Has ever a philosopher had as baleful an influence as Martin Heidegger? The reasons for his extraordinary importance in modern Western philosophy are many and complex, but essentially, in the words of Radical Philosophy founder Jonathan Ree, it's because of the great man's critique of the "imperious dehumanising movement of western modernity". The fact that he was an enthusiastic Nazi was somehow overlooked in the clamour to celebrate a thinker who could, supposedly, see through the false gods of liberalism and the enlightenment. But when you're keen, as so many of our modern critical thinkers are, to analyse the shortcomings of the West, it's perhaps wise not to base your analysis on the works of a philosopher who saw enemies in world Jewry and British democracy, and the answer in National Socialism.
A secondary Heidegger effect has been the spread of impenetrable jargon in the academy - about, in Jonathan Glover's words, "undermining philosophy's role in developing a climate of critical thought":
His books are an embodiment of the idea that philosophy is an impenetrable fog, in which ideas not clearly understood have to be taken on trust. Karl Jaspers was right in seeing this "incommunicative" mode of thought as linked to being dictatorial.
Deference is encouraged by having to take it on trust that the obscure means something important. And since things not understood cannot be argued about, the critical faculties atrophy. Philosophy could not have served the Nazis better than by encouraging deference and by this softening of the mind.
The softening of the mind hasn't just happened in the West: he's also been hugely influential in intellectual circles in Iran. This is from a piece in The Nation on Reading Richard Rorty in Tehran. Rorty, it turns out, was a bit of a disappointment to his Iranian audience when he spoke there in 2004. He didn't agree with Heidegger's views on liberalism and the enlightenment, or Heidegger's "foundationalism":
In the essay “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy” and in his interviews, Rorty presented these notions, central to his political thought, to Iranian readers in much the same terms. But he was clearer about whom he was arguing against: namely, those who claimed that the liberal politics inherited from the Enlightenment cannot be separated from the foundationalist philosophical ideas that first justified them. Such thinkers, Rorty wrote, maintain that once we have called into question the latter, the former “should not or cannot survive.” An “extreme form” of this view, Rorty noted, was propounded by a towering figure of 20th century thought, German philosopher Martin Heidegger.
The response to Rorty’s ideas was swift and vocal, and debated in the pages of the popular press; for a few weeks Rorty’s visit was an event of national importance. While not all the reactions were negative, many expressed disbelief and disappointment. Some dismissed Rorty as simplistic or patronizing, as if the conversational style of his lecture implied he thought Iranians were not up to “real” philosophy. Others accused Rorty of American chauvinism and cultural imperialism; this was, after all, only a little more than a year after the American invasion of Iraq.
More substantively, in his reply to Rorty’s talk at the Artist’s House event, Dariush Shayegan said that anti-foundationalism was unsuitable for Iran’s metaphysical, mystical culture.
These reactions were not just the result of misaligned expectations. When Rorty was preparing for his visit to Iran, said New York University Professor Ali Mirsepassi, who interviewed him during his trip, “he realized that Heidegger and Foucault were influential. He said that he wanted to give this talk and make the point that, as important as both were, they offer very little politically for Iran.”
Heidegger in particular is central to the Iranian story. Beginning in the 1960s, during the rule of the American-aligned and dictatorial Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and continuing through the 1979 Islamic Revolution until today, the German thinker has been one of the dominant philosophical figures in Iran. His critique of Enlightenment liberalism, and his emphasis on the need to “remember” an authentic way of being that modernity has forgotten, resonated particularly strongly. Heidegger’s thought owes continuing prominence in Iran to a single figure, Ahmad Fardid. Born in 1910, Fardid left Iran to study in France and Germany in the years after the Second World War and returned a committed Heideggerian, espousing a doctrine of “Westoxification,” the idea that Iran had been infected by and must rid itself of Western culture and ideas. Writers and thinkers like Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shariati, who shaped the intellectual climate that led to the revolution, adopted Fardid’s views and terminology—“Westoxification” was popularized by Al-e Ahmad in a book by that same name—casting Heidegger a famous Western philosopher who legitimized their already existing anti-modernism.
Before the revolution, Fardid employed his convoluted rhetoric, heavy with mysticism and dubious etymologies, to defend the shah’s regime; afterward, he applied the same tactics to justify Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini’s rule. This species of Heideggerian-infused thought, in style as well as substance, remains popular among both secular and religious intellectuals, those inside the regime as well as among its opponents.
Fardid sounds like an excellent Heidegger disciple. His "convoluted rhetoric, heavy with mysticism and dubious etymologies" could be used to defend the shah, or it could be used to defend the new theocracy...just as Heidegger's obscurantist anti-enlightenment philosophy, originally intended to supply a philosophical underpinning to the growing Nazi party, could be re-purposed later by supposedly left-wing progressive thinkers as the basis for an attack on the Western liberal tradition.
More on "Westoxification", and Heidegger's appeal to anti-liberal mystification in both Iran and Russia, here.