Martin Heidegger

's arguments' forcefulness depend in large part on his personality, on the slow intensity of his speech and his prophetic solemnity.

It should be added, perhaps, that the forcefulness of Heidegger's "aristocratic" arguments depends in large part on the personality of the lecturer. One is caught as in a political rally by the slow intensity of his speech. The contemptuous epigrams with which he dismisses the protests of logic or good sense sting the listeners ears with their acidity; and his prophetic solemnity when he invokes the quest for being ties one as spellbound as if one were a novice taking his first steps into the Eleusinian mysteries.

's greater glory is that all thinkers of the past twenty-five hundred years were so tragically off the track.

It seems to be for the greater glory of Heidegger that all thinkers of the past twenty-five hundred years are found to have been so tragically off the track.

's philosophy is unique only in its rampant misuse of language and in its own emphatic claim to uniqueness.

Heidegger's method, and especially the philosophical earnestness fundamental to its application, achieved for the philosophical public of Germany a new Copernican revolution of speculative thought. If one takes that judgment seriously, one should expect, therefore, that a more considered study might reveal, within the framework of an anthropocentric approach to metaphysics, some unique insight or some new tools of analysis. As a matter of fact, I cannot make any such discovery either in Heidegger's published works or in oral exposition of his views. A close examination seems rather to expose, within the ponderous sentences of essay lecture, a very insubstantial basis for a flimsy superstructure. Heidegger's philosophy is unique only rampant misuse of language and in its own emphatic claim to uniqueness.

Marjorie GlicksmanThinkers

Marjorie Glicksman