteknar íslenskar þýðingar. Einnig virðast margar setningar vera klunnalega beinþýddar, ásamt því að stafsetningarvillur er að finna hér og þar í textanum.
April 26, 2021
It was probably just too huge a task for anyone to attempt to synthesize the works and lives of four major thinkers in the space of some 400 pages. There is so much of interest here, and yet, as a book it dragged. The biographical descriptions and philosophical expositions both lacked the depth or substance needed, and it just felt so rough an uneven. The ties between the thinkers were not really explored with clarity, and I felt, though on this I can not be sure, the author’s utter lack of sympathy for Benjamin seemed so far over the top. A little bit disappointing, but still worth wading through.
November 17, 2019
Wolfram Eilenberger ‘Doba čarobnjaka: Veliko desetljeće filozofije 1919.–1929.’- Mount Rushmore njemačke misli
Knjiga “Doba čarobnjaka” filozofa Wolframa Eilenbergera usporedna je biografija četvorice divova njemačke misli, Ludwiga Wittgensteina, Martina Heideggera, Ernsta Cassirera i Waltera Benjamina, koja pokriva njihovo djelovanje u dvadesetim godinama prošloga stoljeća, razdoblju između dva svjetska rata koje se pokazalo kao posljednje zlatno doba velikih ideja kada je filozofska misao još bila od presudnog značaja u stvaranju svjetonazora na globalnoj razini.
Djelo započinje te kasnije ponovno doživljava kulminaciju u “mitskom Davosu” poprištu radnje jednog od najznačajnijih djela njemačke književnosti tog razdoblja, “Čarobne gore” nobelovca Thomasa Manna, objavljene svega pet godina prije događaja koje Eilenberger opisuje u svojoj knjizi, a to je sučeljavanje dvojice njezinih protagonista, Cassirera i Heideggera, od kojih prvih predstavlja posljednji bastion tradicije njemačke kulture utjelovljene u Kantu i Goetheu, dok potonji kao izazivač zastupa sasvim novi pogled na filozofiju utemeljenu na povratku ontologiji zasnovanoj na iskustvu tubitka bačenog u svijet i uvjetovanog svojim ograničenim boravkom u
njemu. Moglo bi se povući paralelu s ovogdišnjim razvikanim obračunom između Slavoja Žižeka i Jordana Petersona, samo što su prije devedeset godina prezentirane neke doista bitne i revolucionarne ideje.
Po završetku ove debate, kao što je slučaj i sa spometutom recentnom, teško je bilo odrediti pobjednika, samo što će povijest biti naklonjenija Heideggeru, kako u filozofskom smislu, tako i u svakodnevnom, budući da će njega dovesti do poluga sustava moći označivši ga kasnije neisperivom crnom mrljom povezivanja s nacional-socijalizmom i Hitlerom, dočim će Židov Cassirer posljednje godine provesti u izgnanstvu, kao uostalom i Benjamin, treći od protagonista ove knjige. On pak najveći dio pokrivenog razdoblja muku muči s vlastitom nediscipliniranom prirodom, teživši probitku na sceni i osiguravanju svoje egzistencije u kriznom razdoblju Weimarske republike, bilo kao autor ili profesor. On svoje zasluženo mjesto pronalazi tek u samoj završnici knjige, ali tada su na obzoru već tamni oblaci sljedećeg rata koji nikako nisu naklonjeni židovskom misliocu lijeve provenijencije.
Posljednja filozofska zvijezda ovog djela je Ludwig Wittgenstein, neshvaćeni – neshvatljivi – genij koji po povratku iz prvog rata na svijet donosi revolucionarno djelo “Tractatus logico-philosophicus”, ali nema namjeru živjeti na lovorikama i lansirati karijeru, već odluči počiniti “financijsko samoubojstvo” i odustaje od svog pozamašnog nasljedstva u korist svoje obitelji, posvetivši se neinspirativnoj karijeri seoskoga učitelja. U tom razdoblju i Heidegger piše svoje ključno djelo, “Bitak i vrijeme”, a Ernst Cassirer preuzima upravljanje Warburgovom bibliotekom i piše svoju “Filozofiju simboličkih oblika”.
Eilenberger priču izlaže veoma spretno i pitko, u kratkim poglavljima koja velikom brzinom preskaču od jednog do drugog protagonista, a njihove često neprohodne filozofske sustave objašnjava na način koji će biti razumljiv prosječnom čitatelju inače možda nevještom u poznavanju problematike misli o jeziku koja je uvelike obilježila razdoblje pokriveno u knjizi. Sve navedeno “Doba čarobnjaka” čini kvalitetnim doprinosom žanru filozofske biografije koji je u posljednje vrijeme obogaćen s nekoliko vrlo solidnih naslova, poput primjerice lanjskog životopisa Friedricha Nietzschea, “I Am Dynamite!” iz pera književnice Sue Prideaux, a čiji prijevod na hrvatski još uvijek očekujemo.
Lica ove četvorice divova misli na naslovnici hrvatskoga izdanja “Doba čarobnjaka” mogu podsjetiti na kamene profile američkih predsjednika isklesanih na Mount Rushmoreu, a oni doista jesu vrijedni uvrštavanja u neki pandan ove planine u kategoriji filozofije. Eilenberger se trudi čitatelju približiti zašto je tome tako bez zamaranja kompleksnim finesama i umnim začkoljicama, ali isto tako zabavnim biografskim crticama pokazuje kako filozofi tog kalibra mogu biti i mušićavi, teški, lijeni ili grandiozni likovi kakve često susrećemo u svim drugim instancama svakodnevnog života.
(Fraktura, tvrdi uvez s ovitkom, 400 stranica, rujan 2019.)
Knjiga “Doba čarobnjaka” filozofa Wolframa Eilenbergera usporedna je biografija četvorice divova njemačke misli, Ludwiga Wittgensteina, Martina Heideggera, Ernsta Cassirera i Waltera Benjamina, koja pokriva njihovo djelovanje u dvadesetim godinama prošloga stoljeća, razdoblju između dva svjetska rata koje se pokazalo kao posljednje zlatno doba velikih ideja kada je filozofska misao još bila od presudnog značaja u stvaranju svjetonazora na globalnoj razini.
Djelo započinje te kasnije ponovno doživljava kulminaciju u “mitskom Davosu” poprištu radnje jednog od najznačajnijih djela njemačke književnosti tog razdoblja, “Čarobne gore” nobelovca Thomasa Manna, objavljene svega pet godina prije događaja koje Eilenberger opisuje u svojoj knjizi, a to je sučeljavanje dvojice njezinih protagonista, Cassirera i Heideggera, od kojih prvih predstavlja posljednji bastion tradicije njemačke kulture utjelovljene u Kantu i Goetheu, dok potonji kao izazivač zastupa sasvim novi pogled na filozofiju utemeljenu na povratku ontologiji zasnovanoj na iskustvu tubitka bačenog u svijet i uvjetovanog svojim ograničenim boravkom u
njemu. Moglo bi se povući paralelu s ovogdišnjim razvikanim obračunom između Slavoja Žižeka i Jordana Petersona, samo što su prije devedeset godina prezentirane neke doista bitne i revolucionarne ideje.
Po završetku ove debate, kao što je slučaj i sa spometutom recentnom, teško je bilo odrediti pobjednika, samo što će povijest biti naklonjenija Heideggeru, kako u filozofskom smislu, tako i u svakodnevnom, budući da će njega dovesti do poluga sustava moći označivši ga kasnije neisperivom crnom mrljom povezivanja s nacional-socijalizmom i Hitlerom, dočim će Židov Cassirer posljednje godine provesti u izgnanstvu, kao uostalom i Benjamin, treći od protagonista ove knjige. On pak najveći dio pokrivenog razdoblja muku muči s vlastitom nediscipliniranom prirodom, teživši probitku na sceni i osiguravanju svoje egzistencije u kriznom razdoblju Weimarske republike, bilo kao autor ili profesor. On svoje zasluženo mjesto pronalazi tek u samoj završnici knjige, ali tada su na obzoru već tamni oblaci sljedećeg rata koji nikako nisu naklonjeni židovskom misliocu lijeve provenijencije.
Posljednja filozofska zvijezda ovog djela je Ludwig Wittgenstein, neshvaćeni – neshvatljivi – genij koji po povratku iz prvog rata na svijet donosi revolucionarno djelo “Tractatus logico-philosophicus”, ali nema namjeru živjeti na lovorikama i lansirati karijeru, već odluči počiniti “financijsko samoubojstvo” i odustaje od svog pozamašnog nasljedstva u korist svoje obitelji, posvetivši se neinspirativnoj karijeri seoskoga učitelja. U tom razdoblju i Heidegger piše svoje ključno djelo, “Bitak i vrijeme”, a Ernst Cassirer preuzima upravljanje Warburgovom bibliotekom i piše svoju “Filozofiju simboličkih oblika”.
Eilenberger priču izlaže veoma spretno i pitko, u kratkim poglavljima koja velikom brzinom preskaču od jednog do drugog protagonista, a njihove često neprohodne filozofske sustave objašnjava na način koji će biti razumljiv prosječnom čitatelju inače možda nevještom u poznavanju problematike misli o jeziku koja je uvelike obilježila razdoblje pokriveno u knjizi. Sve navedeno “Doba čarobnjaka” čini kvalitetnim doprinosom žanru filozofske biografije koji je u posljednje vrijeme obogaćen s nekoliko vrlo solidnih naslova, poput primjerice lanjskog životopisa Friedricha Nietzschea, “I Am Dynamite!” iz pera književnice Sue Prideaux, a čiji prijevod na hrvatski još uvijek očekujemo.
Lica ove četvorice divova misli na naslovnici hrvatskoga izdanja “Doba čarobnjaka” mogu podsjetiti na kamene profile američkih predsjednika isklesanih na Mount Rushmoreu, a oni doista jesu vrijedni uvrštavanja u neki pandan ove planine u kategoriji filozofije. Eilenberger se trudi čitatelju približiti zašto je tome tako bez zamaranja kompleksnim finesama i umnim začkoljicama, ali isto tako zabavnim biografskim crticama pokazuje kako filozofi tog kalibra mogu biti i mušićavi, teški, lijeni ili grandiozni likovi kakve često susrećemo u svim drugim instancama svakodnevnog života.
(Fraktura, tvrdi uvez s ovitkom, 400 stranica, rujan 2019.)
May 2, 2022
Τέσσερις πυλώνες της γερμανόφωνης ευρωπαϊκής φιλοσοφίας, κατά τη δεκαετία που ακολουθεί τη λήξη του ΆΠΠ, παρουσιάζονται μέσα από την έρευνα του Wolfram Eilenberger.
Κασσίρερ, Χάιντεγκερ, Βιττγκενστάιν, Μπένγιαμιν σε παράλληλα φιλοσοφικά μονοπάτια οδηγούν τις πνευματικές αναζητήσεις, τα μεταφυσικά ερωτήματα και την ακαδημαϊκή σκέψη σε νέες μεθόδους προσέγγισης.
Ακολουθούμε κάθε βήμα τους στην ιδιωτική και ακαδημαϊκή πορεία τους.
Ο ήπιων τόνων, συνετός, εβραϊκής καταγωγής, οικογενειάρχης και πανεπιστημιακός Κασσίρερ, γίνεται στόχος αντισημιτικών συμπεριφορών σε προσωπικό και οικογενειακό επίπεδο. Στο έργο του "Φιλοσοφία των συμβολικών μορφών", καταγράφει και αποκωδικοποιεί σύμβολα όπως η γλώσσα και συμβολικές μορφές όπως οι μύθοι, η τέχνη, τα μαθηματικά, η μουσική ως σημεία πολιτισμικής εξέλιξης και μεταφυσικών αναζητήσεων, ακολουθώντας τη λογική του τοτέμ.
Στον αντίποδα ο αμφιλεγόμενος, φιλοναζιστής Χάιντεγκερ με το έργο του "Είναι και χρόνος", επικεντρώνεται στην αγωνία της ύπαρξης, την επίγνωση του πεπερασμένου αυτής και την ακατάλυτη συνάρτηση της με τον χρόνο.
Οι δύο αυτές αντίθετες απόψεις εκφράζονται δημόσια στη συνάντηση του Νταβός, όπου καλούνται να πραγματευτούν το ερώτημα " Τι είναι ο άνθρωπος" στην μετα-καντιανή εποχή.
Μια διαλεκτική μάχη που θυμίζει την έκθεση φιλοσοφικών απόψεων όπως διατυπώθηκαν στο Μαγικό βουνο του Τόμας Μαν.
Ο αντισυμβατικός, δύσληπτος, οξύνους Βιττγκενστάιν αποποιείται την οικογενειακή περιουσία, κερδίζοντας τα προς το ��ην ως απλός δάσκαλος σε σχολεία της επαρχίας. Συνεχιστής του δασκάλου του Μπέρτραντ Ράσσελ, με το έργο του Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ακολουθεί το δρόμο των προτέρων του Σπινόζα, Χιουμ, Καντ καταδεικνύωντας τη διαφορά μεταξύ λογικών/αληθινών προτάσεων και φαινομενικά λογικών άρα παραπλανητικών προτάσεων της γλώσσας που οδηγούν σε λανθασμένη πρόσληψη του κόσμου μας.
"7. Για όσα δεν μπορεί να μιλάει κανείς, για αυτά πρέπει να σωπαίνει."
Ο Μπένγιαμιν είναι ο άνθρωπος των οραμάτων, των νέων εγχειρημάτων, τα οποία είτε αποτυγχάνουν είτε τα εγκαταλείπει. Αντιμέτωπος με οικονομικά προβλήματα, έχοντας χάσει την οικονομική στήριξη της οικογένειας, κάνοντας άστατη ζωή, προσπαθεί να εξασφαλίσει θέση πανεπιστημιακού καθηγητή.
Πολυγραφότατος, καταπιάνεται με τη φιλοσοφία και την κριτική τέχνης. Καθοριστική για την πορεία του η κριτική του στο έργο του Γκαίτε "Εκλεκτικές συγγένειες", όπου αντιπαραβάλλει τη σχέση γάμου/ ελευθερίας/ πεπρωμένου με τη Δημοκρατία της Βαϊμάρης.
Τέσσερις στοχαστές συναντιούνται σε ένα κατατοπιστικό, διαφωτιστικό, επεξηγηματικό, βιογραφικό έργο που αξίζει να διαβαστεί.
Κασσίρερ, Χάιντεγκερ, Βιττγκενστάιν, Μπένγιαμιν σε παράλληλα φιλοσοφικά μονοπάτια οδηγούν τις πνευματικές αναζητήσεις, τα μεταφυσικά ερωτήματα και την ακαδημαϊκή σκέψη σε νέες μεθόδους προσέγγισης.
Ακολουθούμε κάθε βήμα τους στην ιδιωτική και ακαδημαϊκή πορεία τους.
Ο ήπιων τόνων, συνετός, εβραϊκής καταγωγής, οικογενειάρχης και πανεπιστημιακός Κασσίρερ, γίνεται στόχος αντισημιτικών συμπεριφορών σε προσωπικό και οικογενειακό επίπεδο. Στο έργο του "Φιλοσοφία των συμβολικών μορφών", καταγράφει και αποκωδικοποιεί σύμβολα όπως η γλώσσα και συμβολικές μορφές όπως οι μύθοι, η τέχνη, τα μαθηματικά, η μουσική ως σημεία πολιτισμικής εξέλιξης και μεταφυσικών αναζητήσεων, ακολουθώντας τη λογική του τοτέμ.
Στον αντίποδα ο αμφιλεγόμενος, φιλοναζιστής Χάιντεγκερ με το έργο του "Είναι και χρόνος", επικεντρώνεται στην αγωνία της ύπαρξης, την επίγνωση του πεπερασμένου αυτής και την ακατάλυτη συνάρτηση της με τον χρόνο.
Οι δύο αυτές αντίθετες απόψεις εκφράζονται δημόσια στη συνάντηση του Νταβός, όπου καλούνται να πραγματευτούν το ερώτημα " Τι είναι ο άνθρωπος" στην μετα-καντιανή εποχή.
Μια διαλεκτική μάχη που θυμίζει την έκθεση φιλοσοφικών απόψεων όπως διατυπώθηκαν στο Μαγικό βουνο του Τόμας Μαν.
Ο αντισυμβατικός, δύσληπτος, οξύνους Βιττγκενστάιν αποποιείται την οικογενειακή περιουσία, κερδίζοντας τα προς το ��ην ως απλός δάσκαλος σε σχολεία της επαρχίας. Συνεχιστής του δασκάλου του Μπέρτραντ Ράσσελ, με το έργο του Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ακολουθεί το δρόμο των προτέρων του Σπινόζα, Χιουμ, Καντ καταδεικνύωντας τη διαφορά μεταξύ λογικών/αληθινών προτάσεων και φαινομενικά λογικών άρα παραπλανητικών προτάσεων της γλώσσας που οδηγούν σε λανθασμένη πρόσληψη του κόσμου μας.
"7. Για όσα δεν μπορεί να μιλάει κανείς, για αυτά πρέπει να σωπαίνει."
Ο Μπένγιαμιν είναι ο άνθρωπος των οραμάτων, των νέων εγχειρημάτων, τα οποία είτε αποτυγχάνουν είτε τα εγκαταλείπει. Αντιμέτωπος με οικονομικά προβλήματα, έχοντας χάσει την οικονομική στήριξη της οικογένειας, κάνοντας άστατη ζωή, προσπαθεί να εξασφαλίσει θέση πανεπιστημιακού καθηγητή.
Πολυγραφότατος, καταπιάνεται με τη φιλοσοφία και την κριτική τέχνης. Καθοριστική για την πορεία του η κριτική του στο έργο του Γκαίτε "Εκλεκτικές συγγένειες", όπου αντιπαραβάλλει τη σχέση γάμου/ ελευθερίας/ πεπρωμένου με τη Δημοκρατία της Βαϊμάρης.
Τέσσερις στοχαστές συναντιούνται σε ένα κατατοπιστικό, διαφωτιστικό, επεξηγηματικό, βιογραφικό έργο που αξίζει να διαβαστεί.
January 13, 2022
Books on difficult or technical subjects that are meant to address a large, non-specialist audience have rough going, as Goodreads reviews on this particular book demonstrate. The philosopher, in this case, finds it too superficial or only repetition of what can be found elsewhere, while the non-philosopher, comme moi, can complain about getting lost with this or that explanation. I am an academic, albeit in a very different discipline and area of specialization, and I know how we sneer at those who are "mere popularizers," even though they are simply trying, in their own way, to contribute to general knowledge, which, incidentally, is what we academics all do when we teach a general introduction (hoping, of course, no colleague walks into the classroom and overhears how simply we might be presenting things). So, let me put my cards on the table. Yes, I did like this book, despite the obvious and sometimes unfair criticisms it has received. Yes, it perhaps covers too much--four major thinkers of the 20s--but I am more interested in that lively period, particularly in the Germanic world which was hurtling toward horror, than I am in the difficult details of Heidegger's thought (or, even more so, Benjamin's), which my brain probably would not understand completely no matter who explained it to me. And, yes, the comments about the private lives of these great thinkers might be a bit gratuitous, but such details kept me reading on. Gotta have some entertainment in my old age . . . apart from Netflix.
February 12, 2021
Time of the Magicians is marketed (seemingly at least) as a title in the popular history of philosophy genre. However, though it is, indeed, not an academic work of history, it can hardly be said to be 'popular'. The philosophers under study in this 4-way investigation are fascinating, monumental, controversial -- eminently worthy of the sort of treatment Eilenberger attempts. But Eilenberger in no way clearly elucidates their major philosophical ideas and corpora. Eilenberger writes in a very knowing way. The bits of this book (straight up biographical ones) addressed to an actual popular readership are quite interesting, and justify (to an extent) a lay reader's investment of time reading this book. But don't come to Time of the Magicians expecting to finish it with even a rudimentary clear grasp of the thinkers Eilenberger chronicles (Heidegger's and Benjamin's ideas, obscure as they are, are given particularly murky treatment in this book). The ideal reader of Time of the Magicians, I imagine, is someone with a lot of philosophy and/or history of philosophy reading under their belt, who has already achieved some fluency in the ideas that Eilenberger treats. To the extent the book provided this inexpert reader with a kaleidescopic if quite fuzzy perspective on these ideas, I am glad I read it. But I'd only recommend it to readers who calibrate their expectations appropriately.
March 2, 2021
The perfect book for me. Roughly 50/50 theory and history of these great philosophers. The only surprise for me was the inclusion of Ernst Casirrer, but I guess he was included so that there was someone representing Kantianism or rather neo-Kantianism. Anyway, it was a entertaining and insightful read. A book I will recommend anyone remotely interested in the philosophy of the first half of the 20th century. Pleasantly enough, the barrier between Continental and Analytical philosophy is destroyed here.
Want to read
August 16, 2020June 23, 2020
Sehr spannender Einblick in Leben und Werk zentraler deutscher Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Gerade die philosophischen Perspektiven hätten ab und an aber ein paar weitere Erklärungen vertragen können.
April 22, 2024
Als Laie mag ich es, mich Philosophen erst einmal auf biographische Weise anzunähern, besonders dann, wenn ihre Veröffentlichungen so viel Respekt einflößen wie der Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Erst einmal gelesen, habe ich den historischen Kontext bisher noch jeden Werks deutlich wiedererkannt. Wolfram Eilenberger schätze ich sehr als Gastgeber der Sternstunde Philosophie im SRF und auch in Zeit der Zauberer: Das große Jahrzehnt der Philosophie 1919 - 1929 weckt er gekonnt das Interesse an großen Denkern und ihren Ideen. Dazu gefällt mir seine Sprache sehr gut.
Unsicher bin ich beim Konzept, sich gleichzeitig mit ganzen vier Philosophen zu beschäftigen, nämlich Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger und Ludwig Wittgenstein, zumal mit der Begrenzung auf ein einzelnes Jahrzehnt. Wittgenstein, über den ich bereits am meisten wusste, passt für mich dabei am wenigsten in das Quartett, sowohl mit Blick auf seinen inhaltlichen Schwerpunkt als auch seinen Lebensweg und seine Schaffensorte. Vielleicht ist er allem voran vertreten, weil er der bekannteste ist?
Nehmen wir also Wittgenstein heraus und versuchen mit Heidegger einen spannenden Angelpunkt zu bilden, den er durch Sein und Zeit, die Liebschaft mit Hannah Arendt und seinem späteren Führerkult (der, weil er aus dem Jahrzehnt fällt, mit drei Sätzen zum Ende des Buches aberzählt wird). Dann lassen sich zwar Heideggers und Benjamins Ansichten und Lebensstile, oder Heideggers und Cassirers Auffassungen (z.B. zum Neukantianismus, der Ontologie oder der Endlichkeit des Seins) in ihrer Opposition toll gegenüberstellen, dennoch wird für mich kein Schuh draus, wenn das Buch weiterhin drei Philosophen behandeln würde. Vielmehr hätten es wohl nur zwei sein dürfen, und das war Eilenberger vielleicht auch selbst bewusst, denn das ganze Buch strebt zum Klimax, den Davoser Disputationen zwischen Heidegger und Cassirer, hin; es ist in meinen Augen vergeudete Liebesmüh, Benjamin und Wittgenstein mit diesem persönlichen Streitgespräch zu verbinden. Als Nebenfiguren hätten sie ja allemal auftauchen können, auch ausführlich, zählt es nicht zum Wesen von Biographien das soziale Umfeld von Hauptfiguren zu beleuchten.
Insgesamt ist das Werk als Einführung in die philosophischen Konzepte der vier Protagonisten für mich nicht sehr geeignet, zugleich bin ich jedoch unsicher, ob es jenen, die sich besser auskennen, noch viel neues mitzuteilen weiß. Spannend sind am ehesten die tatsächlichen Berührungspunkte der Denker, nicht die vielen, über die nur spekuliert wird. Auch wenn ich also etwas enttäuscht bin, habe ich zumindest mehr Lust auf weitere Beschäftigung mit Cassirer und Benjamin bekommen, die mir bisher noch nicht bewusst untergekommen sind. Generell habe ich Benjamins prekäres und zerrissenes Leben, aber auch seine Rolle als Marcel Proust-Übersetzer und vortrefflicher Chronist und Kritiker des Zeitgeists der ersten Jahrzehnte des letzten Jahrhunderts höchst spannend gefunden.
Unsicher bin ich beim Konzept, sich gleichzeitig mit ganzen vier Philosophen zu beschäftigen, nämlich Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger und Ludwig Wittgenstein, zumal mit der Begrenzung auf ein einzelnes Jahrzehnt. Wittgenstein, über den ich bereits am meisten wusste, passt für mich dabei am wenigsten in das Quartett, sowohl mit Blick auf seinen inhaltlichen Schwerpunkt als auch seinen Lebensweg und seine Schaffensorte. Vielleicht ist er allem voran vertreten, weil er der bekannteste ist?
Nehmen wir also Wittgenstein heraus und versuchen mit Heidegger einen spannenden Angelpunkt zu bilden, den er durch Sein und Zeit, die Liebschaft mit Hannah Arendt und seinem späteren Führerkult (der, weil er aus dem Jahrzehnt fällt, mit drei Sätzen zum Ende des Buches aberzählt wird). Dann lassen sich zwar Heideggers und Benjamins Ansichten und Lebensstile, oder Heideggers und Cassirers Auffassungen (z.B. zum Neukantianismus, der Ontologie oder der Endlichkeit des Seins) in ihrer Opposition toll gegenüberstellen, dennoch wird für mich kein Schuh draus, wenn das Buch weiterhin drei Philosophen behandeln würde. Vielmehr hätten es wohl nur zwei sein dürfen, und das war Eilenberger vielleicht auch selbst bewusst, denn das ganze Buch strebt zum Klimax, den Davoser Disputationen zwischen Heidegger und Cassirer, hin; es ist in meinen Augen vergeudete Liebesmüh, Benjamin und Wittgenstein mit diesem persönlichen Streitgespräch zu verbinden. Als Nebenfiguren hätten sie ja allemal auftauchen können, auch ausführlich, zählt es nicht zum Wesen von Biographien das soziale Umfeld von Hauptfiguren zu beleuchten.
Insgesamt ist das Werk als Einführung in die philosophischen Konzepte der vier Protagonisten für mich nicht sehr geeignet, zugleich bin ich jedoch unsicher, ob es jenen, die sich besser auskennen, noch viel neues mitzuteilen weiß. Spannend sind am ehesten die tatsächlichen Berührungspunkte der Denker, nicht die vielen, über die nur spekuliert wird. Auch wenn ich also etwas enttäuscht bin, habe ich zumindest mehr Lust auf weitere Beschäftigung mit Cassirer und Benjamin bekommen, die mir bisher noch nicht bewusst untergekommen sind. Generell habe ich Benjamins prekäres und zerrissenes Leben, aber auch seine Rolle als Marcel Proust-Übersetzer und vortrefflicher Chronist und Kritiker des Zeitgeists der ersten Jahrzehnte des letzten Jahrhunderts höchst spannend gefunden.
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