Tzvetan Todorov discussed Heidegger’s attraction to Nazism a few days ago at the Stanford Humanities Center. Adam Kirsch continues some of the same lines of thinking in the New York Times today here. An excerpt:
For what makes Heidegger’s Nazism a challenge — as opposed to merely a scandal — is the fact that he did not drift into evil, but thought his way into it. And once we acknowledge the powerful attraction of his work, we are morally and intellectually bound to explore what part of that attraction is owed to ideas with a potential for evil.
On a lighter note, Kirsch also had some thoughts on U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, the poet who praised the virtue of lightness during her recent visit here (I wrote about her here, and added a few notes from a 2004 interview with her on the Book Haven here), in a recent New Yorker article here.