The Spirit of Hope: Philosophy, the Last Idealists, and the Birth of the New Enlightenment, 1948–1984

After the Second World War, four remarkable thinkers embodied the search for a new vision of humanity and a new Enlightenment: Theodor W. Adorno, Susan Sontag, Michel Foucault, and Paul K. Feyerabend. Moving between Frankfurt, Paris, London, Berkeley, and New York, they sought new ways of understanding the world and escaping the intellectual confines of their age.
Beginning in the winter of 1949—with Adorno returning from American exile to a devastated Frankfurt, Feyerabend arriving in postwar Vienna, and the young Susan Sontag encountering Thomas Mann in Los Angeles—Wolfram Eilenberger follows four extraordinary intellectual journeys whose ideas would reshape philosophy and define many of the central conflicts of the contemporary world. Their lives intersect with the Cold War, decolonization, student movements, the sexual revolution, and the rise of postmodern thought, revealing philosophy as a living response to an era of profound historical change.
Blending biography with intellectual history, Eilenberger once again demonstrates his gift for making complex ideas vivid and accessible. The Spirit of Hope is both a sweeping panorama of postwar philosophy and a compelling account of the thinkers whose work continues to shape how we understand freedom, knowledge, culture, and the future of democratic society.