Who Was Martin Heidegger? (And Should Progressives Care?)

“This is especially true in large urban areas. Forces beyond our control compel us to focus on the now “yolo?” and live fragmented lives of needs and satisfaction. In these contexts, we focus on being like animals rather than selves, and become increasingly homogenous and indistinguishable.”

Heidegger is a strange thinker for many progressives. On the one hand, he remains a central figure for many of the continental theorists who dominated the latter half of the 20th century. This includes a veritable “who’s who” of progressive thinkers including Foucault, Derrida, Sartre, and Marcuse to name just a few. Clearly there must be something there that is worth delving into. On the other hand, Heidegger’s vile affiliation with the Nazi party taints his philosophy with the most repugnant smear conceivable. This is especially true as more and more evidence of his anti-semitism comes to light.

This makes the task of re-evaluating Heidegger’s worth for progressive thinkers all the more important. In this brief essay, I will summarize some of the major themes and ideas in Heidegger’s philosophy. It is worth noting that I will mainly be proceeding backward through his work, moving from his later works and tracing various throughlines back to his original contributions in Being and Time and other pieces. This is because I want to show how his work, when oriented around the idea of authenticity, can be cast in a more favorable light for progressives. This suggests there is still considerable value in Heidegger’s thought if one carefully culls it of its wicked associations.

This is where I will offer a necessary caveat. Heidegger was a virulent Nazi and anti-Semite. This is in many respects unforgivable. I will not be discussing this serious difficulty here because I think it demands a very extensive treatment. In this essay, I operate with the presupposition that bad people can still write interesting books, which we can learn from. If nothing else, it can be worthwhile to look at why intelligent people take false steps down a dark path, to glean what insights we can about why they may have been attracted to such insidious movements.