This is the best study we have of the problems and paradoxes of the German philosophy of freedom, from Rousseau to Heidegger. Newell is a master communicator of deep and complex ideas. His readings bring clarity and coherence to notoriously difficult works. Newell's book stands as an admirable companion and update of Karl Lowith's classic study From Hegel to Nietzsche.'

 –  Steven B. Smith, Yale University

'Utterly profound and urgently immediate. It shows how and why our major political attempts to find a life that is more communal, noble, free, meaningful and dignified than the pursuit of mere material self-interest have led, paradoxically, not to more freedom, connection, and dignity, but to powerful extremist longings which emboldened revolutionary tyrannies to practice utopian genocide and terror, to build slave states and to crush freedom and the soul, and how these same longings for a better life are at this moment inflaming anti-liberal authoritarian tendencies in the democracies. One puts this volume down changed, and in awe.'

 –  Norman Doidge MD, author of The Brain That Changes Itself

'Revolution, terror and violence have shadowed modernity. As Newell demonstrates in this demanding study, philosophers have contributed to raising this monster by arguing that only a changed politics would bring us true happiness – a happiness that classical liberalism with its defense of negative liberty, serving the pursuit of self-interest, could not provide. This brilliant work should generate heated discussions, especially the long chapter on Heidegger.'

 –  Karsten Harries, Yale University

'Anyone who imagined that liberal democracy would have an easy run in the twenty-first century surely realizes that was a vain fantasy. With new anti-liberal ideologies on the rise, Newell's animating question – 'How could the desire to ennoble modern life lead to the political catastrophes of totalitarianism and utopian genocide?' – seems more timely than ever.'

 –  Ronald Beiner, University of Toronto

'Like all Waller Newell's books, this one is bold and dramatic, presenting a sweeping new perspective on the types of political thinking since Rousseau that have confronted liberal constitutionalism with its most provocative intellectual challenges and its gravest revolutionary upheavals.'

 –  Thomas L. Pangle, University of Texas at Austin

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