Modern man sees with one eye of faith and one eye of reason. Consequently, his view of history is confused. For centuries, the history of the Western world has been viewed from the Christian or classical standpoint--from a deep faith in the Kingdom of God or a belief in recurrent and eternal life-cycles. The modern mind, however, is neither Christian nor pagan--and its interpretations of history are Christian in derivation and anti-Christian in result. To develop this theory, Karl Lowith--beginning with the more accessible philosophies of history in the nineteenth and eighteenth...

Beginning with an examination of the relationship between Hegel and Goethe, Lowith discusses how Hegel's students, particularly Marx and Kierkegaard, interpreted----or reinterpreted----their master's thought, and proceeds with an in-depth assessment of the other important philosophers, from Feuerbach, Stirner, and Schelling to Nietzsche.

Written by a former student of Heidegger, this book examines the relationship between the philosophy and the politics of a celebrated teacher and the allure that Nazism held out for scholars committed to revolutionary nihilism.

Karl Lowith was the son of a Munich artist and studied philosophy and biology in Munich, Freiburg and Marburg. He began his teaching career in 1928 as Privatdozent in Marburg, working under Heidegger, but was forced to leave in 1934. After two years in Rome, he held a chair at Tohku University, Sendai, Japan from 1936-1941. In 1941, he moved to the Theological Seminary at Hartford, Connecticut and, in 1949, to the New School for Social Research, New York. In 1952 he returned to Germany as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg where he remained until his retirement. He died...

This long overdue English translation of Karl Lowith's magisterial study is a major event in Nietzsche scholarship in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Its initial publication was extraordinary in itselfa dissident interpretation, written by a Jew, appearing in National Socialist Germany in 1935. Since then, Lowith's book has continued to gain recognition as one of the key texts in the German Nietzsche reception, as well as a remarkable effort to reclaim the philosopher's work from political misappropriation.
For Lowith, the centerpiece of Nietzsche's thought is the doctrine of...

Written by a former student of Heidegger, this book examines the relationship between the philosophy and the politics of a celebrated teacher and the allure that Nazism held out for scholars committed to revolutionary nihilism.

Wissenschaftsgeschichte im neuen Licht. Die Nazis unterbrachen 1935 die Karriere des aufstrebenden Philosophen und Heidegger-Schulers Karl Lowith abrupt. Der Grund: seine judische Herkunft. 1940 im Exil rechnet Lowith mit seinem Deutschtum und mit falschen Weggefahrten ab. Erstmals erscheint der Bericht jetzt im vollen Wortlaut des Originals. Erganzt um eine Fulle von neuen Erkenntnissen und Materialien, treten jetzt Verflechtungen und Netzwerke zu Tage, die bislang im Dunkeln geblieben waren."

Diese zum Klassiker avancierte Studie zur Geschichte des deutschen Geistes im 19. Jahrhundert sucht das Schicksal des Hegelschen Denkens zu erfassen: die Umbildung und Verkehrung der Philosophie des absoluten Geistes durch Marx und Kierkegaard, den Umschlag des geschichtlichen Denkens in das Verlangen nach Ewigkeit bei Nietzsche. Die Erstausgabe erschien 1941 in New York. Der Text dieser Studienausgabe folgt der leicht gekurzten 2. Auflage von 1950. Unveranderter Print-on-Demand-Nachdruck der Auflage von 1995."

Gegenpol zur Philosophie der Aufklarung. Karl Lowith thematisiert in seinem Essay zur Geschichtsphilosophie die biblisch verheissene Erlosung der christlichen Menschheit. Schon unmittelbar nach der Veroffentlichung 1949 und 1953 sorgte das Buch weltweit fur Furore. Angesichts der heute lebhaft gefuhrten Debatte um das "Ende der Geschichte" und die Thesen Fukuyamas hat Lowiths brillanter philosophischer Essay an Aktualitat nichts verloren."