If bad men must be bad thinkers, then any work that’s sufficiently good must have a good creator. This is the fallacy that has long driven us to exonerate men who don’t deserve our (or Arendt’s) exculpatory contortions. When the perversions of authors and thinkers permeate their work, the product is, mercifully, its own indictment. But when the product bears no traces of its untoward origins — when none of Arendt’s gods come to our rescue, cursing ugly men with ugly minds — there may be no recourse. Heidegger is often reproached for his Nazi sympathies, but he’s rarely faulted for seducing Arendt when he was 35 and she was just 18, an eager student in the crowd at one of his popular lectures. His sexism, and our blindness to it, remained dangerous long after his Nazism ceased to pose a threat. Once the Nazi government collapsed, there was little that Heidegger could do to resuscitate it. But his fame still positioned him to take advantage of the female students dazzled or intimidated by his outsize reputation.

¶ 5:52 PM