Large structures must be built on bedrock, or they are doomed to collapse in the tremors and tsunamis that strike everywhere in the centuries to come. Likewise, philosophies fall into rubble in shifting winds, unless they are built on pillars extending to a great depth.
For contemporary philosophy, bedrock means the work of Heidegger. Whether we affirm him, expand him, or overturn him, he is the philosopher of our time, and whatever innovations we dream up today must occasionally be checked or measured against what he has written. While this statement may not meet with universal agreement, it will shock no one, since Heidegger already displays at least three signs of a classic thinker. First, he appeals to every portion of the political spectrum: this confirmed Nazi does not drive away most Jewish readers, Marxist readers, or Churchillians. Like Nietzsche, he is equally beloved from the Left and the Right, a very good sign, since he is respected for the right reasons, and not simply because he helps one’s own team to win, the sure mark of a second-tier thinker. Further, Heidegger is increasingly useful to all philosophical movements: gone are the days when analytic philosophers called him “meaningless.” Virtually every camp in philosophy today tries to appropriate Heidegger and read him as an ally. Next, he has even more followers outside his own nation than within it: this is important, since lesser thinkers can be equally idolized at home, provided that they swing a sufficiently heavy institutional cudgel, or appeal uniquely to one nation’s most unusual tastes, just as swallowing live eels is celebrated in certain obscure national cuisines. The final test, always the most important, is to outlive one’s own time. It is too early to give a verdict here, but so far Heidegger shows every sign of surviving the dangerous transition from latest great thing to aged mentor. He seems largely immune to the decay of the Zeitgeist. Like the bedrock in the earth, he seems untouched so far by seasonal erosions of the soil, by floods and sandstorms, by continental drift.