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One of the century's greatest philosophers, without whom there would be no Sartre, no Foucault, no Frankfurt School, Martin Heidegger was also a man of great failures and flaws, a Faustus who made a pact with the devil of his time, Adolf Hitler. The story of Heidegger's life and philosophy, a quintessentially German story in which good and evil, brilliance and blindness are inextricably entwined and the passions and disasters of a whole century come into play, is told in this brilliant biography.

Heidegger grew up in Catholic Germany where, for a chance at pursuing a life of learning, he pledged himself to the priesthood. Soon he turned apostate and sought a university position, which set him on the path to becoming the star of German philosophy in the 1920s. Rudiger Safranski chronicles Heidegger's rise along with the thought he honed on the way, with its debt to Heraclitus, Plato, and Kant, and its tragic susceptibility to the conservatism that emerged out of the nightmare of Germany's loss in World War I. A chronicle of ideas and of personal commitments and betrayals, Safranski's biography combines clear accounts of the philosophy that won Heidegger eternal renown with the fascinating details of the loves and lapses that tripped up this powerful intellectual.

The best intellectual biography of Heidegger ever written and a best-seller in Germany, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil does not shy away from full coverage of Heidegger's shameful transformation into a propagandist for the National Socialist regime; nor does it allow this aspect of his career to obscure his accomplishments. Written by a master of Heidegger's philosophy, the book is one of the best introductions to the thought and to the life and times of the greatest German philosopher of the century. Rudiger Safranski's evenhanded study, Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, is equally successful at illustrating its subject's pettiness and at displaying the vast power of his imagination. It is the first comprehensive biography of the man, and supersedes both Victor Farias's Heidegger and Nazism and Hugo Ott's Martin Heidegger: A Political Life. It reports many facts that these books did not, and it offers a detailed account of Heidegger's intellectual development--relating his twists and turns, with great skill and remarkable concision, to German intellectual and political life in the first half of this century. -- Richard Rorty New York Times Book Review [A] thoughtful, sensitive and sympathetic biography. -- Ray Monk Times Literary Supplement A superb work of synthesis, the book places Heidegger's thought and life in the volatile context of 20th-century German and European politics and philosophy...Although Safranski sees Heidegger as a towering figure in 20th-century philosophy, this is a "warts and all" biography. The author leaves no doubt about Heidegger's self-centeredness, his intellectual arrogance, and his convenient lapses of memory about his role in the Nazi years. But the book's primary merit is a superb explication of Heidegger's thought, its antecedents, and its place in the context of his political and philosophical times. For an English-speaking audience, Safranski's treatment is easily the best introduction to Heidegger's complex philosophy...This [is] an important book, highly recommended for anyone interested in the history of 20th-century Continental philosophy and Martin Heidegger's place in it. -- Dietrich Orlow Boston Sunday Globe This biography of Martin Heidegger is an impressive achievement, and English-speaking readers are fortunate that it is now available to them...Martin Heidegger is the first comprehensive biography of one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. It offers a detailed view of Heidegger's intellectual development provided by no previous book, and it gives new information on his involvement with the Nazis. Given the importance of Heidegger's thought for many celebrated left-wing thinkers, including Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault,Safranski's careful consideration of the relation between Heidegger's right-wing politics and his thought can help readers struggle with the much-debated question of whether the contemporary leftists of the postmodern movement are really cultural reactionaries in disguise...Safranski's biography is both the most authoritative and the most approachable of the recent Heidegger books. -- Carl L. Bankston III Magill's Literary Annual

Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil

Preface: A Master from Germany Chronology Abbreviations Translator's Note Childhood and School Idealism and Materialism: German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century Career Planning and Career Problems The Outbreak of World War I: Habilitation, War Service, Marriage The Triumph of Phenomenology: Husserl and Heidegger, Father and Son Revolution in Germany and the Question of Being Parting with Catholicism and Studying the Laws of Free Fall while Falling Marburg University and Hannah Arendt, the Great Passion Being and Time: What Being? What Meaning? The Mood of the Time: Waiting for the Great Day A Secret Principal Work: The Metaphysics Lectures of 1929-30 Balance Sheets at the End of the Republic The National Socialist Revolution and Collective Breakout from the Cave Is Heidegger Anti-Semitic? Heidegger's Struggle for the Purity of the Movement Departure from the Political Scene The Age of Ideology and Total Mobilization: Heidegger Beats a Retreat The Philosophical Diary and Philosophical Rosary Heidegger under Surveillance Heidegger Faces the Denazification Committee: Barred from University Teaching What Do We Do When We Think? Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Karl Jaspers after the War Heidegger's Other Public Adorno and Heidegger: From the Jargon of Authenticity to the Authentic Jargon of the 1960s Sunset of Life Notes Works Cited Further Reading Index