Homo Temporalis

Homo Temporalis focuses on the importance of temporal concepts for four German Jewish thinkers who profoundly shaped twentieth-century intellectual history: Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan. By analyzing the concept of time, Nitzan Lebovic explores Buber's stress on the temporality of the dialogue between I and Thou; Benjamin's now-time and "dialectics in standstill"; Arendt's understanding of democracy as "natality" or a "permanent revolution"; and the "breathturn" that informs Celan's poetry. Framing the reception of German Jewish thinking in the second half of the twentieth century as a parallel story to the rise of the modern humanities, Homo Temporalis also highlights how these foundational temporal concepts illuminate the causes of the present crisis in the humanities and its disciplinary limitations in the age of biopolitics and the Anthropocene.

Nitzan Lebovic is Professor of History and Apter Chair of Holocaust Studies and Ethical Values at Lehigh University. He is the author of The Philosophy of Life and Death and Zionism and Melancholy and the coeditor of two volumes, including The Politics of Nihilism.

Nitzan Lebovic's compelling and imaginative study of four German Jewish intellectuals—Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan—unearths their shared preoccupation with time. Each embraced a clear-eyed worldliness situated in the interval between the 'already-not' and the 'not-yet' of an indeterminate temporality. Their insights, Lebovic persuasively argues, can provide a new approach to the catastrophes— environmental, nuclear, political—of our time.

Vivian Liska, author of German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife:

This book offers a lucid engagement with the intricate nexus of time and identity among German Jewish thinkers. Lebovic's erudition and eloquence illuminate the temporal philosophies of Buber, Benjamin, Arendt, and Celan, situating their reflections within the seismic upheavals of the twentieth century. Lebovic deftly intertwines their diverse reflections into a cohesive narrative that invites us to contemplate the profound implications of a temporal turn that resonate profoundly with the crises of their age—and ours.

Ethan Kleinberg, author of Emmanuel Levinas's Talmudic Turn:

Homo Temporalis is an ambitious, exciting, and stimulating work that accomplishes the difficult task of offering new ways to read Martin Buber, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan by placing the focus on time, specifically an understanding of time derived from Jewish tradition.