Heidegger appeared to lack character rather than possess bad character

Evidence

It wasn’t that Heidegger had a bad character, Hannah Arendt wrote to Jaspers in 1949; it was that he had no character. Sartre said a very similar thing in an essay of 1944, speaking of Heidegger’s Nazism: ‘Heidegger has no character; there’s the truth of the matter.’ It is as if there was something about everyday human life that the great philosopher of everydayness did not get. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 307

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The distinction between a bad character and no character at all, and its implication that the philosopher of everydayness somehow missed everyday human life, is a profound and slightly uncanny thought worth sitting with.
• XREF: Connects to discussion of moral character vs. emptiness in postwar thought; also to Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil in Eichmann in Jerusalem. — connects to: Heidegger’s inaugural lecture opened with a surprising deadpan joke — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 246; Ambivalence toward Heidegger stems from recognizing his moral failures within oneself — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 995; Heidegger’s Nazi past and obscure late prose drove away former admirers — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 603 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Ambivalence toward Heidegger stems from recognizing his moral failures within oneself #responds-to (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 995
• Heidegger hid career-damaging political judgments behind claims of truthfulness #complicates (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 300
• Heidegger’s rudeness to Gertrud Jaspers broke his friendship with Jaspers #exemplifies (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 283
• Heidegger’s Nazi past and obscure late prose drove away former admirers #expands (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 603