The important lesson here is that official academics in any society can never be trusted to guide and protect their society with their wisdom - for they are just careerists who will always grovel to the viewpoints that best advance their careers.

I suggest that readers interested in Heideggers ambiguous relationship with nazism read Pierre Bourdieu's "The political ontology of Heidegger". Here Bourdieu shows how Heideggers work is very strongly related to nazism although sublimely so.

One of the most disturbing and baffling mysteries of the modern era (ca. 1500 - 2000) is the one involving the voluntary acceptance by tens of millions of Germans of the absurd and perverse enticements of Hitler and the Nazis. Like anyone born in the post-war years, I've been able to smell the residual stench of the calamity in Germany, but I lack the kind of understanding that can only come from interpersonal relations within the zeitgeist concerning its delusions and yearnings. I've read everything I can about the period, and I've probably viewed every Nazi/WWII documentary ever made. Still and all, I just don't get what anybody ever saw in Hitler, his passionate and captivating speechifying notwithstanding. Several commenters who apparently are academic philosophers themselves or serious students of philosophy have defended Heidegger by separating his "political" mistakes from his contributions to pure thought. The position appears to say that the genius or near genius quality of mind he demonstrated in ontology should be considered distinct from the doofus he showed himself to be when reading and interpreting political tracts and political acts in Germany in the 1930s. Do philosophy and politics occupy separate realms? That would be news to Plato, I suspect. Does the mind operate on one frequency when engaged in technical minutiae and another frequency when assessing universal values? Possibly. But the difference in definition between minutiae and universal should give us some clue as to which is more important. Someone once aptly called philosophy a "walk on a slippery rock." Slippery rock walking is a nice skill to have, I suppose, although I would suggest that it comes in handy only rarely. For me, good common sense trumps it, and quite decisively, too. There was nothing good, common, or sensible about the Nazis and their followers.

Several commenters claim that Heidegger's philosophy is separate from his Nazism. Wrong. Heidegger says that true philosophy can be done only in Greek or German (or by ancient Greeks or contemporary Germans.) His antisemitism is rooted in his philosophy. Being and Time means that Being is dependent on ones culture. Germans can "Be" better than Jews can "Be." Nothing could be more racist.

Read Heidegger's correspondence with Karl Jaspers and you will see that he never once expresses regret about his Nazi enthusiasm. He was scum, and his post-war rehabilitation leaned heavily on the exploitation of Jews and, in Jaspers's case, those associated with Jews. Like all shallow demagogues, a foul opportunist. And, by the way, being elected by 1933 Germans is NOT a mark of moral distinction.

This glorification of Heidegger into Nazi is typically driven by a blind fanaticism of its own. The situation is far more ambiguous than certain people would wish to allow. And then there is the extraordinary greatness of Heidegger's philosphical accomplishment throughout the whole of his career. There can be no doubt that the later Heidegger was transformed by the tragic experience of war. And it is also a fact that there were remarks made by Heidegger in his seminars as late as 1944 that were transparently critical of this murderous regime. Heidegger dropped out of politics after 18 months. Why? Being a philosopher-and collaborating with the Nazis- was no longer possible. Don't let stupid journalism perpetuate stupidity.

If the SA supported Heidegger's election to the Rectorship of Freiburg it would have been because they knew that he was already an under-cover Nazi, though not yet an official one. (See Orr- Martin Heidegger, p.144). I very much doubt whether the Night of the Long Knives "ended what support Heidegeer had had in the new regime". The SA was hardly known for its intellectual sophistication, and they were likely to have agreed with the Nazi "philosopher" Erich Jaensch that Heidegger's "hair-splitting distinctions" were positively "Talmudic" (Ott, p.257). The likes of Jaensch persuaded the Nazi ideology chief Alfred Rosenberg, that Heidegger did not sufficiently embody the National Socialist spirit. Heidegger had hoped to be appointed the Fuehrer of the entire German University system, and was disappointed when instead Rosenberg appointed a Wuerzburg professor to that post instead. That was presumably the reason why Heidegger resigned his Rectorship, rather than that "he was such a disaster in his new post". Heidegger claimed after the war that he had resigned rather than dismiss von Moellendorff (the elected Rector whom Heidegger replaced when Moellendorff had been forced to step down as Recor because he was a Social Democrat, but who, not being Jewish, was still part of the faculty). As for delaying until November the implementation of the April decree to remove all Jews from the University, at least one emeritus professor of Jewish origin, Heidegger's old teacher and friend Edmund Husserl had been dismissed as soon as the decree had been promulgated, and 17 Jewish professors had been barred from the body that elected Heidegger.

I read most of books of Heidegger carefully. Read his last interview which he allowed to published after15years of his death.In my opinion he was hypocritical, coward,and buffoon. He had no daring to published his last interview in his lifetime.He lied too much in that last interview Why he supported to Hitler?Simple reason is he thought Hitler was Messiah can stop advance of science and technology and bring new norms for living.When Hitler was defeated and suicide he was fully disappointed and expressed that Hitler cheated him.In his last years he dreamed that another messiah will come on Earth[Waiting for God] and give new values to people.He boasted watching the play Waiting for Godo that that was his idea.stolen by Bucket.Why his fiancee Hannah Arendt rehabilitated him after war? that is mystery.After all how can man understand the psyche of woman?

Heidegger's work has been popularized in the west through the Landmark Forum / Landmark Education company. Landmark has been very influential for over 20 years with business and cultural elites and media adopting it's language and conceptual framework which has evolved over time. Like all philosophy it has something to offer, but as a business it is akin to scientology and practices a wide range of denial to define it's aims and objectives at any given moment. It is no surprise it is influential with political elites.

A poorly written article. The penultimate sentence in the first paragraph contains the phrase "and took against Hitler," which I guess means "and stood against Hitler." The final paragraph makes it sound as if in respecting Heidegger's metaphysical thought (which rests primarily upon Sein und Zeit, which was published in 1927), we are embracing his Naziism, rather than seeing his politics as an absurd excrescence having little to do with his metaphysics. His Naziism is vile, but his thought about matters other than politics is quite good. By the way, Karl Löwith, racially a Jew, has interesting things to say about his quondam mentor Heidegger.