Abstract
Our presentation of Conrad-Martius’ general cosmological position has reached its conclusion. We have, along the way, expressed our occasional dissatisfaction and perplexity.
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Notes
- 1.
Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 393–402.
- 2.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 400.
- 3.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 212, p. 499.
- 4.
Therefore, she cannot be regarded as a fundamentalist. See Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 178, where the paradise narrative is acknowledged as having an (epistemological) “mythic” status. For Conrad-Martius’ clearly positive attitude towards hermeneutical-existential theology, see Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 196–221.
- 5.
Besides, there can be no doubt that for early phenomenology an eidetic phenomenology of religion was possible. Scheler must be considered the founder of this school. See Scheler 1954, p. 101ff. For theological-metaphysical reasons, Conrad-Martius had a great interest in the history of religions and myths. In a private communication from Conrad-Martius’ friend, Gisela Kaldenbach, I learned that Conrad-Martius had the intention of someday writing for her “Schwanengesang” a book on the theme of mythology. Although Conrad-Martius took a very critical stance towards the devotees of the unconscious, archetypes and magico-sympathetic-participational thought, because of the frequent anti-intellectualism of these views (cf. Ludwig Klages’ theme of “the mind as the adversary of the soul [der Geist als Widersacher der Seele]”), she gave to historical myths and symbols an extraordinary significance. In as much as man is “fallen” from his primordial ontological situation, in as much as the trans-physical potencies which are the plenitude of created being are his now only by way of world-peripheral constitution and not immediate participation, he is misplaced and not integral. The human spirit’s deepest layers reveal this estrangement from and nostalgia for the primordial situation in the expressions of the “unconscious.” Thus Conrad-Martius has a radical justification for the researches of a phenomenologist of religions like Eliade. The myths, as essentially myths of origins, estrangement, and reconciliation are really a kind of anamnesis and utopian function: the spirit’s expression of its radical world-constitution and estrangement from this constitution. Myths for Conrad-Martius are expressions of the integration and disintegration of man with the world-peripheral powers which constitute man “archaeologically” and “teleologically” There is no systematic treatment of these themes in her writings. See Conrad-Martius 1963, pp. 423–426 and Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 140–143, 163–183. Isolated musings on the unconscious are found in Conrad-Martius 1961, p. 236, 1960, p. 86.
- 6.
Of course, in saying that the phenomenologist of religion treats myth as myth we do not wish to be understood to be saying as mere myth (fable, nonsense, etc.). Just as one misses the phenomenological structures of symbol when he thinks of symbol as “mere symbol” so he misses the structures of myth when he thinks of myth as mere myth. For Conrad-Martius, however, the issue for theology and philosophy of religion cannot remain at the merely eidetic-phenomenological level. This is to be not faithful to the phenomenological claims of the myth! That is, they claim to be the really real .and to make unconditional demands upon us. We are forced to say where we stand by the phenomenological exigencies of the myths themselves. This would be, I believe, the sense of her distinction between myth and mystery. See Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 179–180.
- 7.
See Conrad-Martius 1965, pp. 196–222. These two articles relate themselves to the three volumes of Kerygma und Mythos (1948, 1952, and 1954 respectively). The first volume (Bultmann and Bartsch 1948) contains Bultmann’s original explosive article. We concern ourselves here only with Conrad-Martius’ understanding of Bultmann in this particular context.
- 8.
Conrad-Martius 1965, p. 220. Karl Rahner also seeks to integrate the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection into a re-understanding of the cosmos. See, e.g., “Dogmatische Fragen zur Osterfrömmigkeit” (Rahner 1967, pp. 157–172), especially Rahner 1967, pp. 164–167, where he uses the term “realontologisch.”
- 9.
See the phenomenologically instructive listings under “sky” and “heaven” in the Oxford English Dictionary. As late as Shelley, “sky” had religious overtones in English.
- 10.
I know of no single satisfactory study which does justice to the interest of philosophical theologians. Hans Blumenberg’s writings are generally relevant. See especially his Die Kopernikanische Wende (Blumenberg 1965). Useful for a general overview of the history of the religious attitude towards heaven is Troels-Lund 1913.
- 11.
At least that is the contention of Ernst Lerle in Das Raumverständnis im Neuen Testament (Lerle 1955).
- 12.
The theological topology included Hell, of course, as a physical reality and in this sense as really somewhere, but we will confine our interests to heaven in this discussion.
- 13.
See Lewis 1967. The most significant explications of the cosmological notion of heaven within the medieval tradition—and these discussions are by no means merely cosmological discussions, as we shall soon argue—are Pseudo-Dionysius’ four writings, John Scotus Eriugena’s De divisione naturae, the scholastic discussions of Aristotle’s Physics and De Coelo, and Dante’s Divine Comedy.
- 14.
We have already, it seems, the essentials of this distinction at the time of the Pre-Socratics. However, during Greek and Medieval philosophy, cosmology, in the sense defined here, never gained the hegemony in the interpretation of “other worldly” talk that it now enjoys.
- 15.
We could make a stronger case if we took time to show that even in the Arabian and Greek astronomical literature there was, for the most part, a non-cosmological interest or dimension which differentiated the entire early astronomical-astrological enterprise from our sense of cosmology.
- 16.
Otto 1958, pp. 26–29.
- 17.
- 18.
We already discussed the “really real” in the context of Conrad-Martius’ essence-study of the real. See Chap. 3.
- 19.
See Eliade 1961.
- 20.
For a fuller description of the distinction between “worlds” and World, see the next chapter.
- 21.
This, of course, recalls our earlier discussions of Conrad-Martius’ view that the mode of temporality follows upon the existence of a being and the mode of spatiality follows upon the mode of being of something. See Chap. 3. We shall return to this important consideration in relationship to “heavenly space” at the conclusion of this work.
- 22.
It is perhaps not out of place to state that although we are dependent on the basic instruments of an existential understanding of religious language, and in the next chapter hope to contribute to this hermeneutical task, our ultimate intention is ontological. The rehabilitation or the category of heaven is a hermeneutical phenomenological task as well as an ontological task.
- 23.
See Ratzinger 1968, especially the section, “Aufgefahren in den Himmel.”
- 24.
- 25.
I believe, nevertheless, that it is still vulnerable to the censure of reinforcing asocial (or “capitalistic”) attitudes because the bodily and intersubjective character of human life could be subordinated to a distorted monadic realization of the semen gloriae. Process theology’s notion of objective immortality avoids these Roman Catholic temptations but at a tremendous cost. It is interesting, although logically self-evident, that heaven enters--through the back door--as a theological theme in the discussions of a political theology and the utopian movement of the cosmos. Merleau-Ponty seems to me to express a view which brings the political and religious dimensions together in our theme of “heaven.” Religion for Merleau-Ponty, as all the forms of culture, expresses a certain mode of intersubjective relations. The specific mode is “the fantastic attempt of man to rejoin his fellow men in another world” in that he is sure that he can never rejoin them completely in this one.” See Merleau-Ponty 1948, pp. 258–259, cited in Waelhens 1970, p. 382.
- 26.
We find unexpected support for this view in the work of Ernst Bloch who seems to be founding Marxism and his own metaphysics of hope on a “holy physics.” Bloch has, as did Conrad-Martius, emphasized the need for a qualitative philosophy of nature. Such a philosophy of nature would discover the qualitative-potential residue which is the important thing [Hauptsache] about nature and which a mathematicized and quantitative natural science cannot uncover. This qualitative-potential dimension is the realm of the not-yet or possibility (Bloch’s “matter”). This realm is the foundation of the world-process which dialectically realizes and is itself the “utopian function” which founds hope and positive anticipation in history. For a brief, clear discussion of Bloch’s philosophy of nature see Hans Heinz Holz’ Einleitung in Bloch 1967, pp. 22–28. Holz in effect shows that Bloch’s most fundamental position rests ultimately on a position very much resembling Conrad-Martius’—even though such a conclusion is in apparent contradiction to Bloch’s own intentions. In the last chapter we suggested some parallels between Bloch and Conrad-Martius. In both cases Schelling and Aristotle stand in the background.
- 27.
See Blumenberg 1965, pp. 34–40. The negative connotation for our ears which a. “holy physics” has stems from Adolf Harnack’s critique of the Medievals. Actually, the notion comes from Philip Melanchthon. For a discussion of “holy physics” and Harnack’s partial misunderstanding of Melanchthon see Blumenberg 1965, pp. 111–121.
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Hart, J.G., Parker, R.K.B. (2020). The Realontology and Realmythology. In: Parker, R.K.B. (eds) Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ Ontological Phenomenology. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44842-4_6
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