Even during his youthful enthusiasm for socialist ideas, Hartmut Lange experienced a lack of faith in the category of necessity. When he later bid farewell to the social utopia and increasingly turned to existential questions that also preoccupied Heidegger, he became a master of the novella. In this volume, he traces his engagements with Heidegger, Nietzsche, and the desire for transcendence that drive his life and writing, recounts a groundbreaking encounter with Odo Marquard, and subsequently provides a darkly shimmering illustration of his thoughts and insights through a theatrical scene.