  As this attempt to link Heidegger’s thinking of earth with “the soil” and his “social outlook” suggests, Schapiro’s famous criticism has an obvious political subtext. To put it bluntly, Schapiro is insinuating that Heidegger projected his own National Socialist-tainted associations onto Van Gogh’s work, then mistook these “blood and soil” projections for the truth of the  painting.[93] Even stripped of the political subtext that motivates it, this allegation that Heidegger’s interpretation of Van Gogh’s painting is really nothing more than a projection of Heidegger’s own subjective biases represents a potentially formidable objection to Heidegger’s attempt to move beyond the subject/object dichotomy at the heart of aesthetics. For, if Heidegger’s interpretation really just covertly reinstalls his own subjective perspective, then this attempt to transcend aesthetic subjectivism from within looks dubious at best.