Description:
Kleinberg offers new insights into intellectual figures whose influence on modern French philosophy has been enormous, including some whose thought remains under-explored outside France.
Brief description: Ethan Kleinberg is Professor of History and Letters at Wesleyan University and Executive Editor of History and Theory. He is the author of Generation Existential: Heidegger's Philosophy in France, 1927-1961and coeditor of Presence: Philosophy, History, and Cultural Theory for the Twenty-First Century, both from Cornell.
Review Quotes:
A compelling account of the peaceful invasion of contemporary French theory by the German existentialist whose legacy remains tainted by his support for National Socialism. Kleinberg's account unfolds through individual portraits of the intriguing personalities--Emmanuel Lévinas, Alexandre Koyré, Alexandre Kojéve, Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Beaufret, and Maurice Blanchot--whose interrogation of subjectivity and alterity, ontology and historicity, and freedom and responsibility were powerfully influenced by Heidegger's thinking. Kleinberg's rigorous examination of the translation of Heidegger's concepts and questions into the French context explores how the 'generation of 1933' became 'generation existential.'
-- "American Historical Review"