Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Preliminary Notes on Divine Images in the Light of Being-Historical Thinking

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking

Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 65))

Abstract

This paper examines Heidegger’s way of addressing religious experience through such key works as Mindfulness and Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens. Proceeding from “clues” (adopted from Parvis Emad) as to the methodological connection between hermeneutics and being-historical thinking on the one hand, and the question of the arrival and flight of the gods on the other, this study addresses the simultaneous concealing and sheltering of the (divine) mystery within the age of “machination.” Ultimately, the Christian revelation of God both hinges on the preservation of this mystery and yet jeopardizes it through its metaphysical expression as the ground of the “causa sui.”

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Martin Heidegger, “Über die Sixtina” (1955), in Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, 1910–1976, GA13 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), pp. 119–21. Cited in the text as GA13. Translations by the author. Instances of emphasis in quotations stand in the original.

  2. 2.

    Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), GA 65 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989); Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). Cited in the text as GA 65. Martin Heidegger, Besinnung, GA 66 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1997); Mindfulness, trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary, (New York: Continuum, 2006). Cited as GA 66. Reference to the translation, in these and all similar citations, follows reference to the original.

  3. 3.

    Martin Heidegger, “Die Zeit des Weltbildes,” in Holzwege, GA 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1977a), p. 85. For a translation of this essay, see “The Age of the World Picture,” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1977b), p 127. The English translation is cited in the text as AW.

  4. 4.

    Parvis Emad, On the Way to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), pp. 175, 176.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., pp. 177–178.

  6. 6.

    The theological emphasis on idolatry and idol-worship is central to Reformation iconoclasm. See Margaret Aston, England’s Iconoclasts, Vol. I: Laws Against Images (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 343ff.

  7. 7.

    See Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1995); The Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), esp. sections 11–13. Cited in the text as GA 60. For an overview of “formal indication,” see T. Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp.164-170; John van Buren, The Young Heidegger. Rumor of the Hidden King (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994), pp. 324–42; Ryan Streeter, “Heidegger’s Formal Indication: A Question of Method in Being and Time”, Man and World 30 (1997): 413–30; and Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), esp. pp. 231–55.

  8. 8.

    On the relation of formal indication and being-historical thinking, see Emad, op. cit., pp. 114–15; and Paola-Ludovica Coriando, “Die ‘formale Anzeige’ und das Ereignis: Vorbereitende Überlegungen zum Eigencharakter seinsgeschichtlicher Begrifflichkeit mit einem Ausblick auf den Unterscheid von Denken und Dichten,” Heidegger Studies 14 (1998): 27–43. As Coriando notes: “Die Bestimmung des Denkens als formale Anzeige auf das Sein weist hin auf die vollzugshafte Ver-legung der vergegenständlichen Sprache des Subjektes in die freigebende des Daseins” (32).

  9. 9.

    Cordiando, op cit., pp. 33–38.

  10. 10.

    See Martin Heidegger, “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes,” in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1977), pp. 4–15, 43–50; trans. Albert Hofstadter, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1993), pp. 146–156, 182–89.

  11. 11.

    This is the extended argument of Martin Heidegger’s Nietzsche, I: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961).

  12. 12.

    The term “aura” (Aura) as I use it here derives from Walter Benjamin’s essay “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit,” in Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, pp. 15–6; trans. Harry Zohn, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations. Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), pp. 222–3.

  13. 13.

    See Martin Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns, GA 69 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998a), p.185.

  14. 14.

    It should be noted that the installation-being of art does not cease to function when it moves out of the museum, into the cinema, and ‘onto the street,’ into corporate offices, into ‘nature’ and interactive displays—it is only more fully mobilized as art, that is, in accordance with its essence as a form of the ‘interactive’ interface of machination and lived-experience.

  15. 15.

    As Emad, op. cit., pp. 118–19, argues, the giving-staying-away of “Ab-grund” as ground cannot be captured, and is in fact quite covered up, in the translation of Ab-grund as “abyss.” Hence the translation favored the Contributions: “ab-ground.”

  16. 16.

    See Martin Heidegger, “Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit,” in Wegmarken, GA 9 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1976), pp. 212–16; “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” trans. John Barlow in William Barrett and Henry D. Aiken, eds., Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (New York: Random House, 1962), vol. 3, pp. 254–57.

  17. 17.

    The question of the relation of sensuousness to the possible experience of the divine is posed in an instructive way in Marylou Sena’s “Nietzsche’s New Grounding of the Metaphysical: Sensuousness and the Subversion of Plato and Platonism,” Research in Phenomenology, 34 (2004): 139–59.

  18. 18.

    Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, GA54 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1982), pp. 151, 154; trans. by André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz as Parmenides (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 102, 104.

  19. 19.

    Emad, op cit., p. 155.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., p. 157.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., p. 159.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., p. 153.

  23. 23.

    It should be noted that the being-historical question of the relation of the experience of the Greek gods (as articulated in Heidegger’s Parmenides) to the experience of the Christian God (as articulated in the Raphael text) leaves open the issues of many gods or one god. This pertains to the “undecidability of the being of gods”: see Emad, op. cit., 129–30.

  24. 24.

    On Luther’s theology of the cross in relation to Heidegger’s (supposed) appropriation and secularization of it, see Rudolf Bultmann, Kerygma und Mythos. Ein theologisches Gespräch, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (Hamburg-Volksdorf, 1951), pp. 15ff; S.J. McGrath, The Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy. Phenomenology for the Godforsaken (Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), pp. 159–68, 185; John van Buren, op. cit. p. 151; and Benjamin D. Crowe, Heidegger’s Religious Origins. Destruction and Authenticity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 15–66.

  25. 25.

    For example, Brian Elliott, “Existential Scepticism and Christian Life in Early Heidegger,” Heythrop Journal XLV/2 (2004): 276–81 and van Buren, op. cit., pp. 170–95, both follow this doubtful method.

  26. 26.

    St. John of Damascus, Three Treatises on the Divine Images, trans. and Introduction by Andrew Louth (Chestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminar Press, 2003).

  27. 27.

    Michael O’Connell, The Idolatrous Eye: Iconoclasm and Theater in Early-Modern England (New York; Oxford UP, 2000), p. 57.

  28. 28.

    Frances A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1985), pp. 76–81, 87.

  29. 29.

    O’Connell, op. cit., pp. 59–61. For details on the primacy of the local cult in late medieval religion, see also Joseph Leo Koerner, The Reformation of the Image (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 346–8.

  30. 30.

    In this regard, see Bernard Bourdin, La genèse théologico-politique de l’État moderne (Paris: PUF, Bourdin 2004).

  31. 31.

    GA 69, p. 208.

  32. 32.

    In this regard, see Bourdin, La genèse théologico-politique de l’État moderne.

  33. 33.

    John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2 vol. The Library of Christian Classics, ed. John T. McNeill. Trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), I. xi. v. Cited in the text as Institutes.

  34. 34.

    O’Connell, op. cit., pp. 36, 51.

  35. 35.

    O’Connell, op. cit., p. 29.

  36. 36.

    Even when, as in Luther’s view, the divine image is not rejected as idolatrous, but treated as adiaphora, the relation of text and image, and nature of the image itself, changes. The relation of text and image is transformed in Lutheran iconography. See Joseph Leo Koerner, op. cit., with reference to the example of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Crucifixion with the Converted Centurion (1536), pp. 226–29.

  37. 37.

    C. A. L. Jarrott, “Erasmus’ Biblical Humanism,” Studies in the Renaissance 17 (1970), pp. 119–25, 149–50.

  38. 38.

    See Carlos M. N. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 1–27. The concept of “incarnational” theology and religiosity refers to the sacramental theology codified by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). See also O’Connell, op. cit., pp. 37–8.

  39. 39.

    Randall C. Zachman, Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin. The Assurance of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), summarizes the key point as follows: “In order to be fully assured of salvation, we must not only trust in Jesus Christ, but we must know we trust in Jesus Christ....For both Luther and Calvin, this involves not only our knowing that we find assurance and peace of conscience in Jesus Christ alone – which is itself a form of reflexive self-knowledge, even if its object is outside ourselves – but we must also know that our faith is sincere and not hypocritical, by finding within ourselves both the fear of God and the testimony of a good conscience” (230).

  40. 40.

    See Zachman, op. cit., pp. 217–18.

  41. 41.

    Alan Besançon, The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 186–87.

  42. 42.

    Jürgen Gediant offers an illuminating account of the agonistic relation between world and worldpicture in “Zur Geschichtlichkeit der Kunst,” Heidegger Studies 14, (1998): 85–92. See esp. pp. 87–9.

  43. 43.

    See O’Connell, op cit, p. 47.

  44. 44.

    In his account of modern art, Benjamin emphasizes the dialectical relationship of technology and the generation of mass, collective consciousness, especially in his discussion of the cinema. See “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit,” op. cit., pp.31–41; trans. pp. 229–40. Benjamin’s essay on art and Heidegger’s “Die Kunst im Zeitalter der Vollendung der Neuzeit” could be brought into fruitful contact with particular reference to the fate of religious art in the shadow of modernity. While their premises are radically distinct, one will find a perhaps surprising similarity in the phenomenological ‘results’ of the explication of the death of the artwork. This only makes the fundamental difference between Benjamin’s understanding of the consummation of modernity and Heidegger’s projecting-opening of an other beginning founded in the distinction of be-ing and beings (and the beingness of beings) all the more extreme and unbridgeable.

  45. 45.

    “The notion that the Eucharist should be the only worthy image – an iconoclastic principle par excellence – had been refuted by the common belief that the holy species were not the image but the reality of God himself: Calvin, who did not have such an unconditional faith in real Presence, was consequently able to assign them the status of an image, this time in the strongest and almost iconic sense of the term.” Besançon, op. cit., p. 188.

References

  • Aston, Margaret. 2000. England’s iconoclasts, Laws against images, vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, William, and Henry D. Aiken (eds.). 1962. Philosophy in the twentieth century, vol. 3. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, Walter. 1969. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Trans. Harry Zohn. Illuminations. Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt. 222–223. New York: Schocken Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Besançon, Alan. 2000. The forbidden image: An intellectual history of iconoclasm. Trans. Jane Marie Todd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdin, Bernard. 2004. La genèse théologico-politique de l’État modern. Paris: PUF.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bultmann, Rudolf. 1951. In Kerygma und Mythos. Ein theologisches Gespräch, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch. Hamburg-Volksdorf: Herbert Reich Evangelischer Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calvin, John. 1960. Institutes of the Christian religion. 2 vols. The Library of Christian Classics. Trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coriando, Paola-Ludovica. 1998. Die ‘formale Anzeige’ und das Ereignis: Vorbereitende Überlegungen zum Eigencharakter seinsgeschichtlicher Begrifflichkeit mit einem Ausblick auf den Unterscheid von Denken und Dichten. Heidegger Studies 14: 27–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crowe, Benjamin D. 2006. Heidegger’s religious origins: Destruction and authenticity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahlstrom, Daniel O. 2001. Heidegger’s concept of truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eire, Carlos M.N. 1986. War against the idols: The reformation of worship from Erasmus to Calvin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Elliott, Brian. 2004. Existential Scepticism and Christian life in early Heidegger. Heythrop Journal XLV(2): 276–281.

    Google Scholar 

  • Emad, Parvis. 2007. On the way to Heidegger’s contributions to philosophy. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gediant, Jürgen. 1998. Zur Geschichtlichkeit der Kunst. Heidegger Studies 14: 85–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1961. Nietzsche, I: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst. Pfullingen: Neske.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1976. Wegmarken, GA 9. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1977a. Holzwege, GA 5. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1977b. The question concerning technology and other essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1982. Parmenides, GA 54. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Trans. André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. 1992. Parmenides. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1983. Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (1910–1976), GA 13. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1989. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. 1999. Trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly Contributions to philosophy (From enowning). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1993. In Basic writings, ed. D.F. Krell. New York: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1995. Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. 2004. The phenomenology of religious life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1997. Besinnung. Frankfurt am Main. 2007. Trans. Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary. Mindfulness. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1998a. Die Geschichte des Seyns, GA 69. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger, Martin. 1998b. In Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jarrott, C.A.L. 1970. Erasmus’ biblical humanism. Studies in the Renaissance 17: 119–150.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kisiel, Theodore. 1993. The genesis of Heidegger’s being and time. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Koerner, Joseph Leo. 2008. The reformation of the image. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGrath, S.J. 2006. The early Heidegger and medieval philosophy. Phenomenology for the godforsaken. Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Connell, Michael. 2000. The idolatrous eye: Iconoclasm and theater in early-modern England. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sena, Marylou. 2004. Nietzsche’s new grounding of the metaphysical: Sensuousness and the subversion of plato and platonism. Research in Phenomenology 34: 139–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • St. John of Damascus. 2003. Three treatises on the divine images. Trans. Andrew Louth. Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminar Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Streeter, Ryan. 1997. Heidegger’s formal indication: A question of method in being and time. Man and World 30: 413–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Buren, John. 1994. The young Heidegger: Rumor of the hidden king. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yates, Frances A. 1985. Astraea: The imperial theme in the sixteenth century. London: Ark Paperbacks.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zachman, Randall C. 1993. Conscience in the theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin. The assurance of faith. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Arts/English, University of Ottawa, 70 Laurier E, K1N 6N5, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Bernhard Radloff

Authors
  1. Bernhard Radloff
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bernhard Radloff .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of New Orleans, NEW ORLEANS, 70148-2330, Louisiana, USA

    F. Schalow

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Radloff, B. (2011). Preliminary Notes on Divine Images in the Light of Being-Historical Thinking. In: Schalow, F. (eds) Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 65. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1649-0_8

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation