Feuer der Freiheit. Die Rettung der Philosophie in finsteren Zeiten (1933 – 1943) by Wolfram Eilenberger
… may be translated into English as something like: Fire of Freedom (liberty) or Flames of Liberty – The Saving of Philosophy in Dark (gloomy, sinister) Times …
Recently published in Germany, this new book from Wolfram Eilenberger is conceptually very similar to Time of the Magicians that I wrote about a short time ago. When Feuer der Freiheit will be published in English I don’t know, that it will, given the international success of the aforesaid, I am very confident.
Briefly I will say, that this time Eilenberger invites us to follow the paths of four women, and in the ten years from 1933-43. Until I read the book, I can only divulge who the subjects are: Hannah Arendt, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil and Ayn Rand. Hannah Arendt, of course, arose in Time of the Magicians in terms of her relationship with Heidegger, and does so again in our own gloomy present – though far removed from the very sinister 30’s – where her star has risen on both sides of the Atlantic. Madame de Beauvoir has survived her contradictions and the ruthlessness of competing feminist movements to retain icon status (and on her own!). Simone Weil; one can but wonder, for she died so young, but I can’t help but think of the unstable genius of Wittgenstein or Benjamin. And, just as for Cass Sunstein in this review for a recent biography of Ayn Rand (limited access at The New York Review of Books), I too as a young thing had an inexplicable attraction to The Fountainhead, and in extension to its author.
I very much look forward to seeing how Eilenberger interweaves the lives of this extraordinary group in a very extraordinary time. For anyone who can read German more than a bit, I suggest this review by Jens Bisky in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and, if you can really read German, don’t wait for the translation, be like me and put the book on your reading list now. Popular it may well be, and personality driven, but I would warrant place enough is given to an exposition of the philosophical ideas driving his subjects.