Martin Heidegger: Between Good And Evil

One of the century's greatest philosophers, without whom there would be no Sartre, no Foucault, no Frankfurt School. Martin Heidegger was also a man of great failures and flaws, a Faustus who made a pact with the devil of his time, Adolf Hitler. The story of Heidegger's life and philosophy, a quintessentially German story in which good and evil, brilliance and blindness are inextricably entwined, is told in this biography. Heidegger grew up in Catholic Germany and initially pledged himself to the priesthood. He later turned apostate and sought a university position, which led him to become the star of German philosophy in the 1920s. Rudiger Safranski chronicles Heidegger's rise along with his philosophical development, influenced by Heraclitus, Plato, and Kant, and his tragic susceptibility to conservatism after Germany's loss in World War I. A chronicle of ideas and personal commitments, Safranski's biography details Heidegger's philosophy and the loves and lapses that shaped him. The book covers Heidegger's shameful involvement with the Nazi regime as well as his accomplishments.