2 Books Like Terrence Malick and the Examined Life

Very few philosophical investigations today manage to convey political messages without being ideological, that is, taking a clear political stance. This is the case with Libera Pisano’s study. Through the work of five German-Jewish thinkers, she effectively outlines a “diasporic philosophy of language” that can help us resist the resurgence of authoritarianism, nationalism, and idolatry in the 21st century. This resistance will not succeed—Pisano elegantly explains—until we reject linguistic autochthony, meaning language’s identity with a “specific geographical definition” (4). But why is it necessary to explore the writings of Fritz Mauthner, Gustav Landauer, Margarete Susman, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin to “discover a potential source of insight and guidance” (22)? While the term “diasporic philosophy of language” could also apply to Hermann Cohen, Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Martin Buber, and other well-known Jewish thinkers, the authors chosen by the Italian expert all belong to the German intellectual… show more.

The recent translation of volume 82, *On My Own Publications*, urges us to focus on the question of Being and Heidegger’s remarks on five of his works. The first four hundred pages center on his most important book, "Being and Time" (1927), while the rest of the volume covers other notable writings: "What Is Metaphysics?" (1929), “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1935/36), the first of the three Country Path Conversations, ‘Ἀγχι βασίη’ (1944/45), and the “The Letter on Humanism” (1946). Unlike the works in the first and third series, this volume, skillfully translated by Scott Campbell and edited by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, is mainly for Heidegger scholars dedicated to studying and developing his ideas. These scholars can be split between experts on the entire *Gesamtausgabe* and interpreters of specific parts of Heidegger’s work.