Heidegger at Freiburg, 1933

On May 27, 1933, Martin Heidegger gave his inaugural rectoral address on “The Self-Assertion of the German University”, taken by some take as supporting the Nazi regime." Although an older article, it still holds up. It is troubling that Heidegger joined the Nazi party, but his influence as a 20th century philosopher cannot be disputed. From the article:

"Near the end of April, 1933, Martin Heidegger was elected rector of Freiburg University. At the same time, from May, 1933, until his resignation of the rectorate the following February, he was also a member of the Nazi party. Heidegger was then in his mid-forties. His early work, culminating in the epochal Being and Time (1927)—one of the most difficult, influential, and certainly one of the most controversial books of philosophy produced in this century—lay behind him. Ahead lay equally formidable essays on language, art, and technology, as well as numerous essays and monographs on key figures in the Western philosophical tradition, from Parmenides and Anaximander to Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche.

Though he has as many detractors as devotees, Heidegger is without doubt among the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. He is a pervasive force in contemporary theology, psychology, and literary criticism as well as in philosophy. Among his contemporaries, only Wittgenstein rivals him in the depth and extent of his influence. And despite his sometimes forbiddingly abstruse language, there is something uniquely sagelike about Heidegger. Philosophy for him was no merely intellectual pursuit. It was a clarion to “authentic being,” a quest for meaning."