Abstract
If we are to understand Heidegger’s sigificance for religious thinking and explore whatever religious dimension there is in his thinking, we must first consider what animates his thinking; we need to find out what matters to Heidegger, i.e., what is the matter [Sache] of thinking for him. Heidegger tells us the matter on the very first page of his epoch-making Sein und Zeit: what matters for him and concerns his thinking is what he would later call the oblivion [Vergessenheit] of being, i.e., that the question of the meaning of being, of what it means to be, has been forgotten. We no longer ask about being, or understand what it would be to ask such a question, though this question enlivened the thinking of Plato and Aristotle and thereby provided the impetus for the whole of Western thinking. In the trivialization and forgetfulness of such a momentous questioning, Heidegger senses a darkening of our world, a creeping destitution and nihilism that pervades our thinking and thus lays claim to his thinking as what he has to think about. In this sense of foreboding Heidegger finds two kindred spirits in the most recent history of the West — Friedrich Nietzsche, and Friedrich Hölderlin.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. T.S. Eliot
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Notes
David Farrell Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking,” p. 1n, relates that “One is hard pressed to find an essay or lecture by Heidegger in which Nietzsche is not explicitly called into play; it would scarcely be an’ exaggeration to say that Nietzsche’s impact on Heidegger’s thinking is visible on every page of his published writings.” Hildegaard Feick’s Index zu “Sein und Zeit”, 2nd revised ed. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), p. 118, shows that Hölderlin holds a similar fascination for Heidegger, occupying him in eight essays (six of which are gathered in EHD) and warranting citation in at least a dozen other essays. And all of this does not take into account Heidegger’s unpublished work, just now being published.
Erich Heller and Anthony Thoreby, “Idealism and Religious Vision in the Poetry of Hölderlin,” Quarterly Review of Literature X (1959), pp. 25, 33
For observations on Hölderlin’s style, see Michael Hamburger’s remarks in Friedrich Hölderlin, Poems and Fragments, trans. Michael Hamburger (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), pp. xiii, 15.
Otto Pöggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (Pfullingen: Neske, 1963), p. 261.
Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, Preface, 5. (Note that all references to all of Nietzsche’s work will be by section and paragraph number, as is customary).
The last man bears comparison with Heidegger’s inauthentic man in Sein und Zeit; likewise the overman and Heidegger’s authentic man bear comparison. See Michael Zimmerman, “A Comparison of Nietzsche’s Overman and Heidegger’s Authentic Self,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 14 (1976), pp. 213–31.
Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking,” pp. 68, 114, 130, 319. Cf. Krell, “Nietzsche in Heidegger’s Kehre,” pp. 200ff. For Nietzsche on truth, see The Will to Power, # 493, 507, 602.
Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking,” pp. 183–84.
Ibid., pp. 101, 317. Cf. Eckhard Heftrich, “Nietzsche im Denken Heideggers” in Durchblicke, pp. 343–44, 348. This latter essay is probably the most important analysis of how the required “destruction of ancient ontology” declared in SZ evolves into an eschatology of being and the required meditation on Nietzsche.
Lawrence Lampert, “Heidegger’s Nietzsche Interpretation,” Man and World 7 (1974), pp. 354, 363; Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking,” p. 110.
Michael Gelven, “From Nietzsche to Heidegger: A Critical Review of Heidegger’s Works on Nietzsche,” Philosophy Today 25 (1981), pp. 70–73. Cf. Nietzsche, Zarathustra, Preface, 3: “What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt.” The hour in which your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and virtue.
Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking,” pp. 23, 35, 118; Lampert, pp. 357–58. Cf. Nietzsche, Will to Power, # 19, 28.
Nietzsche, Zarathustra, Preface, 3.
Ibid., I, 22:2 (my emphasis); see also Preface, 1, and I, 3.
Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task,” p. 166.
Ibid., pp. 16, 25, 320–21.
Ibid., pp. 208–209. Cf. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 203, for Nietzsche’s thoughts on the anxiety one suffers when one knows of the danger that man degenerates and what may yet be made of man.
James M. Robinson, “The German Discussion of the Later Heidegger,” in The Later Heidegger and Theology, ed. James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr. (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 12.
Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task,” p. 294.
Examples of this way of thinking are: Williams, Martin Heidegger’s Philosophy of Religion, p. 109 (“the description in Sein und Zeit of Dasein as being-towards-death definitely points beyond Dasein to some greater reality”); John Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology (1955; rpt. New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 71, 74–75
Helmut Danner, Das Göttliche und der Gott bei Heidegger (Meisenheim: Anton Hain, 1971), p. 175, who claims that Heidegger seeks “god” but “only” comes as far as to “assert” (sic) the “lack of god” and thereby does not “attain” the God of the Old and New Testaments. Karl Rahner and other Thomists also think along these lines, insofar as they seem to feel that Heidegger does not pursue the question of being as far as they can, to the question of God
see Robert Masson, “Rahner and Heidegger: Being, Hearing, God,” The Thomist, 37 (1973), p. 487.
See Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie, p. 263, and Masson, pp. 487–88. See also John Caputo, “Being, Ground and Play in Heidegger,” Man and World 3 (1970), p. 42
Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Sein Geist, Gott” in Heidegger: Freiburger Universitätsvorträge zu seinem Gedenken, 2nd ed. (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 1979), pp. 50–51
James L. Perotti, Heidegger on the Divine (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974), p. 18
Otto Pöggeler, “Being as Appropriation,” trans. Rudiger H. Grimm, in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, ed. Michael Murray (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), p.106.
Alasdair Maclntyre, “The Fate of Theism” in Maclntyre and Paul Ricoeur, The Religious Significance of Atheism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 21–23
See also N II 378–79, where Heidegger talks about theological transcendence in subjectivity, and Jean Beaufret, “Heidegger et la théologie” in Heidegger et la Question de Dieu, eds. Richard Kearney and Joseph O’Leary (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1980), pp. 20–21, who notes that this line of thought (which we have directed at “liberal” theologians) makes it clear that Heidegger is not secularized Kierkegaard, suggesting that Karl Barth is thus also subject to the same criticism.
Gethmann-Siefert, pp. 140–262, gives the most exhaustive treatment of the theological use of Heidegger, and the most pointed criticisms of that use (pp. 262ff). See Danner, pp. 147–49, 154, for other criticisms. Williams, pp. 11–16, gives the most extensive summary in English of the theological use of Heidegger.
For such comparisons, see Pöggeler, Denkweg, pp. 36–46; Sheehan, “Introduction to Phenomenology”; Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Heidegger’s Later Philosophy” in Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans, and ed. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 214
Hans Jonas, “Heidegger and Theology,” Review of Metaphysics 18 (December 1964), p. 212
Macquarrie, Existential Theology, p. 53, and Principles of Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1966), pp. 59–83, 99–100, and passim
Walter Biemel, in Martin Heidegger: An Illustrated Study, trans. J. L. Mehta (New York: Harvest, 1970), p. 15, vehemently denounces the effort to draw a dependency between Sein und Zeit and the theology of the 1920s, and Danner, p. 161, points out the insignificance of such comparisons.
For discussions and examples of the Bultmannian use of Heidegger, see Bultmann, “Die Geschichtlichkeit des Daseins und der Glaube. Antwort an G. Kuhlmann” in Heidegger und die Theologie, ed. G. Noller (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1967), pp. 72–94 (as well as other works by Bultmann); Gadamer, “Heidegger and Marburg Theology” in Philosophical Hermeneutics, pp. 206–207; Gethmann-Siefert, pp. 140ff; Jonas, pp. 231–33; Macquarrie, Existential Theology, pp. 34, 73–74 and entirety, and Principles, pp. 59–120 and passim; Williams, pp. 18–19. See also the articles in Robinson and Cobb, which largely argue along Bultmannian lines. For criticisms of Bultmann, see Gadamer, p. 207; Heinrich Ott, “Die Bedeutung von Martin Heideggers Denken,” p. 30
William J. Richardson, “Heidegger and God — and Professor Jonas,” Thought 40 (1965), pp. 15, 37
Paul Ricoeur, “Preface to Bultmann” in Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. Don Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 399–400. For a discussion of the formal-indicative nature of the existentialia, see Pöggeler, “Being as Appropriation,” pp. 110–12.
For these criticisms, in order: 1) Danner, pp. 167f; 2) Robinson, p. 42, and Jonas, p. 221; 3) Robinson, p. 42; 4) Jonas, pp. 226–27 (note that Heidegger’s apparent admission of this analogy between primal and theological thinking, reported by Robinson, p. 29, was apparently more hypothetical and for argument’s sake than a statement of his position on the matter; see Jonas, p. 222n.10); 5) Jonas, p. 222; 6) Jonas, p. 221, and William J. Richardson, in response to Ott’s “Hermeneutics and Personal Structure” in On Heidegger and Language, ed. Joseph J. Kockelmans (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), p. 190.
This retreat is documented by the series of articles and statements Ott has made since Denken und Sein (1957): “What is Systematic Theology” in Robinson and Cobb, pp. 77–111, “Bedeutung,” pp. 27–38, “Hermeneutic and Personal Structure,” p. 193, and finally a statement in Richard Wisser, ed. Martin Heidegger in Conversation, trans. B. Srinivasu Murthy (New Dehli: Arnold-Heinemann, 1977), p. 29. This last statement is very cautious, only advancing that Heidegger’s prudence and patience in thinking are a good example for theology.
Jäger, Gott. Nochmals Martin Heidegger (Tübingen: Mohr, 1978)
O’Leary, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition (Minneappolis: Winston/Seabury, 1985).
Gethmann-Siefert, pp. 131–32. Cf. Gadamer, “The Religious Dimension in Heidegger” in Transcendence and the Sacred, ed. Alan Olson and Leroy Rouner (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 202, in which Gadamer sees in Heidegger’s call to theology a “task of thinking”.
Cf. Heinz-Horst Schrey, “Die Bedeutung der Philosophie Martin Heideggers für die Theologie” in Martin Heideggers Einf luss auf der Wissenschaften aus Anlass seines 60. Geburtstag (Bern: Franke, 1949), pp. 9–10
Otto Pöggeler, “Heideggers Begegnung mit Hölderlin,” Man and World 10 (1977), p. 23; Gadamer, “Heidegger’s Later Philosophy,” p. 198, and “The Religious Dimension in Heidegger,” pp. 193, 195–96.
Contra Charles H. Malik, “A Christian Reflection on Martin Heidegger,” The Thomist 41 (1977), p. 60.
Hence Hölderlin is not a “replacement Bible” to which Heidegger refers, nor does Heidegger’s thinking become “mythological” in conversation with Hölderlin, anymore than it becomes theological in conversation with Christianity or nihilistic in conversation with Nietzsche and metaphysics; see Pöggeler, “Heidegger’s Begegnung,” pp. 28, 38, 48, and “Metaphysics and the Topology of Being in Heidegger,” Man and World 8 (1975), p. 17. See also Gadamer, “Sein, Geist, Gott,” pp. 55–56, 62, and Mehta, p. 474n.42.
Heller and Thoreby, “Idealism and Religious Vision,” p. 34.
Jonas, pp. 225–28, laments the ambiguous realm into which Heidegger thrusts us, and John D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976), pp. 246–47, 249, much prefers the plenum of being, goodness, and intelligibility that is Meister Eckhart’s lovable God to Heidegger’s inscrutable being and Ereignis.
T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” p. 126.
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Gall, R.S. (1987). God is Dead: The Destruction of Onto-Theo-Logy. In: Beyond Theism and Atheism: Heidegger’s Significance for Religious Thinking. Studies in Philosophy and Religion, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3683-6_2
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