Panzer Divisions: The Blitzkrieg Years 1939-40 Book

We definitely ought to take into account the possible underlying political motivations of Heidegger's ontological work. However, that is not a task that Wolin has taken on in this text. Rather, he cherry-picks data and skews facts to paint a dark picture about something he has not demonstrated an understanding about.

Notice that Wolin never actually explains Heidegger's philosophy itself in depth. Notice that he reverts to characterizing H.'s dis-ease with technology and modernity as a "forgetting of Being" (pg. 32), instead of explaining enframing in any rigorous detail. Notice that he never takes into account the various elements of Heidegger's thought that might have actual merit. For instance, how he acts like being skeptical of progress, or democracy, is in-itself a bad thing. As though democracy has no faults. As though we ought to never question our own systems. Like it is somehow heretical to be concerned about the exponential speed of technological development with no specific ends in sight.

If Wolin is actually an intellectual historian, one would think he would look at the ideas themselves alongside the lives of the thinkers, and not skew his reader's perspectives by giving deficient accounts of the thought behind the works. Wolin has made a career for himself slandering thinkers, rather than addressing their thoughts. This is not intellectual history, it is the art of polemic bio-ad-homineming (now that is a term).

Heidegger ought to be crtiqued, but this is not critique.