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Margaret Canovan argues in this book that much of the published work on Arendt has been flawed by serious misunderstandings, arising from a failure to see her work in its proper context. The author shows how such misunderstanding was possible, and offers a fundamental reinterpretation, drawing on Arendt's unpublished as well as her published work, which sheds new light on most areas of her thought. ... Read more

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For many years Hannah Arendt (1906Ð1975) has been the object of intense debate. After her bitter critiques of Zionism, which seemed to nullify her early involvement with that movement, and her extremely controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Arendt became virtually a taboo figure in Israeli and Jewish circles. Challenging the "curse" of her own title, Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem carries the scholarly investigation of this much-discussed writer to the very place where her ideas have been most conspicuously ignored. Sometimes sympathetically, sometimes critically, these distinguished contributors reexamine crucial aspects of Arendt's life and thought: her complex identity as a German Jew; her commitment to and critique of Zionism and the state of Israel; her works on "totalitarianism," Nazism, and the Eichmann trial; her relationship to key twentieth-century intellectuals; her intimate and tense connections to German culture; and her reworkings of political thought and philosophy in the light of the experience of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Legacy of Arendt's EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM
There are many themes raised in this book, and I will mention only a few of them. Richard I. Cohen (p. 253) states that no single study of the Holocaust has attracted the same attention as Arendt's work on the Eichmann trial.

Walter Laqueur (p. 50) speaks of Jaspar's work as insisting on German guilt (p. 50). But shouldn't it be characterized as collective German liability rather than collective German guilt? (See the Peczkis review at The Question of German Guilt (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, No. 16)).

Michael Halberstam compares totalitarian systems: "Historians agree that the average ethnic German was not terrorized by the constant threat of deportation and death, as was even the most powerful Russian party member during Stalin's rule in the mid 1930's. Such doubts about the actual levels of threat experienced by the ethnic German population under National Socialism raise suspicions that the terror thesis--and with it, the comparative concept of totalitarianism--constitutes an apologetic for crimes committed under the Nazi regime. The terror thesis, it is argued, falsely presents the German population as passive sufferers, rather than willing participants in the murderous political cult of German nationalist supremacy." (p. 106)

What about the French? Yaacov Lozowick writes: "Their central thesis, now accepted by all mainstream historians, is that the Vichy government acted against its Jews of its own volition." (p. 388)

Without doubt, the most volatile content of Arendt's classic was her candid discussion of Jew-against-Jew collaboration during the Holocaust. Lilian Weissberg comments: "EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM was criticized by many Jewish organizations as an indictment of Jews because Arendt did not understand them as innocent victims only." (p. 154). Susan Neiman (p. 65) notes that some saw this as a confusion of who was on trial: Eichmann or the Judenrate. The editor, Steven E. Aschheim, takes this further: "Indeed, in her treatment of the Judenrate, her apparent blurring of the almost sacrosanct distinction between perpetrators and victims seemed to violate fundamental sensibilities...Moreover, very early on, Arendt warned that the uniqueness of the atrocities could create a self-righteous cult of victimization, one that indeed has occurred. (Witness the absurd current competition in comparative victimization as a tool of identity politics.) (p. 14)

Finally, Hans Mommsen puts Arendt's work in a broader context. Arendt recognized the fact that the Nazi extermination of the Jews was also expanding into the extermination of Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) and Slavs (p. 230)

Very satisfying on an emotional level
HANNAH ARENDT IN JERUSALEM has 21 chapters, plus a preface and introduction, which provide papers from a conference held in Jerusalem between December 9 and December 11, 1997, 22 years after her death.Notes on the papers on pages 347-420 contain information which has not been included in the index on pages 425-428.Scholars have multiple points of view on how well she managed to tune in to the issues which made the twentieth century so exciting.I appreciate Arendt for her ability to derive lessons from Nietzsche that exceed my own powers of observation, but the middle of this book has 180 pages between mentions of Nietzsche, though these pages contain a chapter on The Intellectual Background by Hans Mommsen (an expert on German history and literature) called "Hannah Arendt's Interpretation of the Holocaust as a Challenge to Human Existence" (pp. 224-231).She was prone to emphasize what she had already written in THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM when she went to Jerusalem for the Eichmann trial, a politically inept location for observing that "the Nazi machinery of destruction successfully turned the criminal activities involved into routine procedures that suffocated any moral protest, either from bystanders or from those who were induced to become perpetrators," (p. 231).Hans Mommsen was afraid that this context "inevitably created the erroneous impression that she intended to express contempt for the court itself."(p. 230).

Other contributors to this book who spent countless hours reading the books of letter to and from Hannah Arendt have no difficulty documenting that, as Walter Laqueur admitted, "The animosity toward Jews as a group was of long standing, and it was by no means restricted to Israel and the Israelis. . . .Perhaps she had read too much anti-Semitic literature for her own good."(p. 58).Walter Laqueur's comments on Hannah Arendt as political commentator and "the greatest female philosopher of our time, perhaps of all times, which she might well be" (p. 49) find "a fascinating discrepancy between Arendt the political philosopher and the poverty of her judgment concerning current politics."(p. 50).Comparing Arendt to Raymond Aron, "As a political thinker, he was at least her equal, and his political judgment was infinitely better than hers.He was usually right, and she was often wrong.The list of alleged fools in Hannah Arendt's letters is truly enormous."(p. 62).A review by Raymond Aron in 1954 picked the element of her work that has become so dominant, "without being aware of it, Mrs. Arendt affects a tone of haughty superiority regarding things and men."(p. 61).

The final four chapters of HANNAH ARENDT IN JERUSALEM examine her relationship with the philosophers Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger.The chapter by Anson Rabinbach is mainly about a book by Jaspers in 1946 which appeared in English as THE QUESTION OF GERMAN GUILT.Germans did not embrace the idea.Arendt's husband complained, "despite all beauty and nobility, the guilt brochure of Jaspers is a damned and Hegelized, Christian-pietist-sanctimonious nationalizing bilge."(p. 300).

Peter Baehr considers Arendt, Jaspers, and the appraisal of Max Weber primarily in the context of a letter on January 1, 1933, in which Arendt wrote:

"But I am obligated to keep my distance, I can neither be for nor against when I read Max Weber's wonderful sentence where he says that to put Germany back on her feet he would form an alliance with the devil himself."(p. 308).

Finding some theological applications, Arendt wrote a moral evaluation:

". . . it is not so certain that those who have lost their belief in Hell as a place of the hereafter may not be willing to be able to establish on earth exact imitations of what people used to believe about Hell."(p. 319).

As Peter Baehr concludes, something strange about the mixture of issues involved in communication is complex:

"That some of the most profound forms of expression and dialogue do not conform to norms of transparency, `sincerity,' and consistency may offend some philosophers.But it may also add weight to Arendt's suspicion that philosophy and human experience are constantly at war."(p. 324).

Steven Aschheim, in the Introduction, quotes a letter Arendt wrote to Jaspers on April 13, 1961, in which she complained about Jerusalem:

"Everything is organized by a police force that gives me the creeps, speaks only Hebrew and looks Arabic.Some downright brutal types among them.They would follow any order."(p. 7).

The contribution by Susan Neiman, called "Theodicy in Jerusalem" (pp. 65-90), coincides quite closely with an entry in the index for Immanuel Kant, 68-84, and illustrates Arendt's mix of ideas quite vividly:

"In other words, you don't have to be a student of Heidegger to be ambivalent about philosophy.Arendt's strongest expression of revulsion toward the subject occurs in discussing the intellectual embrace of Nazism:Precisely the capacity to use well-trained wit to provide interesting rationalizations of Nazism made philosophy permanently suspect.But in just the discussion in which, for these reasons, she most vehemently rejects her interviewer's inclination to call her a philosopher, Arendt undercuts her own position.Defending her claim to have bid farewell to philosophy, she appeals to what she calls philosophy's essential hostility to the political--from which she immediately excepts Kant (Gaus, V, 45).Later she would generalize to describe Kant as `so singularly free of all specifically philosophical vices' (T, 83).Be that as it may, this is fairly respectable company to keep for one who insists she has said farewell to philosophy."(p. 73).

Heidegger is such a giant in philosophy that Arendt is able to see his escape from concrete politics into a more philosophical approach than the "interesting rationalizations of Nazism" in 1933 which have become such a large part of Heidegger's reputation.See the quote of her 1953 "Heidegger the Fox" sketch on pages 344-345.

The case against Arendt was not made strongly enough
I was present at the Jerusalem Conference and heard a number of the papers included in the present volume. From what I heard no one really addressed Hannah Arendt's moral failing in showing such insensitivity and coldness to victims of the Shoah in her book 'The Banality of Evil'. They too did not see two other areas in which she despite being one of the great political thinkers of the twentieth century failed her own conception of the ' dignity of man' One was in her reluctant and apologetic attitude toward her own Jewishness, and the second in her deference to the Nazi - sympathizing Heidegger. I would also say the whole celebratory tone of the conference as if the world had changed and now everyone understood that Arendt was after all right about the ' Banality of Evil' conference seemed to be wrongheaded and in itself slightly immoral.

A prophecy of the Israel/Palestine conflict
Hannah Arendt's reputation in Israel (according to this book) has suffered the consequences of her controversial views, but these are now becoming more openly discussed, witness the conference on her thought at the source of this book. This set of essays is a highly useful (and balanced) treatment of the 'banality of evil' controversy, and much else, including Arendt's prophetic cassandra warnings about what was to come in the hopeless muddle of the Israel/Palestine conflict. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Arendt neither a 'feminist' nor a 'zionist'
Those looking to Hannah Arendt for a Zionist or Feminist philosophy will be disappointed. She is one of the great philosophic minds of the twentieth century, and to assign labels to her and use the lens concordant to such labels in reading her is to miss much of what she has to say. She is certainly not trying to provide clever arguments to win debates with. Her relevance to the world today is up to the reader to determine, but I would encourage you to make the attempt.

Arendt is overrated
This is a collection of essays from Arendt, a feminist and Zionist fromthe middle of the century.I am sure most political theorists love thiskind of book, but for normal people the text is far too"scholarly".I could find nothing of a feminist nature in thisbook and little convicing of a Zionist nature.There are far moreconvincing books on both sets of thought than this. ... Read more

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The central argument of this book is that Hannah Arendt's deserved place in the history of Western philosophy has been overlooked, and recognition of her contribution is long overdue. In part a result of Arendt's own insistence on calling herself a 'political thinker' throughout her career, this is also due to a common tendency in philosophy to denigrate the political. This book explores the indisputable philosophical dimensions of her work. In particular, it examines Arendt's theoretical commitment to recognizing humanity as a plurality, which avoids the common mistake in Western philosophy of theoretically overemphasizing the self in isolation. Arendt's own personal dealings with aspects of her identity, namely her Jewishness and her womanhood, work to inform us of this position against solipsism. ... Read more

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Hannah Arendt's work offers a powerful critical engagement with the cultural and philosophical crises of mid-twentieth-century Europe. Her idea of the banality of evil, made famous after her report on the trial of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, remains controversial to this day.

In the face of 9/11 and the 'war on terror', Arendt's work on the politics of freedom and the rights of man in a democratic state are especially relevant. Her impassioned plea for the creation of a public sphere through free, critical thinking and dialogue provides a significant resource for contemporary thought. 

Covering her key ideas from The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition as well as some of her less well-known texts, and focussing in detail on Arendt's idea of storytelling, this guide brings Arendt's work into the twenty-first century while helping students to understand its urgent relevance for the contemporary world.

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Theodor Adorno once wrote an essay to "defend Bach against his devotees." In this book Dana Villa does the same for Hannah Arendt, whose sweeping reconceptualization of the nature and value of political action, he argues, has been covered over and domesticated by admirers (including critical theorists, communitarians, and participatory democrats) who had hoped to enlist her in their less radical philosophical or political projects. Against the prevailing "Aristotelian" interpretation of her work, Villa explores Arendt's modernity, and indeed her postmodernity, through the Heideggerian and Nietzschean theme of a break with tradition at the closure of metaphysics.

Villa's book, however, is much more than a mere correction of misinterpretations of a major thinker's work. Rather, he makes a persuasive case for Arendt as the postmodern or postmetaphysical political theorist, the first political theorist to think through the nature of political action after Nietzsche's exposition of the death of God (i.e., the collapse of objective correlates to our ideals, ends, and purposes). After giving an account of Arendt's theory of action and Heidegger's influence on it, Villa shows how Arendt did justice to the Heideggerian and Nietzschean criticism of the metaphysical tradition while avoiding the political conclusions they drew from their critiques. The result is a wide-ranging discussion not only of Arendt and Heidegger, but of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, Habermas, and the entire question of politics after metaphysics. ... Read more

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Hannah Arendt still makes people angry. Her writings on the modern German-Jewish experience are deliberately challenging -- and sometimes shocking -- to an audience used to thinking of the Jewish people as the victims of history. Visible Spaces is the most ambitious attempt to date to explore the origins and implications of Arendt's political thought. Dagmar Barnouw, an admiring yet critical reader, draws extensively on unpublished archival materials relating to the Jewish experience in modern Germany and its influence on Arendt's political philosophy. Arendt's work is discussed chronologically, from Origins of Totalitarianism to The Human Condition and the unfinished Life of the Mind. Barnouw also offers a challenging reassessment of Arendt's well-known report on the Eichmann trial. The result is an insightful study of Arendt's thought in its complex historical context. ... Read more

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"This collection provides innovative and provocative readings andre-readings of significant aspects of Arendt's work, suggesting that,twenty years after her death, we can better afford to listen to her.Because of the caliber of the contributors, this will make a significantcontribution to the exponentially growing field of Arendt scholarship."-- Lisa J. Disch, University of Minnesota

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was one of the most important politicalphilosophers of our century. Now, twenty years after her death, thiscollection of fifteen essays brings her work into dialogue with thosephilosophical views that are at center stage today--in critical theory,communitarianism, virtue theory, and feminism. An extensive bibliographyof work on Arendt in English is included as an appendix.

THE ESSAYS

Hannah Arendt as a Conservative Thinker Margaret Canovan. Hannah Arendton Judgment: The Unwritten Doctrine of Reason Albrecht Wellmer. TheMoral Costs of Political Pluralism: The Dilemmas of Difference andEquality in Arendt's "Reflections on Little Rock," James Bohman.Socialization and Institutional Evil Larry May. The Commodification ofValues Elizabeth M. Meade. Did Hannah Arendt Change Her Mind?: FromRadical Evil to the Banality of Evil Richard J. Bernstein. Evil andPlurality: Hannah Arendt's Way to The Life of the Mind, I Jerome Kohn.The Banality of Philosophy: Arendt on Heidegger and Eichmann Dana R.Villa. Thinking about the Self Suzanne Duvall Jacobitti. Novus OrdoSaeclorum: The Trial of (Post)Modernity or the Tale of Two RevolutionsDavid Ingram. The Political Dimension of the Public World: On HannahArendt's Interpretation of Martin Heidegger Jeffrey Andrew Barash. Loveand Worldliness: Hannah Arendt's Reading of St. Augustine Ronald Beiner.Women in Dark Times: Rahel Varnhagen, Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt, andMe Bat-Ami Bar On. Hannah Arendt among Feminists Elisabeth Young-Bruehl.Ethics in Many Voices Annette C. Baier. ... Read more

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Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is likely to be the first woman to join the canon of the great philosophers.

Arendt's work has attracted a huge volume of scholarship. This collection reprints papers from the USA, Germany, France and the UK, where further scholarly work is emerging at an increasing pace. Given that there was vigorous debate of her work in her lifetime, that there have since been several waves of evaluation and re-evaluation, and because a new generation of scholars is now coming to her work, a systematic collection of the critical assessments of her thought is extremely timely. ... Read more

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This introduction to Hannah Arendts political thinking, based on a very
close reading of the most relevant texts, suggests that her core teaching
culminates in a unique kind of political humanism. It consists of the disclosure
of unique individual personalities in free public actions inspired by public
principles.The full meaning of such principled actions and its actors emerges
from an uneasy symbiosis between actors and their casts of judgmental
spectators. But it is the free spectators of action who determine its possible
meanings. Importantly, only such public meanings save humans from the abyss of
meaningless existence. Still, and even though individuals are driven by an urge
to public self-presentation, Arendt seems to insist that human freedom
ultimately rests on our inability to fully disclose who we are. Perhaps
paradoxically, Arendts emphasis on a very public humanism links freedom
to what remains ineffable about being human. After the destruction wrought by
20th century totalitarianism, Arendt saw important residues of public freedom
especially in the modern democratic republic of the United States. ... Read more

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This book explores the influence of Hannah Arendt's and Leo Strauss' background in pre-World War II Germany on their perception of American democracy.The contributors analyze how their émigré experience both influenced their American work and also impacted on the formation of the discipline of political science in postwar Germany.Arendt's and Strauss' experiences thus aptly illustrate the transfer and transformation of political ideas in the World War II era. ... Read more

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Martin Heidegger is perhaps the twentieth century's greatest philosopher, and his work stimulated much that is original and compelling in modern thought. A seductive classroom presence, he attracted Germany's 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 Heidegger's most influential Jewish students came to grips with his Nazi association and how it affected their thinking. Hannah Arendt, who was Heidegger's lover as well as his student, went on to become one of the century's greatest political thinkers. Karl Löwith returned to Germany in 1953 and quickly became one of its leading philosophers. Hans Jonas grew famous as Germany's 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 Heidegger's heart and Germany's future? How would they, after the war, reappraise Germany's intellectual traditions? Could they salvage aspects of Heidegger's 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? Heidegger's 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Shadenfreude
mr Wolin doesn't like Heidegger. Therefore, he feels compelled to attack Jews who like Heidegger. Derrida. Levinas. Arendt. In my opinion, Mr. Wolin is a reactionary, with a deep aversion to philosophers (Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, Arendt) of far greater talent and intelligence.

An acceptable inquiry into Heidegger's legacy
Richard Wolin's "Heidegger's Children" is an overview of Heidegger's pupils, Heidegger's effect on them philosophically and the position of Heidegger's political choices in this relation. Judging by the tone and a general lack of depth, the book is mostly intended for people of intellectual caliber but not very well-versed in the subject, which makes it excellent for academics who know nothing about Heidegger, for example. Of course this will not satisfy any real Heidegger scholar, but contrary to other reviewers, I don't think that's necessarily a problem.

Wolin's rapid overview of the philosophies of Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse is generally good, and critical where deserved. He never really goes into the issues with their works themselves, but stays on the subject of the connection between their thought and Heidegger, often mainly relying on biographical analysis. Wolin's overall tone in reflecting on Heidegger and his pupils is that of the 'left-liberal' (continentally speaking) wondering what could have gone wrong, which is a bit annoying at times, but should not bother the reader too much.

On the whole, the book succeeds well for its purpose, but is a little superficial. One also would have wished that the two chapters on Heidegger himself had been in the front of the book instead of the back, since now one is basically 'reading backwards' into what Heidegger thought, so to speak. The conclusion is also rather stronger in criticism than the book itself allows. Therefore, I would recommend it mostly for intellectuals who want a basic overview of four of Heidegger's main pupils, but not for those knowledgeable about Heidegger or interested in an in-depth analysis of his work.

Wherefore loyalty?
The controversy over Heidegger is likely to continue into future generations.One of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century, he blotted his copybook (so to speak) by becoming one of the leading intellectuals of the National-Socialist movement in Germany in the 1930s, changing from a professor who attracted the best and brightest of students from all over Europe to one of the more rigid and dogmatic defenders of Nazi ideals, even at the expense of colleagues, students and friends.Even after the destruction of Germany, Heidegger remained unrepentent about his history and views.

This book, while a stand-alone text, represents the conclusion of a multi-volume task to examine Heidegger's work and intellectual legacy.The first two texts, 'The Politics of Being' and 'The Heidegger Controversy', represented an attempt to look both the politics and the philosophy of Heidegger -- the latter book having created a bit of a fire-storm due to the inclusion of an article by Derrida, who objected to the inclusion.

One of the more bizarre twists in the tale of Heidegger, however, was in the continuing intellectual development of his legacy among his Jewish students.Many of the top students in Heidegger's following in the 1920s and early 1930s were Jewish, and they would ultimately have to reconcile their associations and attachments to Heidegger (the person and the philosophical ideas) in response or reaction to his actions.Richard Wolin's text looks specifically at four key figures:Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse.

All of these four thinkers, acclaimed in their own rights, considered themselves more assimilated Germans than Jews; however, this was not the thinking of the powers-that-were in the 1930s/40s Germany.Each would have to, in the course of careers including academia and writing, have to reconcile to the past idolisation of Heidegger.Germany was, after all, the centre of culture, a nation of writers and thinkers, all to go horribly mad.Wolin's introductory chapter sets a context -- the real problem for Heidegger's students was to determine whether or not there was something integral, something necessary in the connection between the political totalitarian and vicious National-Socialism and Heidegger's existentialist ideas.Wolin gives a brief overview of the development of philosophy to existentialism.In the second chapter, Wolin gives a brief history of German-Jewish relationships, and looks to the points of divergence that culminated in holocaust.

Wolin devotes a chapter to each of the key 'children'.Hannah Arendt was not only Heidegger's student, but also carried on an affair with him, making Heidegger's betrayal personal as well as political.Arendt's problem was not just a 'Heidegger problem', but also a 'Jewish problem', in the sense of her writing allowing that the line between victim and villain was not as distinct as might be believed.Karl Lowith is less well known outside the German speaking world, but his work in philosophy has made him a significant figure, particularly in examining the history of philosophical development -- this development is very much in line with much of Heidegger's methodology, despite the obvious problem that such development leads to a Heidegger.Hans Jonas did confront Heidegger's past openly and publically, in lecture format no less, causing a shift from theological Heideggerian developments such that the trend fell quickly from vogue.Herbert Marcuse is perhaps the most interesting development among Heidegger's children, having been more of an interested pupil rather than proto-disciple; Marcuse combined Heideggerian influences into a general Marxist framework.

In the final chapters, Wolin looks at the overall synthesis and development of these ideas, the post-war German and European intellectual experience, and the problems and strengths that continue from Heidegger's primary work, 'Being and Time".In the conclusion, Wolin states that while it is hard to find better histories of philosophy than those produced by Heidegger and his students, they make the mistakes of confusing philosophy and history, and this can also explain part of Heidegger's general political trouble.

There are a few issues -- Wolin is occasionally choppy, and sometimes repetitious needlessly.Also, Wolin's lack of inclusion of a few key figures (Strauss comes to mind here) leaves something to be desired.However, the construction with the four figures here is well-done and thorough.This is a fascinating text, highlighting a lesser-known but strangely pervasive strand in intellectual history, and helps to highlight difficulties and opportunities in the continuing development out of the work of Heidegger.

Heidegger's Children
Wolinappears to be a decent philospher and researcher, but
he needs to learn how to write.Herky jerky style and skewed syntax make this one an almost impossible read.Sorry folks, but
I have to rate this one as unintelligable garble.

Insightful
Considering the current emphasis on Martin Heidegger and his thought during the last decade, it is more than a bit surprising this book wasn't written sooner. Besides being one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, Heidegger was also a university professor, and quite a charismatic one at that. Living and teaching in Weimar Germany, it is not surprising, then, that many of his best students were Jews. And if we were to, say, pick a 'cream-of-the-crop' among those Jews, the names of Hannah Arendt, Karl Lowith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse would easily spring to mind.

It is interesting to note that none of the above were practising Jews; rather they saw themselves as assimilated and cosmopolitan in outlook. Ironically it would be their teacher, one of the greatest existentialist philosophers, who drove home to them the inauthenticity of their position when he dedicated himself to National Socialism. By abandoning them he turned his back on them and forced them to face their Jewishness, no longer as a metaphysical question, but in the harsh light of ontological reality, as an important component of their social being. Despite religious assimilation, they were still outcasts, only this time by basis of their racial identity - their very being.

Though abandoned by their mentor, each of Heidegger's students would go on to make a mark in the field of philosophy. In the chapters concerning their careers Wolin takes the time to carefully not their contribution to phliosophy and their attachments to their former teacher. Each discourse is concise and to the point, often giving the reader important insights into the relationship between student and teacher in ways not directly observable. With Arendt, this is easy due to the mass of scholarship, some excellent, some on the level of a supermarket tabloid. With a thinker such as Jonas, whose public career is not so well known, such insights are most welcome. I remember Jonas as a teacher and remember quite well his relationship with Heidegger. Although he would criticize his mentor in the strongest possible terms, when traveling to Europe he would still be careful to make the pilgrimage to the Black Forest to pay homage to the old man. Jonas made his mark both as an expert on Gnostic philosophy and as a philosopher of the environment, his works helping to build the basis of Germany's Green Party.

Lowith developed a love-hate relationship with his former teacher, becoming one of Heidegger's most insightful critics, and yet refusing to pull the trigger. One should not stop reading Heidegger; but one should refrain from reading him so naively. Perheps it was Heidegger's own latent, and naive, romanticism that led him from a critique of nihilism into the arms of totalitarian philosophy.

Marcuse is the strrangest case yet, if we view he and his teacher merely from the outside. It would appear Marcuse made the strongest reaction of all to his former teacher, by Msarcuse incorporated more of his teacher's thought into his own than any of the others. Compare Marcuse's "One Dimensional Man" with Heidegger's "Letter on Technology." Marcuse's retreat into the pseudo-rationalism of Marx to escape the demons of nihilism strangely mirrors Heidegger's own retreat into National Socialism for the same reason. Taking Spengler at his word, Marcuse accepted the decline and retreated into a new world order of sorts while Heidegger fought Spengler's prognosis by adopting the standards of what he saw as the defence of civilization in the Swatstika.

Wolin wraps all this into 269 tightly constructed pages. Not a wasted word or thought. In other words, an excellent and entertaining introduction into a world of thought not usually considered. Highly recommended. ... Read more