Heidegger.s Fall

With this succinct remark, a widely respected philosopher (and good friend of many years) John Caputo, crystallizes his reaction1 to an attempt I had made2 to discuss the tragic debacle of Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism in terms of Heidegger’s own conception of the negativity of truth: aletheia. “Thereby hangs a tale.” The symposium that occasioned my proposal had been entitled “Heidegger and Politics,” and I had taken as springboard for the essay an earlier reflection of John Sallis, commenting on Heidegger’s then recently published Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom