ABSTRACT
Hans Loewald and Emmanuel Levinas were two of Martin Heidegger’s many students of Jewish heritage1 who felt betrayed by him when he both spoke and acted in strong support of the Nazi regime. While haunted by their teacher’s treachery, they could not completely divorce themselves from his influence, or refuse to admit his important intellectual legacy. This complex, ambivalent stance is similar to what Richard Wolin (2001) found in his study of some of Heidegger’s other Jewish students. As he wrote in Heidegger’s Children, “his ‘children’ sought to philosophize with Heidegger against Heidegger, thereby hoping to save what could be saved, all the while trying to cast off their mentor’s long and powerful shadow” (pp. 7-8).
