For such people, Heidegger was a visionary, a man surrounded by an aura, imbued with the dark power of ''thinking." This astonishing gift placed him, in the imagination of almost everyone who knew him, beyond ordinary judgment. To do it as he did it was to climb Mount Olympus. Reading him, or listening to him speak, people felt exalted. His very presence renewed the idea of being alive. The experience carried with it the conviction of re-creation, aroused an inner atmosphere toward which one yearned -- not a sensation to be resisted. And no one did resist it. Not Hannah Arendt, not Karl Jaspers, not anyone exposed to the man whose gifts of mind were large enough to persuade that he saw life whole, and then he saw beyond.