A PORTRAIT OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER AS A MAN AND A PHILOSOPHER.

In this biography of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), now available in English, historian Guillaume Payen synthesizes the connections between the German philosopher's life and work. Critically, but without polemics, he creates a portrait of Heidegger in his time, using all available sources-lectures, letters, and the notorious "black notebooks." Payen chronicles Heidegger's "changing destinies": after the First World War, an uncompromising Catholicism gave way to a vigorous striving for a philosophical revolution-fertile ground for National Socialism. The book reflects a life of light and shadow.

Heidegger was a great philosopher and teacher who cultivated friendships and love affairs with Jews but also was an anti-Semitic nationalist who lamented the "Judaization of German intellectual life".

Guillaume Payen is professor of history at Sorbonne Université in Paris. He lives in Paris. Jane Marie Todd (1957–2021) was a translator of over eighty books. Steven Rendall has translated ninety-five books from French and German.