“It is perfectly natural to feel loyalty to the thinker who set you to thinking, to the writer whose writings first made you a careful and devoted reader, and whose example inspired your own way of life as a philosopher.”
Altman’s words appear in the concluding chapter of his book on Martin Heidegger, and while his remarks hold for the awakening to intellectual life of thinkers of all stripes, he is especially directing his next words to Heideggerians:
“Having spent a considerable amount of time with the devoted students of ugly men, I have come to the conclusion that only the tiniest hard core of true believers are loyal to the ugliness: they are loyal to the excitement and even the beauty inspired in them by a master whom they at first revered in near perfect innocence. Clinging to this life-altering insight, they must necessarily repel each new revelation lest they lose, as it were, a precious part of themselves.”
Both perceptive and benevolent.
Source:
William H. F. Altman’s (recommended) Martin Heidegger and the First World War: Being and Time as Funeral Oration (Lexington, 2012), p. 284.
Related:
Geniuses and their followers — Zarathustra’s advice.
More on Altman’s book.