Ambivalence toward Heidegger stems from recognizing his moral failures within oneself

Evidence

In Jackson’s Dilemma, her character Benet is also writing a book on Heidegger, and like Murdoch herself he is struggling with the project. He wonders whether the difficulty comes from not being able to decide what he really thinks of Heidegger. Some aspects are attractive while others repel him: the Nazism, the appropriation of Hölderlin, and the relentless ‘poeticisation of philosophy, discarding truth, goodness, freedom, love, the individual, everything which the philosopher ought to explain and defend’. He questions whether he is ‘fascinated by a certain dangerous aspect of Heidegger which was in fact so deeply buried in his own, Benet’s, soul that he could not scrutinise or even dislodge it’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 995

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s larger project on the contested legacy of Heidegger’s Nazism; echoes Arendt and Levinas concerns threaded through this book. — connects to: Heidegger’s philosophical intensity reflected a threatening inner landscape — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 192; Heidegger appeared to lack character rather than possess bad character — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 307; Jaspers blamed his own politeness for failing to intervene with Heidegger — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 284