German Philosophy and the First World War

Nicolas de Warren is Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Husserl and the Promise of Time (Cambridge University Press, 2010), A Momentary Breathlessness in the Sadness of Time (2018), and Original Forgiveness (2020).

• 1. The genius of war, the genius of peace: Max Scheler's demons; 2. Deutschtum und Judentum: Hermann Cohen in the time of the nations; 3. I and you: Martin Buber and dialogical creation; 4. More than life: Georg Simmel's philosophical testament; 5. The apocalypse of hope: Ernst Bloch's phenomenology of utopic spirit; 6. The road to Damascus: György Lukács and History and Class Consciousness; 7. From death into life: Franz Rosenzweig's redemptions; 8. World-philosophy: Ernst Cassirer, freedom in ways of worldmaking; 9. Martin Heidegger and the titanic struggle over being; 10. The tragedy of the person: Edmund Husserl at war.

'These profound reflections on philosophy and the First World War reveal important dimensions of the genealogy of what still drives contemporary philosophy-the continuing resilience of religion in an increasingly secular world, the modern experience of alienation which seems to know no limits, the problems of violence, the question of history, the meaning of the political. This is, in short, a remarkable book.' James Dodd, The New School for Social Research, New York