ABSTRACT
Martin Heidegger was born and died in the small German town of Messkirch in the Black Forest region of Baden-Württemberg. His father was the caretaker of the local Catholic church. Heidegger was reared as a Catholic and attended local secondary schools, where he was particularly interested in the ancient Greeks and the classics; this classical heritage remained the bedrock of his intellectual life. As a teenager in a Jesuit seminary, he was captivated by Franz Brentano’s work on Aristotle’s understanding of “Being.” He made the study of Being his life’s work and never wavered from that goal. Critics claim that Heidegger had always been sympathetic to the Nazi cause and that he apparently disowned his teacher Husserl (who was Jewish). As late as 1953, Heidegger affirmed the “inner truth and greatness” of the Nazi movement.
