Heidegger’s influence, not Jaspers’s, dominated postwar European philosophy

Evidence

Even today, Jaspers, the dedicated communicator, is far less widely read than Heidegger, who has influenced architects, social theorists, critics, psychologists, artists, film-makers, environmental activists, and innumerable students and enthusiasts — including the later deconstructionist and post-structuralist schools, which took their starting point from his late thinking. Having spent the late 1940s as an outsider and then been rehabilitated, Heidegger became the overwhelming presence in university philosophy all over the European continent from then on. One Fulbright scholar who arrived in Heidelberg to study philosophy in 1955, Calvin O. Schrag, was surprised to see courses on many other contemporary philosophers, but none on Heidegger. Later his puzzlement disappeared. As he wrote: ‘I quickly learned that all courses were on Heidegger.’ — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 616

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the running contrast between communication and obscurity; Heidegger’s late thinking seeded post-structuralism and deconstruction (Derrida, Foucault), which the reader may have encountered elsewhere. — connects to: Heidegger’s philosophy attracted interest long after intellectual fashions moved past Sartre — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 994

Broader Connections

• Heidegger’s philosophy attracted interest long after intellectual fashions moved past Sartre #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 994