Martin Heidegger's Changing Destinies

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.&rdquo