For the time Being: Heidegger's Final Words in Vorläufiges I-IV (original) (raw)
Related papers
2014
Martin Heidegger is the 20th century theology philosopher with the greatest importance to theology. A cradle Catholic originally intended for the priesthood, Heidegger's studies in philosophy led him to turn first to Protestantism and then to an atheistic philosophical method. Nevertheless, his writings remained deeply indebted to theological themes and sources, and the question of the nature of his relationship with theology has been a subject of discussion ever since. This book offers theologians and philosophers alike a clear account of the directions and the potential of this debate. It explains Heidegger's key ideas, describes their development and analyses the role of theology in his major writings, including his lectures during the Nazi era. It reviews the reception of Heidegger's thought both by theologians in his own day (particularly in Barth and his school as well as neo-Scholasticism) and more recently, suggesting throughout directions for theology's possible future engagement with Heidegger's work.
Hearing the Silent Call of the Last God: On Heidegger's Mythical and Prophetic Language
2022
In this article, I argue that Heidegger's notion of "God(s)" can only be properly understood through a new phenomenological interpretation of his esoteric/private writings of the 1930s and 1940s. Through this interpretation, I will hold that Heidegger built a philosophy, heavily based on poetic devices, in which an "ontic atheism" is the condition of possibility of a true understanding of the divine, and therefore of the sacred, as the phenomenological dimension of the world that is beyond any kind of human technical and scientific reductionism. Until 1928, Heidegger maintained that true philosophy has to be methodologically atheistic , and that his own thinking denied the ontic existence of God. Nevertheless, after being unable to write the projected second part of Sein und Zeit due to the insufficiencies of traditional metaphysical language, Heidegger started to use poetic and prophetic language around the concept of being. In Beiträge, Heidegger talked about a future and mysterious "Last God" linked to a new understanding of being in general, hidden now in the epoch of planetary technique. In his Brief über den Humanismus, Heidegger rejected Sartre's consideration of his own philosophy as atheistic, and in other texts Heidegger divided the world into earth, sky, mortals, and the god(s). Finally, in his 1966 Der Spiegel interview, Heidegger famously held that only a God can save us. Simultaneously, however, Heidegger presented his thinking as a Destruktion of onto-theology , understood as the worldview that considers God as the Supreme Being that explains all the other entities. Moving away from the most common interpretations, my paper will investigate who this enigmatic God is, and why did Heidegger decide to combine the language of philosophy, poetry, and prophecy in order to lead towards a deeper understanding of existence.
Anna Varga-Jani, 2020
The question of whether Heidegger's phenomenological contribution to the philosophy of being originates from his pre-philosophical attitude to theology or rather, it is the methodological question of phenomenology which influenced his thinking , is one of the most essential questions in Heidegger-research. Though, this has already been elaborated on in a broader sense, the publication of the Black Notes has opened new dimensions for discussion. It is not the aim of this paper to represent Heidegger's concept of the history of being in the light of the new debates, but rather to confirm the thesis, that, in spite of the 'turn'; in Heidegger's thinking, his phenomenological hermeneutics was inspired, above all, by his reflection on Chris-tianity. Moreover, the paper will question whether the linearity of Heidegger's thinking about the historical being remains on the horizon of the religious phenomenon, as it is thematized in his early papers and lectures. While Heidegger's early phe-nomenological approaches to religion and theology have been sufficiently elaborated on by several authors, and the phenomenological-hermeneutical relevance has been proven in his thinking, the linkage between the early philosophical approaches to the problem of religiosity and of historical being arising newly in Heidegger's thinking from the 1930s is missing. The present paper will not just refer to the thesis that Heidegger's theological background contributed to his questioning of being, and that it was influenced in different ways, but makes an attempt to reveal the internal dynamics of Heidegger's early thinking prior to the publication of Being and Time and the time of composing the Contributions to Philosophy of those of Heidegger's lectures which remain in the parallel analysis of religiosity and historicity.
Scholarship in Heideggerian philosophy can be broadly differentiated into three groups, which evolved in the European and Anglo-American discourses after WWII, namely, first a transcendental (idealist Kantian) approach; second, an Aristotelian approach; and third, a Christian approach to Heidegger's analytic of Dasein and his fundamental ontology. All of these basic positions are a result of Heidegger's philosophy on his way to Being and Time (1927) which he developed both in his broad ranging and fascinating lecture courses in Freiburg, where he taught as Husserl's assistant between 1917 and 1923, and in Marburg, where he taught between 1923 and 1927 (before he returned to Freiburg in 1928 as Husserl's successor).
Heidegger's Notion of Religion: the limits of being-understanding
2010
The engagement with Heidegger's interpretation of primal Christianity 1 is not a new topic of debate and there have been various excellent commentaries on this topic. The aim of this paper will not be to repeat or dispute these previous discussions, but rather, to posit Heidegger's relationship with the question of religion in a new light. The aim of this paper is to disclose how religion is conceived in Heidegger's path of thinking, and further, how the phenomenon of religion poses problems for Heidegger's path of thinking.
Neither Philosophy nor Theology: The Origin in Heidegger's Earliest Thought
Open Theology, 2021
The Origin," one of Martin Heidegger's most important notions after 1934, is tightly related to being-historical thinking, and to the peculiar kind of divinity that being-historical thinking indicates. However, the notion of the Origin appears already in Heidegger's early Freiburg lectures (given between 1919 and 1923), thus placing it among the fundamentals of his early thought. This article argues that Heidegger's project of fundamental ontology emerges from that early notion of the Origin, preparing the way for its flourishing in his later thinking. Attending to Heidegger's early notion of the Origin, I suggest, reveals a unique feature of Heidegger's thinking; namely, an element of genuine religiosity ungraspable in terms of both philosophy and theology. Thus, rather than interpreting fundamental ontology as a transcendental project encompassing a de-theologized version of early Christianity, it should be taken as an attempt to think the truth of the Origin, thus preparing the way for the genuine religiosity of Heidegger's later thought. In this light, a unique sense of divinity underlies Heidegger's lectures between 1919 and 1925; a sense which can only be comprehended through Heidegger's triple sense schema (enactment-relation-content).