The problem was that Heidegger’s innovations could not be so easily absorbed through such passing glances. It was this intuition of the indispensable that prompted Eric Voegelin to return periodically to measure his work in relation to the widely sensed, if less widely understood, genius of Heidegger’s philosophy. At stake is the vitality of his or her thought. This is why the question of how a thinker stands in relation to Heidegger is not simply an idle curiosity. To ignore him is to remain anachronistically within an earlier phase of philosophical reflection, a little like continuing to compose music as period pieces in a style no longer capable of development. It is impossible to philosophize without taking account of Heidegger’s primordiality. He remains the toweringly original figure from whom philosophy today takes its bearings. Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida can legitimately claim to have advanced and departed from the Heideggerian project, but this is, fundamentally, to have remained within it. The most convincing evidence of this is that his critics, at least those who actually understand rather than simply dismiss him, operate of necessity within the framework he has provided. For better or worse he is the one who carries philosophy forward to the point it has reached today. Martin Heidegger was the culminating figure of twentieth-century philosophy.
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