Karl Löwith

Criticizing the tendency to treat Nietzsche as a literary figure or as a vitalist in the tradition of Bergson, Simmel, and Klages, Lowith situates Nietzsche squarely within the history of Western philosophy. He takes issue with the position of Jaspers that Nietzsche is best read as a rejection of all philosophical certainties and challenges Heidegger's view that Nietzsche was the last metaphysician of the West. For Lowith, the centerpiece of Nietzsche's thought is the doctrine of eternal recurrence, a notion which Lowith, unlike Heidegger, deems incompatible with the will to power. His careful examination of Nietzsche's cosmological theory of the infinite repetition of a finite number of states of the world suggests the paradoxical consequences this theory implies for human freedom. How is it possible to will the eternal recurrence of each moment of one's life, if both this decision and the states of affairs governed by it appear to be predestined? Lowith's book, one of the most important, if seldom acknowledged, sources for recent Anglophone Nietzsche studies, remains a central text for all concerned with understanding the philosopher's work.

Written in 1939 while the philosopher Karl Lowith was in exile in Japan, and first published in Germany in 1986, this autobiography focuses on the years 1914-39, a crucial period in the growth of Hitler's Germany. It covers Lowith's youth in Germany, his emigration to Italy and from there to Japan, and his meeting with Martin Heidegger in Rome in 1936. Included are philosophical-biographical vignettes of leading German intellectual figures of the day: the George circle, Oswald Spengler, Karl Barth, and Carl Schmitt. My Life in Germany Before and After 1933 represents the search by a German-Jewish intellectual for political and cultural identity in the Germany of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. It provides a valuable account of the intellectual and social ambience before and after 1933 and will be of value to philosophers, intellectual historians, and those interested in German history.

Lowith's study of Max Weber and Karl Marx is a key text in modern interpretations of the theme of alienation in Marxist theory and rationalisation in Weber's sociology. It remains the best short student introduction to the differences and comparisons between these essential thinkers. This new edition includes a Preface by Professor Bryan S. Turner which demonstrates the relevance of the book for contemporary sociology.

From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in 19th Century Thought (German: Von Hegel zu Nietzsche: Der revolutionäre Bruch im Denken des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) is a 1941 book about German philosophy by Karl Löwith. (Source: [Wikipedia](

Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism makes available in English Lowith's major writings concerning the origins of cultural breakdown in Europe that paved the way for the Third Reich. Including incisive discussions of Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, a noted legal theorist of the same period who also supported the Third Reich, Heidegger and European Nihilism helps to illuminate the allure of Nazism for scholars committed to revolutionary nihilism. Lowith's landmark essay on European nihilism is also included in its entirety here, along with two never-before-published letters from Heidegger to Lowith. In a work of impressive historical depth, Lowith traces the abandonment of higher European ideals in favor of a fatal flirtation with nihilism. These essays explore the enthronement of man above God, a trend that had begun to appear in European thought by the mid-nineteenth century in the works of Nietzsche and Marx and one that informed the nihilist philosophies of Heidegger and other theorists of the early twentieth century. An introduction by editor Richard Wolin provides lucid commentary, placing the three essays gathered here in a broad historical context, along with suggestions for further reading. This seminal work of intellectual history sheds light on the fascist impulses of nihilism in the first half of the twentieth century, but also offers unique perspective on the intellectual malaise of today.