Review of Stanley Rosen, The Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger (original) (raw)

THE POSITIVE TASK FOR THEOLOGY IN HEIDEGGER'S PHILOSOPHY OF BEING

What is the relation of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of Being to theology? In Philosophical Myths of the Fall Stephen Mulhall observes that Heidegger “consistently claims that his existential analytic of Dasein is scrupulously neutral with respect to theological matters – neither supposing nor criticizing them.” Insofar as Heidegger’s existential ontology is a transcendental philosophy intended to elucidate the conditions of knowledge, Mulhall has a point. Heidegger seems to do little more than explain how it is that we believe what we believe, albeit in a manner that is radically different from that of either Kant or Husserl. However, Heidegger also expresses considerable antipathy toward the positive sciences of anthropology and theology. He believes that they have covered over and conceal the question of the meaning of Being, and cautions against the habit of conflating objectively present entities with ontological grounds during a flight from oneself into the “inauthentic they.” This is hardly neutral language with respect to the positive sciences in which theology is implicated. But just as Heidegger regards psychology as being, in his words, a “fallow field” in the sense of holding out the potential for a new abundance of understanding, so too does he regard theology.