Abstract

This dissertation concerns a debate over the legacy of Heidegger's thought in America. Ultimately the subject of dispute turns out to be what is called "the crisis of the West," as understood and articulated by Heidegger and before him, Nietzsche. ;The way we interpret this crisis is crucial to our response. Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche's attempt to overcome nihilism concludes that Nietzsche was destined instead to deepen nihilism to its limits. Heidegger's Nietzsche fails radically in his life's task. Does Heidegger's own path provide the solution? ;The answer among both admirers and critics is that it does not--at least not without correction. The issue is over the nature of that correction and the role of scholarship in facilitating it. On the one hand, a number of Heidegger's students have offered correctives whose emphasis is on appropriating and furthering his path of thinking. These efforts are becoming increasingly influential in America, with a number of recent translations and Gadamer's own sustained effort to increase his transatlantic influence. On the other hand, the works of Leo Strauss and the "Straussian" school reject Heidegger outright, albeit in a complex way that owes much--more, perhaps, than they would care to admit--to his teaching. ;Heidegger saw human being or Dasein as radically time-bound, so much so that there is question whether he allowed even for historical continuity of the human spirit. This issue may be expressed as a tension between his views of history as mankind's increasing forgetfulness of Being, and as a discontinuous series of epochs in Dasein's relation to Being. Being's destiny, according to Heidegger, is the history not of a single unfolding, but of multiple appropriations. Yet the crisis of the West is a story of progressing nihilism, beginning with Socratic-Platonic rationalism and culminating in Nietzsche's doomed attempt to revitalize human values. ;This story has naturally become a focus of scholarly criticism: insofar as Heidegger's interpretation of the Western tradition can be shown to be erroneous, his interpretation of crisis is open to doubt. The contribution of scholarship, how it can and cannot help in our evaluation of Heidegger, therefore becomes central