Karl Löwith (9 January 1897 – 26 May 1973) was a German philosopher in the phenomenological tradition. A student of Husserl and Heidegger, he was one of the most prolific German philosophers of the twentieth century. He is known for his two books From Hegel to Nietzsche, which describes the decline of German classical philosophy, and Meaning in History, which challenges the modern, secular progressive narrative of history, which seeks to ground the meaning of history in itself. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Life Löwith was born in Munich to a Christian family of Jewish descent. He was trained in phenomenology under Heidegger, and they developed a close friendship. However this relationship became estranged with Heidegger's affiliation with Nazism, therefore Löwith had to emigrate from Germany in 1934 because of the Nazi regime. He was an important witness in 1936 to Heidegger's continuing allegiance to Nazism. He went to Italy and in 1936 he went to Japan (as did figures like Brunner) where he lectured at Tohoku University, which had its own tradition of phenomenology. But because of the alliance between the Third Reich and Japan he had to leave Japan in 1941 and went to the United States. From 1941 to 1952, he taught at the Hartford Theological Seminary and The New School for Social Research. In 1952 he returned to Germany to teach as professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, where he died. Thought His main influences include Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard. His writing after WWII can be read in the same vein as other Christian philosophers and theologians of the 20th century. Often called responses to "crisis", Christian intellectuals of this era, such as Karl Barth (Protestant), Florovsky (Orthodox), and Erich Przywara (Roman Catholic), attempted to articulate an understanding of Christian faith in response to the challenges of scientism, secularism, and skepticism. From Hegel to Nietzsche Meaning in History Löwith's argument in Meaning in History is that the western view of history is confused by the relationship between Christian faith and the modern view, which is neither Christian nor pagan. He writes," The modern mind has not made up its mind whether it should be Christian or pagan, it sees with one eye of faith and one of reason. Hence its vision is necessarily dim in comparison with either Greek or biblical thinking." The modern view is progressive, which is to say that