Time to Grasp the Nettle

Anders shares with these fellow thinkers a wide-ranging biographical commonality – the experience of being driven out of Nazi Germany and feeling an alienation from the German-Jewish milieu and the Shoah. He also shares with them the goal to develop a concrete, non-academic, but nonetheless highly engaged, philosophy as a way of responding to that background. The letters demonstrate how much controversy there was among these philosophers. As early as the dispute with Adorno, the fractures between academic, and what might be described as more ‘invasive’ philosophies, become part of the debate. In one letter to Marcuse, Anders speaks of philosophers as ‘thoroughly objectionable’, while in another letter he insists ‘Contradiction doesn’t earn anyone a living’. This book bears witness to the high moral demands of these intellectuals and writers. These letters bring some fascinating biographical and historical content to our attention and they also give us insights on the history of philosophy and thus help us to see into the minds of this generation of intellectuals shaped by the politics and culture of post-war Europe.