Time of the Magicians

Time of the Magician: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy. Wolfram Eilenberger, trans. Shaun Whiteside. New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2020.

It is rare for a book to weave historical content and philosophical debate into a page-turning narrative. Time of the Magicians fascinates through the interconnected stories of the intellectual and personal lives of four prominent philosophers from 1919-1929. The result is a human narrative about philosophical insight. Wolfram Eilenberger’s book, published first in German in 2018 and translated into English in 2020, is subtitled “Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy.” The relationship between these individuals, and the relationships between the people and their ideas is the magic at the center of Eilenberger’s book.

The book skillfully braids the individual narratives of each of its four main figures through well-known touchpoints in the development of philosophy. The men in Eilenberger’s book are part of a larger project in the 1920s of remaking the social, cultural, political, and intellectual landscape of Europe. That landscape had been ravaged by war. Europe still bore the scars as the young and old rose to pick up the pieces and build something new. Eilenberger’s book tells the story of this rebirth both diachronically and synchronically. The book is diachronic, in that narrative unfolds over eight historical periods, and synchronic, in that the historical telling gives rise to distinct conceptual themes such as culture and freedom. On my reading, Time of the Magicians is largely silent on the topic of war, even as war’s influence is central to the developments in philosophy that he charts. 

There is little direct reflection in the book on the massive event (or series of events) that set the conditions for “the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy:” war.[1] This force, however, is fundamental to understanding the narrative.

What becomes clear in Eilenberger’s telling is that the two types of relationships highlighted in the book—between people as well as between people and their ideas—are not separate from one another. The intermingling of relationships gives rise to another type—the relationship between an idea and other human beings. This is the native ground of philosophy. Here the payoff of Eilenberger’s approach becomes clear, as he chronicles the flurry of revolutionary ideas captured in the writings of seminal philosophers to be predicated upon the milieu of 1920s philosophy within a web of historically-contingent human relationships.

The immediate challenge that young philosophers faced in 1919 can be summed up as follows: Draw up a plan for one’s own life and generation…First, in literal biographical terms…[by] daring to break away from the old frameworks (family, religion, nation, capitalism). And second…[by] finding a model of existence that made it possible to process the intensity of the experience of war, transferring it to the realm of thought and everyday existence.[3]

Rather than literal war, Eilenberger brings into focus a different kind of battlefield—one between political, cultural, and social conditions and contexts. This is the very environment that gives rise to philosophical meaning. The day-to-day wrestlings of each individual—their attempts to find employment, navigate relationships, and do the work of philosophy amidst the ravages of war-torn Europe—run parallel to their deeper internal struggles of the heart and of the mind. Eilenberger’s fascinating and wild telling of these philosophers’ lives elucidates the deeper philosophical musings that arise from their concrete circumstances. These reflections, on topics such as the ability of language and symbols to communicate reality, complement the larger narrative and push it forward in ways that are congruent with the subject matter. Heidegger suggests, “Being human already means philosophizing.”[4] Indeed, the act of philosophical exploration through writing itself becomes a means of coming to know oneself and the world, whereby the symbolic expression of language opens up the self to the world.[5,6] Yet in Eilenberger’s telling, the philosophical critic and the object of critique/analysis both affect and are affected by this process.[7]

Cassirer, Wittgenstein, Heidegger , and Benjamin (Dan Murrell/Getty)

Even so, literal war figures significantly in Eilenberger’s narrative, and each individual experienced war in utterly unique ways. Wittgenstein was deeply affected by the First World War, through his own experiences in the trenches and as a POW, as well as by losing people close to him.[8] Heidegger and Cassirer served in the conflict, but in desk or support roles behind frontline service, looking on its devastation from relatively safe distances.[9] Benjamin, on the other hand, escaped personal service in the War but not significant personal loss due to it.[10] In the aftermath of the desolation of war, Eilenberger traces the magic of the relationships between people in shaping their philosophical insight. Relationships with lovers also figure prominently in Eilenberger’s telling. The insights and thoughts of Hannah Arendt and Asja Lacis push the philosophical musings of Heidegger and Benjamin, respectively, in new directions.[11,12] Eilenberger’s emphasis here is the magic of relationship that interweaves, undergirds, and transforms philosophical insight.

Although the Great War set the stage for the battle over ideas that took shape in its aftermath, each philosopher in Eilenberger’s narrative sought to come to terms with human experience in their own way. Eilenberger’s narrative  details the personal struggle of each man to engage with and come to terms with the modern era. In this sense, Eilenberg's telling uniquely captures the magicians at their craft—transforming the mundane relationships of this modern world into relationships of existential insight. The magic is how the relationship changes the subject, precisely because revelation is found through relationship.[13] Relationship to the Other and relationship to ideas interplay, at once revealing and creating deeper connections and interrelationships. Philosophers seek to unravel these webs of knowledge and meaning if they even deem this task possible. The concrete aim of this unraveling, for many of the philosophers Eilenberger traces, is therapeutic rather than purely theoretical; that is, their philosophical work sought to meet practical felt needs in the aftermath of their own, and others’, war trauma.[14]

Philosophical insight emerges as the product of diverse and complex forces—but most importantly of forces that are distinctly human. Relationships, cultural conditions, and individual human experiences become magic in their ability to precipitate insight into human meaningfulness. But this magic is also all-too common in human experience. Like the magician who shows a card trick too many times and reveals his secret, Eilenberger’s interweaving of these philosophers’ narratives showcases the banal, yet ultimately meaningful, realities that spawned transformational insight. Love triangles, financial difficulties, and family problems are the usual stuff of human experience, but Eilenberger shows them to be the genesis of philosophical insight. Perhaps it was a particular shared force across these narratives—war—that uniquely engendered a philosophical revolution during this decade.

If Time of the Magicians is about something, it is about the magic of relationships—relationships between people, their experiences, and the thoughts that attempt to reconcile the two. Little conscious reflection exists in the book on the experience of war itself, but its influence is felt everywhere. These deep themes of the meaningfulness of human existence, especially in the aftermath of war trauma, should elicit interest on the part of modern warriors, but I cannot help wondering what a more deliberate inclusion of this topic may have added to the already-insightful project undertaken by Eilenberger.

The magic of relationship in Time of the Magicians sparkles even more brightly against the gloomy backdrop of war. The significance of otherwise commonplace relational issues are magnified in the wake of a war that severed meaningful ties and reorganized societal relationships. These realities lurked in the subconscious of people in 1920s Europe, even as the specter of war that would vanquish hope for the future is ever-felt, if not always acknowledged in Time of the Magicians. This is not fully a critique of the text. The absence reveals as much about us as readers and as human beings as it does about the text  itself. We often do not like to speak about war and would rather relegate its destructive power to the periphery of our thoughts and analysis. Why involve it if not necessary?

But we must assess human experience in light of war; this boundary experience clarifies the questions central to understanding authentic existence, Heidegger’s Dasein.[15] The effects of war cannot be escaped. Eilenberger’s narrative begins in the aftermath of the First World War and culminates with a historic debate between Heidegger and Cassirer in 1929 at Davos, Switzerland. Even here the book’s ending resounds with echoes of the Second World War—Heidegger’s association with Hitler’s Nazi party, Cassirer fleeing Nazi Germany, Wittgenstein teaching in wartime Cambridge, and Benjamin committing suicide while fleeing Nazi deportation.[16]

War figures significantly, for the subjects of Eilenberger’s narrative, as well as for readers living in the midst of the decades-long War on Terror. Might a fuller reckoning with events revolving around the central reality of the Great War, events that precipitated the reinvention of philosophy, shed light on our own age? The significance of philosophical meaning-making arising out of war trauma may resonate with a generation exiting America’s longest war.  The continent-wide desolation of the First World War left its impact on the philosophical landscape of Europe. We cannot yet know what effects the Global War on Terror will have on the philosophy of the future. The philosophical problems and solutions will certainly be different, but the reality of war experiences, although varied, will no doubt precipitate new attempts at unraveling the mysteries of human lived experience. We must give attention to this influence and the diverse ways it may manifest itself in the lives of those both directly and indirectly affected by war. This begins with awareness and acknowledgement of war’s influence, in our own time and in other times. Awareness finds further fulfillment in wrestling with the deeper issues of human existence that war unsettles in our experiences—by giving voice to these painful and uncomfortable realities before a new war thrusts them on us. Eilenberger’s able account is necessary reading, for its creativity, its depth of philosophical understanding, and its exploration of the “decade that reinvented philosophy,” whose insights have significant resonances and cautions for our own time.

Nathan H. White is a U.S. Army Reserve officer who currently serves in leadership roles in academia and public service. This review essay reflects his own views and not necessarily those of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.

[1] Wolfram Eilenberger & Shaun Whiteside (trans.), Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2020).

[2] Time, 167.

[3] Time, 53.

[4] As quoted in Time, 309.

[5] Time, 24.

[6] Time, 247.

[7] Time, 35.

[8] Time, 4, 39-43, 165-166.

[9] Time, 44-58, 184, 188.

[10] Time, 31-32; Martin Jay, “Walter Benjamin, Remembrance, and the First World War,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society, December 1999-2000, Vol. 11/12, Violence in the Modern World (Special Issue), pp. 18-31.

[11] Time, 193, 225.

[12] Time, 200.

[13] Time, 232.

[14] Time, 6, 66, 157, 225. This was especially true for Wittgenstein.

[15] Time, 235.

[16] Time,  363-365.