Jaspers blamed his own politeness for failing to intervene with Heidegger

Evidence

Jaspers later thought he might have erred in treating Heidegger too delicately. When Heidegger sent him a printed version of his rectorial address in 1933, Jaspers’ reply was supremely diplomatic: ‘It was nice to see it in its authentic version after reading about it in the paper.’ Should he have been more critical, he wondered later? Perhaps he had failed ‘this intoxicated and enthused Heidegger’. Heidegger perhaps needed what a later generation would call an ‘intervention’, to save him from himself. It was, Jaspers implied, a failure of engagement on his own part — and he linked this to a more general failure of tolerant, educated Germans to face up to the challenge of the time. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 284

Categorization

• XREF: Jaspers’s self-reproach about the failure of educated, tolerant Germans connects to Hannah Arendt’s later writings on the banality of evil and the complicity of ordinary citizens. — connects to: Heidegger’s rudeness to Gertrud Jaspers broke his friendship with Jaspers — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 283; Ambivalence toward Heidegger stems from recognizing his moral failures within oneself — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 995

Broader Connections

• Heidegger’s rudeness to Gertrud Jaspers broke his friendship with Jaspers #complicates (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 283
• Ambivalence toward Heidegger stems from recognizing his moral failures within oneself #complicates (0.70) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 995