william richardson heidegger and god and professor jonas

8/10/2019 William Richardson Heidegger and God and Professor Jonas

1/28

Christians are interes ted in thethought Heidegger even thoughGod less because there is truth in

Heidegger and wherever there istruth there is God.

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

-AND PROFESSOR JONASWILLI M RI H RDSON

O N TH FRONT P G of the second section of The N ew Y r Timesfor Saturday, April 11, 1964, there appeared a scream headlinewhich read: Scholar breaks with Heidegger/Conference at Drew istold philosopher s work lacks meaning for Christians/Pro-N1azism ischarged/Teacher at the New School cites German s statement endingwith Heil Hitler.

The scholar in question was Dr. Hans Jonas, Professor of Philosophy at the New School of Social Research in New York City. Theconference, to which he had been invited to give the keynote address,ha d been convened at Drew University, Madison, N.J., under theleadership of the eminent Dean of its Graduate School, Dr. StanleyRomaine Hopper. The announced theme of the three.,d ay Consultation had been The Problem of Non-objectifying Thinking and Speaking in Contemporary Theology. But in simpler terms it had as its

purpose to offer most of the leading thinkers of contemporary Protestantism the opportunity to discuss with two special guests invited fromEurope, during a three-day Consultation, the relevance of MartinHeidegger s thought in its most contemporary form to their theological enterprise.

As a matter of fact, Heidegger himself had been invited to givethe opening address, hut when in JanuHry his doctors forbade hirn

EDITOR S NOT This article is the text of the annuaI Suarez Lecture delivered at Fordharn University, April 27, 1964.


2/28

T OU T

to make the journey, he sent a communication to be read absentiato the assembly and DT Jonas was invited to speak in his stead.

By any standard, Dr. Jonas performance was bril l iant-thoughsomewhat unexpected. Accepting the invitat ion, he later said, as acall of destiny, he launched what ma y weIl be one of the most incis-ive cri ticisms that has ever been directed against this German thinker.With erudition an d fire, with lucidity and wit, he affirmed with allvigor the nonrelevance of the contemporary Heidegger for theology,an d thereby art iculated in dynamic fashion his own attitude towardHeidegger an d the problem o God.

Fo r lnany months this had been the proposed theme for these re

ections. It was my intention to trace the development of Heidegger sthinking about God an d examine in some detail some docu,mentsthat recently have become avail able. The purpose would have beento try to disengage the essentials of Heidegger s att itude toward thequestion, an d determine its relevance for Christ ian thought. But Dr.Jonas changed al l that. Throwing the problem into the context oftheology, he offered the most damning evaluat ion possible of Heid-egger s attitude toward God. 1 should like to propose, then, that werenounce the luxury of a purely philosophieal meditation, and pickup the gage where Dr. Jonas has thrown it down. My purpose is notto be merely topical, but philosophy does have an obligation to berelevant. Nor is it my purpose to be polemic, but a statement for theprosecutJlon warrants a statement for the defense, in order that justice,which is to sa y truth, ma y have its way.

To situate the problem properly let us ask: What ras the mean-ing of the Consultation at Drew ? what was the substance of the Jonasattack? w hat is its value?

THE CONSULTATION AT DREW

If Martin Heidegger and Hans Jonas, the one in absentia an d theother in praesentia came to share the same platform at Drew, thiscould have been achieved only through the good offices a great andgood mutual friend, Rudolf Bultmann. 1 do not mean, course, thatBultmann s theology alone is the pjvotal point of the new hermeneu-tic (that is, the science 01 art interpreting Sacred Scripture),which was the fundamental issue of the Consultation. But 1 do meanthat without Bul tmann s contribution, consciously modeled on the


3/28

HEI EGGER N GO

early work of Heidegger, the problem of contemporary hern1eneuticswould never have been posed. I mean, too, that the contemporaryproblem itselfturns upon the question : Does the evolutionof Heid-egger s own thought through the famousKehre which we may trans-late as turning or reversal -invite a corresponding turningor reversal in the Bultmannian method?

The controversy-for controversy iti s -was not engaged properlyuntil1959 when Heinrich tt (disciple of, and now successor to,KarlBarth at the University o f Ba se l) , who had already, under Barth sdirection, writ ten his doctoral dissertation in1955 on the theologyof Bultmann, published a studyof IIeidegger entitledThinking andBeing The Wa y Martin Heidegger and the Wa y Theology 2 Itsuggested that fidelity to the Heideggerean inspiration as it evolvedin the philosopher s later works would lead Bultmannand his dis ciples beyond their original position in the directionof the theologicalposition representedrather by Karl Barth.

The controversy itself cannot beour concern in this discussion. Letus be content withabrief resume of the useto which Bultnlannpu t theearly Heidegger, for in this Hans Jonasplayed a role. If we wereto look for the steadyeenter around which Bultmann s entire theologi-cal effort revolves, we might find that it is no different from thatofKarl Barth, no matter how divergent maybe the paths that each sub-sequently folIows.In the Preface to the second editionof his Epistleto the Romans Barth writes:. . . If I have a system it consists in the fact that I keep in mind as per-sistently as possihlewha t Kie rkegaa rd called the infinite qualitative differ-ence between time an d e te rn it y i n hath its negative an d its positive mean-ing 3

This, toD is the very heart of Bultmann. What characterizes Bult-mann s effort, however, is that his conceptionof God and God s rela-tion to the worl,d is based upon the analogyof what we knowof man

1 Geschichte un d Heilsgeschichte in der Theologie Rudol J Bultrnanns Tbingen:l.e.B. Mohr, 1955).

2 Denken un d Sein. Der We g Martin Heideggers un d der Weg der Theologie (Zurich:EVZ Verlag, 1959).

3 Wenn ich ein System habe, so besteht es dar in, dass ich das, was Kierkegaardde n unendlichen qualitativen Unterschied von Zeitun d Ewigkeit genannt hat,in seinernegativen und positiven bedeutung mglichst beharrlich im Auge behalte K . Barth,Der Rmerbrief 2nd ed. 1922), p. xiii. Trans. E. C Hoskyns, T he Ep istle to th eRomans (London: Oxford University, 1963), p. 10.


4/28

T OU T

and Inan S relationship to the world. Now Bultmann s conception

man is avowedly Heideggerean: man is qualitatively different fromal l other heings in the world of his experience for he transcends a llbeings. The fundamental choice open to man, upon whichdependsthe achievement or nonachievement of authenticity, is this: either hecan lose himself among beings, forgetting his great prerogative andbecoming in his own eyes abeing l ike the res t a t best a subject forwhom everything else is an object, with his eyes turned steadily toward tlIe past ; or he can live in terms of his prerogative, accept himself as transcendence, open hirnself to the future, constantly achievethe self that is offered hirn to become by constantly re-trieving ie-d e r h o l ~ ~ n gthe Being that comes to hirn througll his paste In such achoice eonsistshis authenticity.

Whell such a schema is transposed into a new key so that it mayenable us to speak mutatis mutandis of God, we find that God isinfinitely and qualitatively different from the world Hecreated And just as man in his finite historicity transcends the whole sphereof the subject-object correlation, so also does God as an infinite Existent tranBcend all that falls within the macrocosmic counterpart of thissame s p ~ h e r e . 4

One inference from this is immediate. There is nothing in the created order of things, nothing that man is, has, or does, thereforenothing in human language as such, no effort on the p ar t o f the sacredwriter and still less of the theologian, that is directly divine or canbe assiglled a divine function or significance. Let us see what thismeans in the context of what Bultmann calls the mythological language of the New Testament. True enough, the sacred wri ter bearswitness to the fact that human existence is controlled somehow by theaction of God. But this testimony is encrusted in language thatbe-longs properly to this world, and God s action is portrayed as if itbelonged properly to the world men. Take the mythic language ofa miracle, for example. It presents God s action as a process whichsuddenly interrupts and at the same time prolongs the natural courseof history i t inserts transcendent causality into the events of a human world. In a word, myth objectifies God s action, that is, makesi t an objeet about which man can think and speak, makes this action

4 S Ogden, Introduction to Existence and Faith Shorter Writings Rudol/ Bult-mann ed. S. Ogden (New York: Meridian, 1960) , p. 16.


5/28

HEIDEGGER N GO

immanent to man s world and therelore destroys God s infinitelyand qualitatively different transcendence.

We see at onee, then, why Bultmann is comlmitted to demythologize

the Christi an message. The reason is not alone that our contemporary scientifie world can no longer aceept the mythological formulations of Sacred Scripture an,d therefore tends to shut its ears to themessage contained therein. The reason is more profoundly in thenature of reality itself r Bultmann conceives it. We can set asideany previous theological formulation of faith, including those of thecanonieal theologians, that is, the inspired writers, themselves, be-cause every human formulation is a humanaffair and has no divinesignificance. Furthermore, we must set aside all mythological formulations, becau se they obseure the fact th at God s difference fromthe world is not only quantitative hut qualitative.

All this ;characterizes the thought of the mature Bultmann as it hashecome known to the public since 1941, hut the history of its development is for our purposes interesting. One might say that the firstbreak-through in the advance toward what we now call demythologizing was made not hy Bultmann but by Karl Barth with his commentaryon St. Pau l s Epistle to the Romans. In the Preface to the first edition (1918) he writes: . . . My whole attention was directed to looking through the historical to the spirit of the Bihle, which is theeternal Spirit. Under attack from Adolf von Harnack in 1923for his failure in objectivity (theology s task is to get intellectualcontrol of the object, said Harnack), Barth replied: . . . The scholarliness of theology eonsists in being bound to the recolleetionthat its object was first subject and must again and again hecomesuhject . . . . 6

Bultmann recognized the theological validity of Barth s faitaccompli at least in the second edition (1922) -and soon devotedhimself to ,developing and clarifying the method, which he first ealledSachkritik that is, criticism in terms of subject matter, so that this

5 Aber meine ganze Aufmerksamkeit war darauf gerichtet, durch das Historischehindurch zu sehen in den Geist der Bibel, den der ewige Geist ist K . Barth, er Rmerbrief (Bern: G. A. Bschlin, 1919), p.v. Trans. J. Robinson, Th e Ne w Herme-neutic ed. J. Robinson, J. Cobb (New York: Harpe r and Row, 1964), p. 22.

Die Wissenschaftl ichkeit der Theologie wre dann ihre Gebundenheit an dieErinnerung, dass ihr Objekt zuvor Subjekt gewesen ist und immer wieder werden muss.. . . - Ka r Barth, Ein Briefwechsel mit Adolf von Harnack, in Theologische Fragenund Antwort en Gesammelte Vortrge (Zollikon: Evangelischer Verlag, 1957),111, 10.


6/28

THOUGHT

method might be pu t to more general use.

One y ear la te r (1923)Heidegger, with Sein und Zeit germinating in his head but four yearsbefore its publication, joined hirn on the faeulty at Marburg and theirelose assoeiation began.

In the long years between 1922 and 1941 during which Bultmann stheory of demythologizing slowly matured, one work in partieularwritten by one of Bul tmann s most gifted students, who ha d aireadydone his doetorate under Heidegger in 1928, stands out. Its titIe:Gnosis und Sptantiker Geist s Published in 1934, it was indeed abrilliant example of all that Bultmann eould hope that the methodof demythologizing would be. When reissued in 1954, Bultmann himself wrote apreface to the first volulne, in whieh he says:

The method of the author laying hold of a historical phenomenon bymeans of the principle the analysi s of existence, seems to me to haveproven hri ll iant ly its fruitEulness. I am certain that this work will fructifyresearch in the history of ideas i n many regards, and no t least in the interpret at io n o f the New Testament. 9

This book, a classic in the field, appeared in English in 1958 and asecond edition in paperback in 1963. I ts English titIe: The GnosticReligiotl/; the author, Hans Jonas. 10

When, then, Heidegger hirnself was unable to come to Drew to

launch the discussion on Non-objectifying Thinking an d Speaking inTheoIogy, who on the American scene was bet ter qualified to takehis place than a former student both of Heidegger and Bultmann, whohirnself was the most brilliant exponent of the method now underscrutiny, namely, Dr. Jonas himself?

DR . JONAS CRITICISM

Dr. Jonas opens his attack by insisting that there is much secular-

See J. M. Robinson, Hermeneut ic since Bar th , in The N ew H ermeneuti c New

Frontiers iln Theology, ed. J . M Robinson, J. Cobb, (New York: Harper and Row,1964) , pp. 29 3l.

8 H. Jonas, Gnosis und Sptantiker Geist Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des lten u nd e ue n Testaments (Gttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1934).

9 R. Buhmann, Vorwort to H. Jonas, Gnosis und Sptantiker Geist (Gttingen : Vandenhoek und Huprecht , 1954) , I, vii. Trans . 1. 1\ 1 Robinson, The ew Hermeneutic pp. 34-35.The autho r had first come to grips formally with the problem i n terms of th e hermeneutics of Church dogma in the first appendix to his earlier work (soon to be re-edited) ugustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem Forschungen zur Religion un d Literaturdes lten und Neuen Testaments (Gttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1930).

1 0 H. Jonas , The Gnostic Religion 1st ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1958), 2nd ed., paperback(Boston: Beacon, 1963).


7/28

H I GG R N GO

ized Christ iani ty in Heidegger' s thought and language. the earlyperiod, such concepts as guilt, concern, anxiety, cal l of conscience,resolution, fal lenness, authenticity-inauthentici ty, and in the laterperiod such terms as hearing, response, mission, shepherd, revelation, thanksgiving-all oi these characteristically Heideggereanterms have a profoundly Christian resonance. This accounts for theaffinity that the Christian thinker feels with Heidegger 's thought andexplains the desire to profit fron1 it. But herein lies the danger :

l-'he theologian must ask, before he re- imports his own original product:what have you done vith my little ones? in what company did you bringtheIn up ? ar e they still my uncorrupted children? can 1 take them back f romyou? and what, if I take them, will 1 take with them? 11Can Heidegger' s phi losophy be assimilatedby the Christian thinkerin part without taking the whole? Dr. Jonas says: No

What does Dr. Jonas see as belonging to the whole of Heideggerthat the Christian must accept if he takes the part? Firstly he mustaccept Heidegger's so-called fatalism :

Let us start with the idea of fate. It looms large in Heidegger's thinking andin his idea of thinking. Thinking s lot is cast by Being. Being speaks tothought, and what it speaks is thought's lot. Thinking about Being .has a fate-like character (or: is fate-Iaden : geschicklieh )

12

Whatever the purely philosophical value of the notion of Being asfate-ful, there is one exanlple of such a conception of destiny thatDr. Jonas is painfully aware of:

But as to Heidegger's Being it is an occurrence of unveiling, a fate-ladenhappening upon thought: so as the Fhrer an d the call of German destinyunder hirn: an unveiling of something indeed, a call of Being all r ight , fateladen in every sense: neither then no r now did Heidegger's thought providea norm by which to decide hO\iv to answer such calls Heidegger's ownanswer is, to the shame of philosophy, on record and, I hope, not forgotten .. . . The following quo ta tion from a proclamat ion by Heidegge r (then Rector)to the students oI the University of F re ib urg i n Novernber, 1933, serves asan example: N ot theorems and ideas be the rules of your Being. The Fhrer

11 H. J onas, Heidegger and Theology, vi w Metaphysics XVIII (DecembeL1964), 207 2.33 p. 214. Hereafter cited as: H. Jonas, H e idegge r and Theology. Citations in the present article have been made to conform to the published version, wh ichslightly expands and emends the text as delivered. For the sake of c la rit y an d consistencyin the exposit ion that folIows, however, we have taken the li be rty of e ap ita li zi ng th eword Be ing in Pro fes sor J on as ' tex t whenever it c1early refers to Heidegger 's Sein

12 H. Jonas, Heidegger an d Theology, p. 215.


8/28

20 THOUGHT

himse]J and alone is the present and future German reality an d its law. Learnever deeper to know: t ha t f rom now on each and every thing demands decision, and every action, responsihility. Heil Hitler 1 3

No,v a Christian-it is clear-and therefore the Christian theologian must reject any such idea of fate and history: For one thing, the Christian is said to be saved from the power of fate .. . . Second and more so, that which saved hirn was, hy the understandingof faith as distinct from the understanding of the world, not an event of theworld and thus not an event of fate, no r destined ever to become fate orpart of fa te itself, hut an event invalidating all the dicta of fate and overruling the words which fate speaks toman including the words of selfunveiling Being 14

But it is not only Heidegger's fatalism that is repugnant to Christ i n i t y ~Dr. Jonas claims, it is his paganism, too-paganism that deifies the world at the same time that it de-divinizes God. Heidegger deifies the world, for Being, according to hirn, is the Being that revealsthe beings of this world-ho kosmos houtos. Being, then, is essentiallyimmanent in the world. Yet Being is conceived as the Holy. He citesHeidegger's Letter on Humanism: Only from the t ru th of Beingcan the essence of the Holy be thought. Only from the essence of the

Holy is the essence of deity to be thought. Only in the light of theessence of deity can that be thought and said which the word 'God'should name 1 5 Is this not todeify the World?

But not only does Heidegger deify the world, he de-divinizes God .D-r. Jonas makes his point by a display of verbal jiuj itsu that he callsa stretch of rigorous dialectics. Respecting, apparently, what Heidegger calls the ontological difference, that is, the difference betweena being (that which is and Being itself (the process by which it isDr. Jonas argues thus:

13 H. Jonas , Heidegger and Theology, p. 218, inc luding note 7. In citing ProfessorJona s here we take the liberty of appending the footnote to the main text, for s uc h wast he version which was delivered a t Drew, a nd which occasioned the headlines in theNe w Yor k Times on the day following. Prof. Jonas ' i ta lies .

4 H. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, p. 217.

15 Erst aus der Wahrhei t des Seins lsst sich das Wesen des Heil igen denken. Erstaus dem Vesen des Heiligen is t das Wesen von Gottheit zu denken. Er st im Lichte desWesens von Gottheit kann gedacht und gesagt werden. was das Word 'Gott' nennensoll M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit it einem rief be r den Humanisrnus (Bern: Francke, 1947) , p. 102. Cp. p. 85. Trans . H . Jonas , He ideggerand Theology, p. 220. Prof. Jonas' t l ~ ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


9/28

HEI EGGER N GO

Beings are occasions for the experiencing of Being; God is a being; thusGod, when encountered, is an occasion for the experiencing of Being. Being isexperienced in heings as amazement at their heing (existing), Le., arnazement

that they ar e at all ; thus the experience of Being in God is amazernent at hisexisting at alle Amazement at something heing at all is to think with its Beingits not-heing or its contingency; thus the experiencing of Being in theencounter with God is the th ink ing of the not-being an d the contingency ofGod 16

All this is said with a lip service to the ontological difIerence. Butwhen al l is said and done, does this difIerence real ly make muchdifIerence? Does not Heidegger really coneeive of Being as beingafter all?

Indeed how can one speak of Being s activity an d man s receptivity, ofthe forrner s having and heing a fate, heing event, no t only making possiblethought hu t giving thought, clearing or ohscuring itself in such thought, having voice, cal ling to man, entrust ing itself to man s care, appropr ia ting hirninto its own care, favoring him, enlisting his loyalty, summoning his gratitude,hu t also needing him how can one attribute all this to it unless one understands it as an agency an d apower as some sor t of subject? 11

Once Dr. Jonas has underscored Heidegger s apparent fatalismand paganism, he speIls out certain un-Christian consequences that

the Christian theologian would have to aecept if he wished to strueture his thought in those terms. First he would have to face the consequences of apermanent Tevelation, where future revelations are notprejudged by past revelations and no one revelation supplies anauthoritative criterion by which others are to he judged. 18 Secondlyhe would have to live with the enormous arrogance oI Heidegger sthought, that is, the claim that througll him speaks the essence ofthings itself, the claim to be, following the insinuation of Nietzsehe slllocking allusion to Schopenhauer, the ventriloquist of Being. 19 Not

the least sign of that ,arrogance for Jonas is the abiding desire ofI-Ieidegger to transcend the world of subjeets and objeets, a relationship which Jonas sees as a God-given privilege of the human conditionas such.

16 H. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, p 221.11 H. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, p 22318} 1. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, pp. 225 22819 H. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, pp. 228 229

H Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, p 230


10/28

22

HEIDEGGER

T OU T

1 Synoptic View

The indictment is a heavy one. is impossible to reply to it all.But I should like to review the main lines of Heidegger s effort, underlining those elements that have reference to the question of God.

Stretching over more than fifty years, Heidegger s efIort, as nodoubt that of any major thinker, may be viewed either in its unity orits diversity, synoptically or genetically. For the sake of clarity ofpresentation, let us begin with the synoptic view. But even a synopticview cannot dispense from a look at the first moment fifty-eight yearsago when the long way began. At the age of eighteen, while s til l astudent in the Gymnasium at Constance, when he was at the education level of a college sophomore, he received from a priest-friend,Conrad Grber, a copy of the doctoral dissertation of the neoscholastic thinker Franz Brentano, written in 1862, entitled TheManifold Sense 0/ Being in Aristotle (where being translates theGerman Seiendes and the Greek on Of this first experience Heidegger writes in 962: On the title page of his work, Brentano quotes Aristotle s phrase : to onlegetai pollachs I t rans la te : A being becomes manifest (sc. wi th regard toits Being) in many ways. Latent in this phrase is the question that determined the way of my thought: what is the pervasive, simple, unified determination oE Being that permeates all of its multiple meanings? This question ra ised ano ther : what, then, does Being mean? To what extent (why an dhow) does the Being of beings unfold in the four modes which Aristotleconstantly affirms, bu t whose common or igin he leaves undetermined. Oneneed bu t ru n over the names assigned to them in the language of the philosophical tradition to be struck by the fact that they seem at first irreconcilable:: Being as property, Being as possibility and actuality, Being astruth, Being as schema of the categories. What sense of Being comes to ex

pression in these four headings. How can they be brought into comprehensible accord?

This accord can not be grasped without first raising and settling the question: whence does Being as such (not merely beings as beings) receive itsdetermination ?21

. . Brentano setzte auf das Ti te lblat t seiner schrift den Satz des Aristoteles:t legetai pollachs Ich bersetze: Das Seiende wird (nmlich hinsichlich seinesSeins) in vielfacher Weise offenkundig. In diesem Satz verbirgt sich die meinen Denkweg bestimmende rage Welches ist die alle mannigfachen Bedeutungen durchhe rrschende einfache, einheitliche Bestimmung von Sein? Diese Frage weckt die folgenden:


11/28

H I GG R N GO 23

It is irnportant that we understand clearly how Heidegger experiences beingsan d how he poses the questin about the Beingo beings.In the same texti 1962 he continues:

Meanwhile a decade went byan d a great deal of swerving and s tr ay ingthrough the history of Western philosophy was needed for the above questions to reach even an initial clarity. To gain th is claritythree insights weredecisive, though, to be sure,no t yet sufficient for theventure of analysing theBeing-question as a questionabout the sense of Being.

Dialogues with Husserl provided the imlmediate experience ofthe phenomenological methodthat prepared the coneept of phenomenology explainedin the introduction toSein u Zeit In this evolution a normat ive role wasplayed by the reference back to fundamental words of Creekthought whichI interpreted accordingly: logos (to make manifest) an d phainesthai (to showoneself).2 2

The influence o Husserl, then, cam e early and we cannt exaggerate its importance, fr the whle interrogation f Being and beings is conditioned by the initial experienceoI the phenomenologist:that a being is that which appears, s a being fr hirn nly insofar asit appears.

Was heisst denn Sein? Inwiefern (weshalbund wie) entfaltet sich das Sein des Seienden

in die von Aristoteles stetsnu r festgestellten, i n i hr er gemeinsamen Herkunft unbestimmtgelassen vier Weisen? Es gengt, diese in de r Sprache der philosophischen berlieferung auch nur zu nennen, um von dem zunchst unvereinbar Erscheinendenbetroffen zu werden: Sein als Eigenschaft, Sein als Mglichkeitun d Wirklichkeit, Seinals Wahrhei t, Sein als Schema der Kategorien. eIcher Sinn von Sein spricht in diesenvier Titeln? Wie lassen sie sich in einen verstehbaren Einklang bringen?

Diesem Einklang knnen wi r erst dann vernehmen, wenn zuvor gefragtun d geklrtwird: Woher empfngt das Sein als solches nich t n ur das Seiende als Seiendes) seineBestimmung? -l\1. Heidegger, Preface to W. J. Richardson, S.J., Heidegger: ThroughPhenomenology to Thought Phaenomenologica, No. 13 The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), p. xi.Fo r the sake of clarity, the reader should be aW8lre that the word being when capitalized (Being) t ranslates Heidegger s Sein and when not capital ized being) translatesHeidegger s Seiendes (that-which-is.)

22 Indes verging ein Jahrzehnt, und es bedurfte vieler Um- un d Abwege durch dieGeschichte de r abendlndischen Philosophie hindurch, bis auch nur die genanntenFragen in eine erste Klarheit gelangten. Dafr waren drei Einsichten entscheidend, diefrei lich noch nicht ausreichten , um eineErrterung der Seinsfrage als Frage nach demSinn von Sein zu wagen.

Durch die unmittelbare Erfahrung der phnomenologischen Methode in Gesprchen mitHusserl bereitete sich de r Begriff von Phnomenologie vor, de r in der E in le it un g zu Sein und Zeit 7 ) darges te ll t ist. Hierbei spiel t die Rckbeziehungau f die entsprechend ausgelegten Grundworte des griechischen Denkens:logos (offenbar machen)un d phainesthai (sich zeigen) eine massgebendeRolIe. -M. Heidegger, Preface toRichardson, Heidegger: , p. xi.


12/28

24 T OU T

But it was not only Husserl that marked hirn:

A renewed study of the Aristotelian treatises (especially Book IX of theMetaphysics an d Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics resulted in the insight

into Aletheuein [the verbal form of the Greek word for t ru th ] as the processof revealment, an d in the characterization of truth as nonconcealment, towhich all self-manifestation of beings pertains 23

In other words, he finds in Aristotle justification for the experienceof the phenomenologist that a being is that which is manifest to hirn,is present to hirn as manifesting itself for what it so Being itself, then,would be the structure or the process that enables a being to becomemanifest as what it is, the is-ing of what so Now for a being to becomemanifest, i t must be thought of as somehow emerging out of a condition in which was not manifest in which it was concealed), so thatit thereby becomes un-concealed. The Being of such a being will bethe process hy which it becomes un-concealed. Now the Creek wordfor concealment, as w know, is lethe. The alpha privative negates it.What is un-concealed a being, that is) is a-lethes, which we normallytransla te by the word true. The process by which this non-concealment comes-to-pass (the Being of this being) is aletheuein, the coming.to-pass of truth.

Heidegger s initial ex,perience with Brentano was his introductionto philosophy. Through Brentano, then, his first real master wasAristotle, and was under the aegis of the great Stagirite that helearned the meaning of metaphysics. Fo r Aristotle, what w now callmetaphysics (whatever the history of the word itself) meant firstphilosophy ; it meant posing the question : ti t on hei on; what ar ebeings as beings? But for Heidegger the question already was whatis the Being Sein of beings Seiende , and to his disappointmenthe found that Aristotle never posed the question in these terms. Letus pause here amoment, for the point is crucial.

Tbe question of Being as Heidegger experiences it is differentfrom the question about beings as posed by Aristotle. For Being is nota heing. In the Letter Humanism 1947) he writes:

23 E in erneutes Studium der Aristotelischen Abhandlungen (im besonderen desneunten Buches der Metaphysik und des sechsten Buches der Nikomachischen Ethik)ergab den Einblick in das aletheuein als entbergen und die Kennzeichnung der Wahrheitals Unverborgenheit, in die alles Sichzeigen des Seienden gehrt -M . Heidegger, Preface to Richardson, Heidegger: , pp. x-xiii.


13/28

HEIDEGGER N GO

Being, indeed, what is Being? I t is not God, nor [same] ground ofthe warld. Being isbroader than all beings-and yet is nearer to man thanall beings, whether they ar e rocks, animals, works of art , machines, angels

or God. Being is what is nearest [ to m an ]. Yet this nearness remains farthestremoved from hirn : 4

Being lis not a being, because it is that which enables heings to hemanifest (unconcealed) to man and men to each other. I t is nearestto man hecause it makes him to be what he is. Yet it is farthestremoved from hirn because it is not a being with which man, structUTed as he is to deal with beings, can comport himself.

From the point of view of heings, Being encornpasses them all, justas a domain of openness encompasses what is found within it. Beingis adomain of openness precisely hecause it is the lighting processhy which heings are lit up. If these beings be subjects or objects,then the light itself is neither subject nor object but between themhoth, enabling the encounter between subject and object to comeabout. 25

If Being is not a being, nor the surn total of them, the process ofnonconcealment (truth, or truth-ing) has a built-in not characterto it that contracts, constricts, or hides it within the beings it lets be(manifest ). As a result, if we try to describe Being merely in termsof tlle beings that it is not, then the most we can say about it, perhaps, is that it is not a being; and if for amoment and simply forpurposes of exposition, we cal l every being a thing, theu Being isnot a thing, i t is No-thing, i t is Nothing Nichts). Being Sein andNothing Nichts) ar e one.

In the early years, Being precisely as No-thing Nichts) is thema-

4 Doch das Sein-was ist das Se in? Das i st n icht Gott und nicht ein Weltgrund.Das Se in ist weiter denn alles Seiende und ist gleichwohl dem Menschen nhe r als j edes

Seiende, sei dies ein Fels, ein Tier, ein Kunstwerk, eine Maschine, sei es ein Engeloder Gott. Das Sein ist das Nchste. Doch die Nhe bleibt dem Menschen am weitesten .. . . -M . Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem Brief ber den Human-ismus (Bern: Francke, 1947), p. 76 (Writer s translation).

5 Here and in the exposition that folIows, the writer is utilizing the entire textualbasis on which his Ionger study (W. J Richardson, S J Heidegger: Through Phenom-enology Thought, Preface by Martin Heidegger, Phaenomenologica , No 13 [TheHague: Nijhoff, 1963]) rests. The reader who wishes a ful ler explanation than is offeredin the present article , or det ail ed documentation from the works of Heidegger himself,will be able to find them in the Jonger study with the help of its General Index. Inprinc ipIe we shal l footnote in these pages only the sources of di rect citations. Translations are the wri ter s own.


14/28

26 T OU T

tized often enough. s Heidegger proceeds along the way, Being ismore disengaged as something positive. Fo r example, in 1950 hemeditates i t precisely as nearness. He takes as his star ting point thefact that modern means of travel and communication have reducedenormously the distance between man and the things with which hedeals. Yet diminished distance need not mean that things are genuinely nearer to man, for no matter how close they come to hirn physically, they are genuinely neal only when they are comprehended inthat which renders them near, that is, in their nearness as such. Heproposes, then, to meditate the things that are near precisely in theirdimension of nearness. This means to meditate them as near, as whatthey are, that is, to meditate things as things. Thus begins the essayentitled T he Thing.

H, then, Heidegger s primary concern is Being, not beings, and ifmetaphysics, as Aristotle describes it and the tradition after hirnconceives it, is concerned with beings as beings, then Heidegger is notconcerned with metaphysics at all. But if it is Being that lets the beingsof metaphysics be manifest to the metaphysician, then Being lies atthe basis of metaphysics, it is its foundation 01 ground. That is whyHeidegger conceives his task as laying the foundation (digging the

ground) for metaphysics; the Being question is the ground questionof metaphysics. Sein und Zeit he describes his task as developinga fundamental ontology, that is, as laying the foundation of metaphysies. the later years he speaks rather of overcoming metaphysics, by thinking precisely the origins Wesen of metaphysies,and he cloes so by a wesentliches Denken, that is, by a foundationalthought.

t is important for our undel s tanding of the problem of God thatwe understand how Heidegger conceives the structul e of metaphysics.

To interrogate beings as beings involves, he claims, a certainambiguity. The phrase might suggest the common denominator ofbeings, what scholastics call being in general . this sense metaphysics is identical with ontology (01 onto-Iogy) though the wordwas not used before the seventeenth century. Again, to consider beings as beings may mean to consider them in their ultimateground in so me sort of supreme being normal ly called divine, 01

26 M Heidegger, Das Ding, Vortrge und ll stze (Pful lingen: Neske, 1954) , pp.163185.


15/28

H I GG R N GO

god theos . Metaphysics in this sense would inevi tably be a theology. Now the ambigu ity that perrnits metaphysics to become on theone hand onto-Iogy and on the other theo-Iogy, is, for Heidegger, built

into tlle fonnula on i on itself. That is why he maintains that metaphysics is of its own nature onto-theo-Iogy.

One more step and we come to Dr. Jonas-and God. Why is it,after all, that the formula gives rise to this anlbiguity? The reason,we are told, lies in the nature of on itself. Grammatically i t is a participle and as such may be used either as a noun fo r example, cana human being live on the moon ? ) or as an adjective with a verbalsense being anxious to explore the moon, we mnst know ). Moreprecisely, on when taken as a noun, means that which is, that is, a

being Seiendes ; taken as a verbal adjective, it designates the process by which a being a s noun) is, t hat is, its Beillg Sein . Theword itself, then, comport ing both senses is int rins ical ly ambivalentand i t is because on can mean either Being, or beings, or both thatthe interrogation of on i on can evolve either as a meditation onbeing in general onto-Iogy) or as ult imate ground theo-Iogy) . Inother words, the onto-theo-Iogical structure of metaphysics for Heidegger is rooted ultimately in the intrinsic ambivalence of on

But what is this ambivalence, a ft er a ll ? Nothing else but the correlation in a single word of being as noun and being as verbaladjective, of beings and Being. Now we could not speak of ambivalence, of duality, of correlation at al l unless there were a diIJer-ence between Being and beings, and from the very beginning Heidegger has called it the ontological difference. l ~ process of truthor truth-ing by which beings emerge out of concealment into nonconcealment is nothing more or less than the coming-to-pass of theontological difference. This is clear if we recall for a moment theinaugural address of 1929 when he formula tes the ground questionof metaphysics by using the formula of Leibniz: Why are therebeings at al l and not much rather Non-being? Fo r Leiblliz, of course,the formula asks effectively about a Supreme Being that grounds al lother beings and therefore is an eminently metaphysical question.For Heidegger, the question means: How is it possible that beings,independently of where they might have come from, who or what may have caused them as metaphysics understands theseterms, can manifest) as beings? In other words, it is a question


16/28

28 THOUGHT

ahout the coming-to-pass of the nonconcealment of beings, ahout theemergenceof the ontological difference.

As time goes on and his language clarifies, it hecomes more and

more clear that whatrea11y interests hirn is notso much the meaningof Heing hut the meaning of the ontological difference as such. Inlater years he meditates it under different guises: sometimes asUnterschied (difference), sometimes asAustrag (the issuing forth ofBeing-beings), sometimes asEreignis (the e-vent out of which thedifIerence arises). Most recently, in a lecture still unpublished (asfa r as I know) , delivered at Freiburg,January 30, 1962, he took ashis theme Zeit und Sein Time and Being. The title was deliberately evocative, for everyone knows that his major achievementSein

und Zeit was only the firstpa rt of a projected work. Tbe secondpartneveJr appeared hut wasto have been entitledZeit und Sein (Timeand lBeing). To deliberately choose Time and Being as the title ofa public lecture at Freiburg of a11 places) was to deliberately courtthe impression that the lecture itself would indicate the continuityofhis present thought with the first work. What did the lecture turn outto he? A meditation on the formulaees gibt Sein s gibt Zeit ( Beingis gramted, Time is granted ) together with the correlation betweenthe nl O But what is the Es that gibt? What is it that does the grant

ing? Answer: Ereignis the e-vent of the ontological difference. In1959 he had said that which brings about the e-vent is the e-ventitself m Now in 1962 he says: This [e-vent] is not something new hut the most ancient of ancients in occidental thought, theprimal ancient that hides itself under the nameAletheia m

Very nice, hut what hasa11 thatto do with God? In Fehruary, 1957,Heidegger hirnself took over the closing sessionof a seminar that hadmeditated Hegel s Science Logic He seized the opportunitytoshow how his own philosophical reflection differed from that of

HegeL In the hriefest terms it is this: Hegel supposes the ontologicaldifference in order to think heings in terms of Being, conceivedasAhsolute Tbought; Heidegger thinks the ontological difference s

27 Das Ereignende ist das Ereignisselbst-und nichts ausserdem -M .Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), p.258

28 dass dieses [Ereignis] nicht einmal etwas Neues ist, sondern das lteste desAlten im abendlndischen Denken, das Uralte, das sich in dem NamenAletheia verbirgt. ~ I . Heidegger, Zeit und Sein, cited according to auditor s notes with ProfessorHeidegger s permission.


17/28

HEIDEGGER N GO 9

such that is, as the e-vent out of which Being and beings issue. Thelecture itself is entitled, however, T he Onto-theo-logical Structure ofMetaphysics, and after sketching his own differentiation from Hegel,

he proceeds to meditate the e-vent of the ontological differenee as itgives issue to metaphysics in its essentially onto-theo-Iogical structure. The significallt question for Heidegger is not: How does metaphysics come to God, but rather, How does Gad come into metaphysics, that is, whence comes this onto-theo-Iogieal structure?

Fo r Heidegger, the God of metaphysics is conceived fundamentallyas Supreme Being who is essentially Cause Cause of eings otherthan Hirnself, Cause of Hinlself ausa sui in the Cartesian-Spinozansense of that term. Furthermore, as Heidegger sees it, the God of

metaphysics is accessible only by a metaphysical thought, that is, bya thought directed only toward beings. Ultimately such a thought iscontrolled by the laws of logic which is always thought about something, about some object of thought. Metaphysical thought, he wouldsay, is essentially conceptual, presentative, objectifying thought-when all is said and done, it reduces God, even as ausa sui to anobject, that is, ofthought.

If this be the God of metaphysics, then, Heidegger says: To [such a] God man can neither pray nor offer sacrifice. Before the ausa su i man can not fall on his knees in awe; in the presence of a God likethis he can not make musie and danee. So it is that a god-Iess thought [ i.e. ,a foundational thought which does not pose the question of God hu t onlyinterrogates the ontological differenee], whieh must forfeit the God of philosophy, God as ausa sui is perhaps eloser to the God who is divine. Herethis says only: [such a thoughtJ is freer f or [the divine God] than ontotheo-Iogic would care to admit. 9

And now a word for Dr. Jonas. He criticizes the so-called immanentism of Heidegger, profoundly pagan because it deifies this

world. I take hirn to mean that Heidegger s Being is essentially aBeing of this world and that it dei fies this world because,in Dr. Jonas

9 Zu diesem Gott kann der Mensch weder beten, noch kann er ihm opfern.Vor dem Causa sui kann der Mensch weder aus Scheu ins Knie fallen, noch kann er vordiesem Gott musizieren und tanzen.

Demgemss ist das gott-lose Denken, das den Gott der Philosophie, den Gott alsCausa sui preisgeben muss, dem gttlichen Gott vielleicht nher. Dies sagt nu r: Esist freier fr ihn, als es die O n t o T h e o ~ o g i kwahrhaben mchte. M. Heidegger,Identitt und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), pp. 7071.


18/28

30 T OU T

eyes, l leing is identical vvith God. Against this, theology shouldguard the radical t ranscendence of God, whose voice comes not out ofBeing but breaks into the kingdom of Being from without. 30

It is important here to keep clearly in mind that we are concernedfor the moment with Heidegger hirnself and not with the use that hasbeen nlade of hirn by theologians. Heidegger is a phi losopher andpretends to be no more, an d by Dr. Jonas own definition, as given atDrew, :philosophy is the elucidation of the nature of reality by sec-ular thought. 31 T he nature of rea li ty as elucidated by Heideggeris reality as experienced by the phenomenologist , wherein beings are insofar as they ar e manifest , insoIar as they appear to man.Being, then, as that which enables beings to becomemanifest, is es-

sentially revelation-revelation of a secular kind. It should not besurprising that the revelation continues as long as beings are, northat it should be of this world. This is why Heidegger has insistedso strongly from the beginning that Being itself, as he has experiencedit, is not and cannot be God.

Why, then, call this paganism? Whatever his l imitat ions, one thingthat Heidegger does not do is dei fy the world. II Heidegger speaks ofBeing as the Holy, this came abaut because it was under this guisethat he :finds Being in the experience of the German poet, Friederich

Hlderl in. Having shared that experience, he can now write (and Dr.Jonas cites the passage): . . . Only in terms this essence of theHoly is the essence of divinity to be thought. Only in the light theessence of divinity can be thought and uttered what the word Godshould name 32

As Heidegger sees it, then, he too would want to guard the radicalt ranscendence of God whose voice comes not out of Being bu t breaksinto the kingdom of Being from without. As a matter of fact he wouldbe rather interested himself to hear Dr. Jonas stretch of rigorous

dialectics in which he speaks this radically transcendent God.He would at first be chagrined perhaps that any student his couldso grossly have misunderstood the phenomenological character the

3 H. J onas , Heidegger and Theology, p. 219.31 H. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, p 210.3 Erst aus dem Wesen des Heiligen ist das Wesen von Gottheit zu denken.

Erst im Lichte des Wesens von Gotthei t kann gedacht und gesagt werden, was das Wort Gott nennen soll -M . Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit Mit einemBrief ber den Humanismus (Bern: Francke, 1947), p 102


19/28

HEIDEGGER N GO

ontologieal differenee. But then he would be bemllsed to hear how this transcendent God ean be loeked up in a s tretch of rigorous dialeet ic . He would be interested to know if in Dr. Jonas eyes this meta

physieal God of whom he speaks, who yields so easily to his owndialect ical rigor, who accepts without protest this slavery to logieal humanly logical) thought-Heidegger would be interested to know,I say, if Dr. Jonas really thinks that this is the God whose voiee comes no t out of Being but breaks into Being from without. Is this the Godbefore whom David daneed?

In meditating Being as the Holy I take Heidegger to intend thatwhile rejecting the God of ,metaphysics because it is not divineenough, he ,vould be endeavoring to explore that dimension of hUlnan

experience which would enable hirn to reeognize God s voiee as divine, if He s:peaks, and in answer eall God God.

Genetic Vieu

What w have said so far eoncerns the synoptie view. We tried togather into single foeus what seems to he the heart of Heidegger sthought: to interrogate the foundations of n1etaphysics in ternlS of thee-vent of truth A-Ietheia) out oi which hoth Beings and beings issueforth. We eome now to a more genetic view of Heidegger as he hasdeveloped through the years.

After Heidegger left the GymnasiunL in Constanee he began hisadvanced studies at Freiburg and spent his first three semesters as aseminar ian studying theology. There in the courses of Sac red Scripture he learned the meaning of the word hermeneutic. At the sametime he experieneed some vague relat ionship between Being and language, between the self-revealing God and the language of SaeredScripture, between the word of God and the speculation of theologlans.

In the years that followed the relat ion of Being and language wasoften interlaced with his work. It had a significanl role to play in thehabilitation thesis of 1915, Duns Scotus Doctrine on Categories andS i g n i f i c a t i o n ~y 1920 when he gave his course on Express ion andAppearing, it was clear to his students at least that the Being-Ianguage problem was central to his thought.

33 M. Heidegger, Die [ ategorien- un d Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotlls Tbingen:1916).


20/28

T OU T

In the summer semester of 1923, Sein und Zeit began to take writ ten form, and for the first time the word hermeneutic appeared inthe title of a university lecture course on Ontology. After meetingthe word first in his theology courses, he found again in Diltheywho ha d taken it from the same source, theology in particular fromthe theological writings of Schleiermacher, who ha d given to the wordthe broad meaning of an art by which one correctly understands andjudges thewritings of another. It was an easy step to expand this meaning of hermeneutic still further so that it could apply to any typeof interpreta tion whatever, even of the plastic arts. All this maturedslowly. As Sein und Zeit crystall ized, the author began to conceive hermeneutic more radically still. It would mean for hirn not simpl y a manner of interpretation, but interpretation itself would be conceived in terms of a sti ll more fundamental process of hermeneutic.

How was the process to be understood? Heidegger went to the radical sense of hermeneuein, which, he maintains, bears profound affinity with the Creek god, Hermes, herald of the gods. Hermeneuein forthe mattLring Heidegger came to mean to play the role of herald, tobear tidings, or, more simply, to make something manifest Dar.legen . What for hirn must be made manifest, ever since the philosophical awakening with Brentano, is the Being of beings in its difference from beings. So it happened that hermeneutic came to meanthe entire effort to let Being be manifest, the effort to lay the foundation of metaphysics.

But at the start, i t was not explicitly the foundation of metaphysicsas such that preoccupied hirn. Assistant to Husser until invited toMarburg in 1923, the young Heidegger gave his first loyalty to phe.nomenologyand sought simply to think the essence of phenomenologyin its origins, so as to give to it a rightful place in the philosophicalt radit ion of the West. I t is easy to see how hermeneutic (the processof letting-be-manifest) , and the combination of phainomenon thatwhich manifests i tself) with legein (to let-be-manifest) joined eachother to such an extent that hermeneutic and phenomenology be.came for Heidegger but one. hermeneutic retains a nuance of itsown, this is the connotation of language. At any rate, it was becausephenomenology seemed to offer promise of unfolding the hermeneuticthat Heidegger dedicated Sein und Zeit to Edmund Husserl.

In Sein und Zeit, how did the hermeneutic proceed? It is familiar


21/28

H I GG R N GO 33

to us. Heidegger will attempt to disengage the sense of Being. Thereis one being among the rest endowed with a privileged comprehensionof Being, called Dasein. Dasein then, will he the phenomenon par

excellence. Heidegger will let it show itself for what i t is. He will leti t be. What does the analysis reveal Dasein to be? Transcendence thatis finite, whose ultimate meaning is time.

Dasein is transcendent, that is, i t passes beyond all beings including i tsel f , beyond that level where beings are conceived as objectsopposed to subjects that is, beyond al l subject-ohject polarity tothe Being of beings.

This transcendence is finite, tllat is, it has a built-in not -eharacter negativi ty , that makes i t limited indeed: Dasein is not master of

its own origin; it simply finds itself in the Wor ld as a matter of fact,seems to be simply thrown there. Dasein is not independent of otherbeings; it is inextricably related to them. Dasein is not only relatedto other beings hut has a sort of drag toward them, a tendency to loseitself among them and forget its privilege of transcendence. Daseinis not capable of comprehending Being except in terms of beings;therefore for Dasein Being is essentially not-a-being, Non-being Nichts . Finally Dasein is not destined to be forever, it is destinedto .end. 1t is Being-unto-en,d and in man that end is death; i t is Beingunto-death.

D asein is, then, transcendence that is finite. It achieves its ownauthenticity when it recognizes and accepts itself as what it is. It c-cepts itself as transcendence, when it overcomes its tendency to loseitself among beings and to forget the Being that lets them he. It accepts itself as finite, when it consents to its own negativity, not in thesense of su-rrendering to an ineluctable fate, but simply in the senseof letting itself be, thereby achieving its freedom.

Dasein is finite transcendence and its ultimate meaning that is, thesource of its unity is time. s transcendence, Dasein is continuallypassing beyond beings to Being, that is, is continually coming to Beingin such a way that Being is continually coming to Dasein. This continual coming is Dasein s future. But Being comes to a Dasein thatalready is, and this condition of already-having-heen-this is Dasein spaste Being, then, comes as future to Dasein through Dasein as pasteFinally, because Being comes to Dasein i t renders beings manifest,that is, renders them present to Dasein and Dasein to them. Tha t is


22/28

34 T OU T

Dasein s present. Now the unity of future-past-present constitutes theunity of time so that the source of unity of Dasein is the uni ty of timeitself.

To achieve authenticity in terms of this temporal structure, Daseinmust say yes to its finite transcendence by lett ing Being continueto come to it through its past. This effort to let Being continue to comeout of the future and through the past is what Heidegger caIls Wiederholung. Let us translate re-trieve.

The use that Bultmann made of this analysis is now a commonplace. I would simply underscore the fact that nothing influenced hirnmore profoundly-and the whole conception of demythologizing isthe proof- than this notion of re-trieve, of letting Being come out of

the future through the past. Dr. Jonas at Drew, speaking for hirnselfas weIl as Bultmann, said: Th s the demythologizing meant the re-trieving of this substance fromthe ost compact, most unyielding, most extreme form of objectification inwhich it was locked up, and here indeed the categories evolved in Heidegger sanalysis of existence in Sein und Zeit offered a super ior means of bringing tolight the ground from which the projections of doctrine had risen and whichcontain their truth, So far, I think, I am in complete agreement with myfriend and teacher Bultmann 34

We shaIl return to this. Fo r the moment let me remark tha t thenotion of re-trieve, as indeed the whole analysis of Dasein upon whichProfessor Jonas friend and teacher Bultmann built his whole theology is based upon the principle that Dasein as transcendence, transcends first of aIl and most profoundly the subject-object relationship.How, then, in the same address can Dr. Jonas maintain that the subject-object relationship is intrinsic to the human condition as such,to the extent that Heidegger s effort to think beyond it would be theconsummate form of his presumption, hybris and arrogance?

After Sein und Zei t Heidegger continued along the way. Being ha dbeen disengaged through the analysis of Dasein as the process of nonconcealment, a-letheia truth), and the problem of truth itself ha dreceived a lengthy development. was not surprising then that threeyears later he would return to the problem, and in 1930 he deliveredfo r the first time the lecture known as On the Essence of Truth. 35

34 H. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, pp. 231-232.35 M. Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit 3rd ed. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1954).


23/28

H I GG R N GO 5

What is noteworthy is this: in meditating truth as a-letheia, as nonconcealment, he gradually came to the realization that the concealment somehow precedes the nonconcealment (darkness somehow pre

cedes the emergence into light , so that the revealing process is somehow prior to Dasetri and reveals itself (albeit in beings) to Dasein.To really think the Being-process, then, should one not tr y to thinkit from the point of view of Being i tse lf as revealing itself to Dasein,rather than from the point of view of Dasein as was done in Sein undZeit? With this new insight the so-called later Heidegger begins toappear.

In the years that follow, how does Heidegger endeavor to think theBeing-process from the viewpoint Being itself? Being is sti ll fun

d,amentally a-letheia, the process of nonconcealment, out of which theontological difference arises. But since Being reveals itse lf only inbeings, every revelation is finite, that is, in revealing itself in beingsas beings, it conceals itself in them as weIl. This process of revealment-concealment, when it is thought as proceeding from Being, maybe interpreted as if Being were sending itself to Dasein. Let us say,then, that Being sends itself, or e-mits sich schickt itself to Dasein.It sends itself to Dasein, therefore Dasein is part of the process;Dasein is com-mitted Schicksal in the e-vent. Taken together, thise-n1itting of Being and com-mitting of Dasein may he described as aunified e-vent and called mittence Geschick . This is the e-vent outof which the ontological difference issues forth.

What constitutesany epoch of time, now, is precisely this mittenceoI Being. Sometimes the epoch is conceived rather narrowly, in termsof a single person that characterizes it, for example, the epoch/mittence of Absolute Idealism in Hegel; sometimes i t is conceivedvery broadly, for example, as the whole history of metaphysics. Inany case, aseries of epochs/mittences Geschick-e constitute intermittence Ge-schick-te and this inter-mittence is what Heideggermeans hy history,that is, Being-as-history Geschichte .

What is the role of Dasein in al l this? If Being is essentiaIly aprocess of nonconcealment, that is, of revelation-a very secularrevelation, of course - then tl ere is no revealing unless there besomeone or sorne being to whom and for whom (better perhaps: inwhom) the revelation is made. That being is Dasein. Dasein is theDa des Seins, the There among beings where the e-vent of a-Ietheia


24/28

36 THOU HT

comes-to-pass. The There is essential to the process, it is correlativeto Being, i t lets the Being-process take place, it tends Being inheings--in this sense it is the shepherd oI Being. Its task is to be

correlative with Being. Sometimes the spontaneity oI Being is conceived as an address 01 a hail to Dasein. Dasein s correlation, then,means to respond to the hail , to correspond with Being, to acquiesceto Being s need. This acquiescence to Being as it comes-to-pass infinite ndttences-this is what Heidegger means hy thought.

Two precisions and we come immediately back to Dr. Jonas andDrewI The first concerns thought. Thought of such a kind that thinksBeing-as-history must be historical thought. What this means we seemost clearly in ~ case of dialogue with another thinker. Let us take

the mittence oI Being to Kant (the whole Kant book is an exampleof this). To think historically the mittence of Being to Kant meansto recognize at the outset that this mittence was finite, permeated bya not. To dialogue with Kant means to re-trieve that mittence toKant: to let Being come again (future) through what Kant said(past) and acquiesce to it by rendering it present in language now(present). Thought oI this nature that is structured by the unity oIIuture-past-present is proIoundly historical thought. And it meansthat the thinker may learn to say not what Kant said hut what he did

not say and could not say because the mittence was finite.The second precision is more concerned with Being. y dialoguing

in this historical fashion with Heracli tus, Heidegger makes anotherre-trieve We recall that in describing the phenomenology of Seinund Zeit as hermeneut ic there was implied a certain ambiguityof the word legein as meaning, on the one hand, to layout in the open(therefore to make manifest) , and, on the other, to art iculate speech.This amhiguity plagued Heidegger. Again and again he approachedit in terrns oI the problem of Logic logos . But in 1944 he achieved

area l hreak-through when he explicitly meditated the word logos asit appears in Heraclitus. 36 Heidegger endeavored to let Being comeagain to himselI through what Heracli tus said about logos and articulate in the present what Heraclitus did not say and could not say,na,mely this: that logos as the Being-process of gathering togetherbeings unto themselves, is as such the origin of language. Here at last

Heidegger, Logos, Vortrge und Au/stze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), pp.207229.


25/28

HEI EGGER AN D GOD 37

was the secret of hermeneutic: Being is not simply related to language; Being and Language-that is, original Language, Languagein its origins - are one. Everything that has been said up to now

about the Being-process as the e-vent out which the ontological difference issues is now to be said of aboriginal Language. Being forthe contemporary Heidegger is thought not only as A letheia. Being is Logos as weIl.

No wonder, then, that in the Consultation on Hermeneutics Heidegger s notion of foundational thinking should be at issue. No wonder,either, that Dr. Jonas incisive cr itique should cut into the issue sodeep. What more needs to be said hefore we conclude?

In the first place, there is one curious fact. Dr. J onas is quite

willing 1 make his own Heidegger s notion of re-trieve in Se in undZeit whereby Dasein achieves its authenticity because it lets Beingcome continually through the paste And yet foundational thinking ofBeing-as-event is nothingmore than letting Being come again throughwhat has been said by another poet or thinker, that is, through thepast. Foundational thought of the later Heidegger has exactly thesame structure as re-trieve in Sein und Zeit. What is the difference?In Sein und Zeit the accent was on Dasein; nO \\ it is on Being itself.But the shift of accent was imposed on Heidegger by a realiza tion ofthe nature of Being that Sein und Zeit discerned: Being as a letheia that is, as lethe [concealment] which precedes revelation), mustbe conceived as prior to man. How is it, then, that Dr. Jonas canaccept re-trieve in the ear ly Heidegger and reject it now when theonly shift is one of accent imposed by fidelity to the fundamental experience itself? I would wonder - this is said very respectfullywhether Dr. Jonas, together with his friend and teacher Bultmannhave any right to part of Heidegger (that is, the notion re-trieve)if they are not willing to accept hirn whole.

My second point concerns the claim that Heidegger, when all issaid and done, reall y conceives Being as a being: . . . F or surely a Being that acts must be; that which takes the init iat ive must exist;what reveals itself ha d a before when it kept hidden and thus has ab b d h f 8elng eyon t e act revea lng. . . .

Here, I think, the problem is one of language rather than of con-

31 See H. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, p. 2 538 H. J onas, Heidegger and Theology, p. 223


26/28

38 T OU T

eeption. But no one is more aware of the problem than Heidegger. Thediffieulty, he writes in 1957, lies in language. Ou r oeeidental Ianguages are [all] in one way or another languages of

metaphysieal thought 3 9 The reason why the second part of Seinun Zeit never appeared is that the neeessary language failed. Forthe lallguage of Sein und Zeit, despite Heidegger s own best efforts,remains a metaphysieal Ianguage - that is, onto-theo-logieal innature 4

But the question is not whether or not Heidegger s language is always llappy; the question is whether his insight is legitimate. Theessential, as fa r as I can see, is that his conception of Being in thelater period is as rigorously phenomenologieal as ever it was in Seinund Zeit. By that I mean that whatever is said about it is said in termsof that process of a-letheia that lets beings be un-concealed to Dasein.When Heidegger speaks of Being as holding the pri1macy, that ite-mits itself, reveals-coneeals itself, addresses a hail to Dasein, whatHeidegger is insisting on is that Dasein is not its souree. But when hespeaks of the eorrelation Zusammengehrigkeit) of Being an dDasein, of Being s need for its Da, he is reaffirming with a differentaecent what he said in Sein .und Zeii: there is Being only solong as Dasein is. . . 4 1

Finally I eome to the so-ealled fatalism of Heidegger. The word fateful translates geschicklieh, the adjectival form of Geschick that is, mittence of Being). Geschicklieh therefore means not fateful hut mittent. Here as hefore Heidegger is eoncemed witha phenomenon; what is significant only is that it as a matter of facttakes plaee. If we were to look for its proper equivalent in e in undZeit, it would be in the notion of matter-of-factness Faktizitt) orthrown-ness Geworfenheit) of Dasein. In any ease, Heidegger hasmore than once repudiated any notion of ineluctable necessity, suchas a dialectical process suggests; so much so that if one were to reproach hirn in this regard I would think it more valid to say not that

39 Das Schwierige liegt in der Sprache. Unsere abentlndischen Sprachen sind inje verschiedener Weise Sprachen des metaphysischen Denkens M . Heidegger,Identitt .und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), p. 72

40 See M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem Brief ber den Humanismus (Bern: Francke, 1947), p. 72

41 Allerdings nur solange Dasein ist . . . gibt es Sein. . . . -M. Heidegger, Seinund Zeit, 9th ed. (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1960), p. 2 2


27/28

I

HEI EGGER N GO D 39

history is unified by ineluctable necessity for Heidegger, but ratherthat i t has no unity at all.

If mittence is not fate, how explain Heidegger s capitulation toHitler? Here, I should like it understood that it is not my businessto justify before the eyes of men Heidegger s personal history. Butfor my part I am interested in the philosophy of Heidegger, I havenot nlarried hispolitical paste I suggest that w examine his philosophical experience and leave his conscience to God. The question is:Is there anything in the philo.sophy of Heidegger that compelled asurrender to Nazism? With reserve for better judgment, I think theanswer is no. An epoch of history is a mittence of Being, an e-ventof nonconcealment out oi which the difference between Being andbeings emerges. Heidegger s primal concern is viith the interrogationof that difference as sueh in its basic structure. In its deepest intentional l ontic considerations, whether in terms of politics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, existentialism, or Heidegger s own Nazi past,are philosophically irrelevant. The worst that can be said out of fairness to his philosophy in the context of the Nazi experience is notthat his philosophy compelled the capitulation but that i t was unableto prevent it.

CONCLUSION

Two years aga at a reception, someone who had read my bookmade reference to the chapter on the Epilogue to What etaphys-ics that begins (banally enough) hy saying: 1943 was a prolificyear. The gentleman said: I rememher 1943 weIl, Father. I wasjust talking t some of your friends about it, regaling them withamusing stories they laughed and laughed. You know in 1943 Iwas in one of the concentration camps. It was a very prolific yearindeed. On another more forlmal occasion, someone with the sameexperience asked: What do you see in Heidegger? What can youhope for as a Christian from the thought of that God-less man? Ineffect, the same question lies behind Dr. Jonas reproach to the theologians at Drew: M y theological friends, my Christian f r iends-don t you see what you are dealing with? Don t you sense if not seethe profoundly pagan character oi Heidegger s thought? 4

H. Jonas, Heidegger and Theology, p 219.


28/28

40 T OU T

Why are Christians interested in Heidegger s thought though histhought is a God-Iess thought? Because there is truth in Heideggerand wherever there is truth there is God. For a Christian the Wordof God, the eternal Logos, became man, and at one moment in Hishistory, quiteaware of the malice of men, He said I am thetruth Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. 43 We maytake this to mean I am the truth. anyone attends to the truth, it isMy voiee that he hears.

What precisely that truth in Heidegger may be, may be difficultto say. Perhaps it is only a philosophical truth: the ontological difference as such. But that much would be gain. Perhaps there is in hirna theological truth. Whether or not there is truth to be gained in Heidegger s own suggestion of the analogy between his thinking and theology remains to be seen. It would be based on the analogy that wouldsay: as foundational thinking is to the e-vent of the ontological difference, so theological thinking (the thinking of faith) is to the revealing word of God. But here the matter is difficult and it must beleft to the theologians themselves.

What do we Christians hope for from Heidegger? That he quit hisway, do penance and return to the Father s house? Not necessarily.Fo r my part 1 would hope that he would simply be true to hirnself,follow his call, pursue his way to the end. Will this bring hirn to God?That is beside the point. The question is not how Heidegger comesto God but how God comes to Martin Heidegger. is is the advent inwhich a Christian hopes: the voice of a radical ly transcendent Godcomes not out of Being a phenomenologist s Being but breaks intothis kingdom from without.

any ma n is t rue to hirnself within the kingdom of Being, if heremains attentive to th e most ancient of ancients in western thought t h primal ancient that hides itself und er the name of truth, thevoice of a radically transcendent God can at least make itself heard.If true to himself, Heidegger responds to Being as Holy and beginsto comprehend the meaning of divine, then perhaps he will recognize that voice if i t speaks and at long last be able to cal l God God.

4 lohn 14 ; 6 and 18: 37.

william richardson heidegger and god and professor jonas

Documents