Martin Heidegger's Changing Destinies: Catholicism, Revolution, Nazism - Hardcover

by Guillaume Payen (Author), Jane Marie Todd (Translator), Steven Rendall (Translator)

A portrait of Martin Heidegger as a man and a philosopher

In this biography of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), now available in English, historian Guillaume Payen synthesizes the connections between the German philosopher's life and work. Critically, but without polemics, he creates a portrait of Heidegger in his time, using all available sources--lectures, letters, and the notorious "black notebooks."

Payen chronicles Heidegger's "changing destinies" after the First World War, an uncompromising Catholicism gave way to a vigorous striving for a philosophical revolution--fertile ground for National Socialism. The book reflects a life of light and shadow. Heidegger was a great philosopher and teacher who cultivated friendships and love affairs with Jews but also was an anti-Semitic nationalist who lamented the "Judaization of German intellectual life."

Author Biography

Guillaume Payen is professor of history at Sorbonne Université in Paris. He lives in Paris. Jane Marie Todd (1957-2021) was a translator of over eighty books. Steven Rendall has translated ninety-five books from French and German.