Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt Karl Lowith Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse.

About this book

Martin Heidegger is perhaps the twentieth centurys greatest philosopher and his work stimulated much that is original and compelling in modern thought. A seductive classroom presence he attracted Germanys brightest young intellects during the 1920s. Many were Jews who ultimately would have to reconcile their philosophical and often personal commitments to Heidegger with his nefarious political views. In 1933 Heidegger cast his lot with National Socialism. He squelched the careers of Jewish students and denounced fellow professors whom he considered insufficiently radical. For years he signed letters and opened lectures with Heil Hitler! He paid dues to the Nazi party until the bitter end. Equally problematic for his former students were his sordid efforts to make existential thought serviceable to Nazi ends and his failure to ever renounce these actions. This book explores how four of Heideggers most influential Jewish students came to grips with his Nazi association and how it affected their thinking. Hannah Arendt who was Heideggers lover as well as his student went on to become one of the centurys greatest political thinkers. Karl Lwith returned to Germany in 1953 and quickly became one of its leading philosophers. Hans Jonas grew famous as Germanys premier philosopher of environmentalism. Herbert Marcuse gained celebrity as a Frankfurt School intellectual and mentor to the New Left. Why did these brilliant minds fail to see what was in Heideggers heart and Germanys future? How would they after the war reappraise Germanys intellectual traditions? Could they salvage aspects of Heideggers thought? Would their philosophy reflect or completely reject their early studies? Could these Heideggerians forgive or even try to understand the betrayal of the man they so admired? Heideggers Children locates these paradoxes in the wider cruel irony that European Jews experienced their greatest calamity immediately following their fullest assimilation. And it finds in their responses answers to questions about the nature of existential disillusionment and the juncture between politics and ideas.