Time of the Magicians

Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy

By: Wolfram Eilenberger

Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price

Length: 13 hrs

Publisher's Summary

“[A] fascinating and accessible account.... In his entertaining book, Mr. Eilenberger shows that his magicians’ thoughts are still worth collecting, even if, with hindsight, we can see that some performed too many intellectual conjuring tricks.” (Wall Street Journal)

A grand narrative of the intertwining lives of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Cassirer, major philosophers whose ideas shaped the 20th century

The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity. Meanwhile, Heidegger, having managed to avoid combat in war by serving as a meteorologist, is carefully cultivating his career. Finally, Cassirer is working furiously on the margins of academia, applying himself to his writing and the possibility of a career at Hamburg University. 

The stage is set for a great intellectual drama, which will unfold across the next decade. The lives and ideas of this extraordinary philosophical quartet will converge as they become world historical figures. But as the Second World War looms on the horizon, their fates will be very different.

©2020 Wolfram Eilenberger (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

“[T]his comprehensive and well-informed treatment deserves credit for bringing four major philosophers down from the heights of abstraction.” (Publishers Weekly) 

"[Eilenberger] patiently draws these four intellectual magi out of the shadows of their writings, which often tend toward complete opacity. The result is not a book of academic philosophy but rather an intellectual history that largely succeeds in bringing philosophy to life." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Wolfram Eilenberger’s survey of high thoughts and low politics among German-language philosophers of the 1920s is a salutary tale for today, not just a gripping panorama of century-old dreams and feuds.... Eilenberger shows flair in knitting complex ideas into the fabric of his sages’ lives and times." (The Economist)

Narrator butchers foreign many language quotations

There are problems with this book, even for a reader/listener who is interested in the subjects, While I am not a philosopher, and was accordingly bored by some of the philosophical discursions, I was prepared to tolerate them. But what made me wince --- because the books is absorbed by listening and not by reading --- was the butchery of words from languages other than English. Because this is a semi-scholarly book, there are hundreds of such phrases. Sadly, the narrator who was assigned the job of reading did not have familiarity with French, Latin, and possibly German as well. Walter Benjamin, one of the subject philosophers, spent much of his life in France, and specialized in writing about Paris and translating some of its writers. It was not a proper assignment to give the reading of this book to a person who cannot pronounce the relevant quotations in a tolerable way. So the responsibility rests more with the editor who chose the narrator, or who decided not to listen to the final product and should have detected the numerous errors.

Fascinating synthesis, exasperating narration

Would. Audible. PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE. NOT hire narrators who are incompetent to read the books they're narrating? NARRATORS OF PHILOSOPHY BOOKS SHOULD KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT PHILOSOPHY SO THEY CAN PROPERLY PRONOUNCE NAMES AND TECHNICAL TERMS. NARRATORS OF BOOKS ABOUT GERMANS SHOULD KNOW GERMAN. Surely there are scads of qualified readers out there--who can, for instance, pronounce "Benjamin," "Klee," "es gibt" etc etc...it is outrageous that a recorded books company would have such lousy quality control. It ticks me off.

That said, Eilenberger's interweaving of these four thinkers' lives and theories is a magesterial and highly illuminating synthesis, and worth putting up with the lousy reading. (Barely.)

Worst pronunciation ever

Topics include fee-nomenology, Witty-Wittgenstein, the Why-mar Republic, and Heidegger's teacher, Husaboo. I feel bad ragging on the guy, but who narrates a book like this without learning basic pronunciations? It adds to a feeling that you're hearing a book read by someone who didn't even know any of these thinkers or concepts existed before sitting down to narrate.

Narrator cannot read German

This is an awesome book! I really liked how history and philosophy were interwoven in the story. The narrator was excellent in English, but his German reading was unintelligible even for a native German speaker.

Voice hard to understand

The reader of this book is very hard to understand. His voice is very deep and muffled. It’s sort of sounds like James Earl Jones but speaking with his hand tightly covering his mouth.

Narrator not up to the job

The narrator of this book has a pleasant voice, but cannot pronounce many words in German and French, as well as some in English. It also appears that he has no idea what he is reading. This is a book about philosophy, not a novel, and it is inappropriate to make it into a performance by adopting weird voices when quoting the philosophers or others.

I am attracted to books about various aspects of European history and culture, but I am usually disappointed by the narrators. Don’t audiobook publishers realize that pronunciation of foreign words really matters in the narration of books that include them? This performance is disappointing and takes away from comprehension of the concepts presented.

Four compass points of 20th Century thought

Intriguing 4-POV biography of 4 distinctive & iconic reactions to the emergence of a new phase of modernity embodied in Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin & Ludwig Wittgenstein. The contextualized account of the development of these 4 perspectives, and of their overlaps and divergences, is fascinating, though ending somewhat abruptly. The performance is vivid, it's occasionally strange pronunciations underline the edgy intertwining of Germanic and Judaic cultures and personalities, all against the ominous backdrop of the decay of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Anti-Semitism. Well worth hearing.

A brilliant, entertaining, enlightening book

Wow, such a great pleasure to listen to this audible book, I had to restrict myself to only one hour per day, to stretch it out and fully digest this very enjoyable and dense book. I was not very conversant with philosophy prior to reading this book, but I am now inspired to continue to explore philosophical ideas. This book seamlessly weaves biographical stories of the four philosophers with their philosophies and the cultural milieu of the time. It is a deep, educational and very satisfying book.

The translation seemed very fluid, with no awkward phrases that are so common in other German books in translation.

The narration was close to perfect and significantly added to my understanding of the book. I’m not at all sure I would have been able to read it in print, but the narration kept me fascinated. The narrator does mispronounce some German and other foreign words, but his narration is so good, I could overlook them

I loved it!

You had one job

The ideas presented in this book are world-changing, and the characters are unique and inspiring. Is it so hard to ask that the narrator know how to pronounce words in French and German if the publishers knew it would be heavy in European names?

Excellent book, appalling narrator

Excellent content, appalling narrator. Very disappointed. It is worse than text to speech. Much of the meaning is lost due to his total lack intonation.