Forgive me, but I benefit from studying both MH and Vogelin, and I see no reason (except as an excuse to damn MH with comments that he would likely dismiss as irrelevant) to pit one against the other. Life is complicated but there's no need to oversimplify for the sake of rhetoric.
 

""Heidegger turned his provincialism into a matter of philosophical principle: true thinking is only possible in the German or Greek language, and, for instance, when the French think, they do it in German. That is why only Germans can express the philosophical epiphany of the meaning of Being within the specific ontic condition of the entity that is human Dasein.""

Das Stimmt!

MH's emphasis on German and Greek as the only languages worthy of Dasein intrigues me, yet a cynic might term that linguistic imperialism of a sort. One can understand the metaphysician dismissing the anglo "piratenzunge" and the romance languages--yet abandoning the latinate?? A bit schwer. Many a great scribe --even german ones knew his latin grammar. Caesar's worth a read (ponytext Bello Gaulico, y'all)--even the moustached one , ie Nietzsche would agree with that
 

My sense of the critique of MH offered mostly uses material from his attempts at drawing to himself the loyalties of his listeners during the rector period.

Still, his interest in the ancient Greeks remained profound. Somewhere there is the argument between MH and a highly regarded philologist over the meaning of a single Greek term. They did not reach agreement. But that's when I realized I dare not aspire to useful scholarship in philosophy.

MH's argument that we must look to the primal sense of Greek vocabulary has been generalized by others to a wider and more inclusive employment of etymology. What it shows me is that in the absence of a shared dictionary, one can have many adventures in ideas, claiming etymology, while amounting to mere thought experiments.
 

The classic case is aletheia, which MH claimed was not used as correctness, corresponds-with-the-facts, until Plato's time. But a philogist showed where Homer used aletheia to mean correctness, and MH had to agree; this was in ~ mid-sixties.
 

Were one to seriously consider Heidegger's claim...what could one say of the typical American academics and pedagogues who know little or nothing about greek classics, latin, or Deutsch for that matter ?

Most of the edu-crats we've encountered can barely manage a few words in spanglish (or the Queen's anglo for that matter). Latin es no mas. French is considered the language of the communists, more or less. A few professors may know some german--but as a whole it's pretty safe to say Americans dislike foreign languages, of any sort. KrugmanSpeak is sort of the default tongue.

the Founding crackers were capable latinists--many consider Jefferson a yokel, but he was competent in latin, french, spanish as well (probably read the Republic in latin....not sure if greek). Franklin spoke french.


Reading a bit of Ezra Pound one will discover that Pound considered English as...la Lengua del Diablo, mo' or less...a strange , rustic manifestation of sorts (as did the cat. clerics, pre-reformation)--suited to nordic sea shanties, perhaps-- all the plantagenet additions not necessarily an improvement IMHE.

Pound had issues but also suggests that Being derives from the Greek, or something of the sort
 

"Being derives from the Greek"

I think a better phrasing, so far as MH is concderned, would be "The Greeks had a distinctive understanding of Being itself."

I recall approaching a former professor with MH and being dismissed with "Plato talked about Being in the (drinking party essay whose name escapes me at the moment)." I was not prepared at that time to reply that MH's understanding of Being is not Plato's.

So it might be better to say that for MH the Greeks had the most useful misunderstanding of Being with which to work.