Wherewith to draw us to the left and right: on reading Heidegger in the new millennium

The live stake in critically rethinking Heidegger in the light of everything we know in 2018 is less about changing what established Heideggerian friends and foes will continue to argue, given the hermeneutic devotion to his oeuvre many of the former have built entire careers around. The debate is about how Heidegger should be conceived and taught to the next generation of students and scholars whose minds and careers are yet to be made up, given what we—as against previous postwar generations—know of the complete works. It is primarily with that “futural” aim and audience in view that the following critical considerations are tendered: • the first, concerning claims that Heidegger, after resigning the rectorship then after the war, can plausibly be thought of as an “anti-Nazi” thinker (Part II); • the second, concerning the claims Heidegger’s mature thinking makes about the history of Western philosophy and what the uncritical acceptance of this metanarrative serves to omit, distort, or prejudice students against (Part III); • and the third, too briefly, on Heidegger’s persona as a philosopher, given the continuing anxieties academic philosophers face about our place in the “contest of the faculties,” and the democratization and technicization of education (Part IV).