The publication of Victor Farfas's Heidegger and Nazism in 19871 set off the Heidegger wars, which have grown in intensity over the succeeding years. The bitter controversy ignited in France by Farfas's contention that both Heidegger's life and thought were integrally linked to Nazism, has now spread across the Rhine, to Germany, and the Atlantic, to America, where new fronts in the conflict have been opened. Dozens of books and hundreds of articles have been written in an effort to sort out the extent, duration, meaning, and bases, of Martin Heidegger's entanglement with National Socialism. The present essay, and its second part to follow, is concerned with the philosophical stakes arising from the Heidegger wars. Our concern is to indicate which issues, raised by this controversy, are the most significant in terms of their overall philosophical impact, and to point out ways in which the discussion can be fruitfully developed. In surveying the issues raised by the debate over Heidegger's involvement with Nazism, there is no way to avoid taking a position on the questions at hand, no way to avoid becoming a participant in the controversy. An overview of the issues to be discussed can best serve as an orientation to the battle lines in this increasingly acrimonious dispute. In part one, we will focus on Heidegger's stature as a thinker, and on the methodologies of reading Heidegger. In part two, our focus will shift to the ethical and political ramifications of Heidegger's relationship to Nazism. In the light of Heidegger's commitment to some form of National Socialism, at least during the early and mid-1930s, and his indisputable support for Adolf Hitler, however short-lived it may have been, how should we now read Heidegger? Indeed, can we still read him as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century? Beyond the immediate question of Heidegger's stature as a thinker, at stake is the very shape of philosophy itself as the century draws to a close. Richard Wolin has suggested that in light of Heidegger' s entanglement with Nazism, any philosophy which, like