Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
>
it is as if this consonance allows us to
> dismiss Heidegger as theoretically
> irrelevant and thus to avoid the effort to think
> with and through Heidegger, to confront the
> uneasy questions he raised against such basic
> tenets of modernity as "humanism,"
> "democracy," "progress," etc.
This argument is an empty one, since anyone can apply it to anyone. There are more major books out there than you and I together ever have or ever are going to read, and it is simply empty to say X raises important questions. It becomes especially empty in this case when "progress" is named as one of the "basic tenets" that we will supposedly not learn to question if we don't read Heidegger. I had dismissed that "tenet" before I had ever read Marx or even heard of Heidegger.
I have no idea whether or not "we" need to read Heidegger; I just know that _this_ is an empty argument.
Carrol