[lit-ideas] Heidegger's philosophy and Christianity
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lawrenchelm1. post@blogger. com" <lawrencehelm1.post@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 17:45:57 -0800
While there might be in some cases a connection between a philosopher's
politics and his philosophy, and while several writers have assumed that
there is a connection between Heidegger's philosophy and his politics, I
can't visualize what that connection might be.
When I was studying theology, and this may have been when I first
encountered Heidegger, I spent some time reading Rudolf Bultmann. It is
well known that Bultmann was influenced by Heidegger, and this influence has
probably been described by any theologian who has written about Bultmann.
For example, in a discussion of "Bultmann's use of existentialist categories
in order to interpret Paul's view of man" (from The Two Horizons, New
Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description) Anthony Thiselton
writes "Bultmann refuses to interpret soma in substantival terms, when Paul
clearly uses it to characterize human existence. Hence Bultmann concludes
that soma in Paul represents a way of being rather than a substance or a
thing: 'Man does not have a soma; he is a soma."
Then on page 40 Thiselton's writes, "In due course we shall look closely at
Bultmann's use of Heidegger's categories for the interpretation of the New
Testament. Meanwhile, we may note that a number of writers apart from
Bultmann argue that there are close affinities between Heidegger's view of
human existence and the New Testament portraits of man. The New Testament
scholar Erich Dinkler writes: 'When Heidegger criticizes man as enslaved by
the pseudo-security of concrete objects . . . when he analyzes idle talk and
gossip as an attempt to escape from ultimate anxiety towards death - then he
says nothing else than what Paul has said characterizing man according to
the flesh. In fact Heidegger's portrait of the thrown and fallen man is
very similar to what Paul with the Greek term xanthasthai says about
self-glorification and boasting.' In particular Dinkler considers that
Heidegger's view of the human tension between fate and freedom comes close
to the New Testament description of man. He continues, 'As a New Testament
student I cannot refrain from saying that it is just this interrelation and
correlation of freedom and predestination explained by Paul . . . which we
re-discover here in philosophical terms.'"
On page 41 Thiselton writes, "It would be a mistake, however, to limit
Heidegger's relevance to New Testament Interpretation to the so-called
'existentialism' of Being and Time. The detailed work of Ernst Fuchs on the
text of the New Testament also owes much to the stimulus of Heidegger's
later thought. . . ."
"It was Ernst Fuchs who first translated the hermeneutical discussion from
the categories of inauthentic and authentic existence derived from Being and
Time into the later Heidegger's analogous distinction between everyday
language of the subject-object dilemma and the uncorrupted language of
being.'
On page 42, Thiselton writes, "The twenty or so writings of Heidegger that
span the years 1935 to 1960 reflect a pessimistic assessment of the capacity
of the language of the Western language-tradition to convey anything other
than the day-to-day practicalia of technology and idle talk. . . ."
On page 201, Thiselton writes, ". . . Heidegger's philosophy is
individualistic in two particular ways. First of all, although he rejects
Descartes' starting point of the cogito, Heidegger rejects not so much
beginning with the individual self, but beginning with a self which is
isolated from its world as the epistemological subject in an act of
cognition. Dasein is more than a thinking subject, but it remains an 'I
am.' This is the theme of Paul Ricoeur's essay entitled 'Heidegger and the
Question of the Subject.' Ricoeur writes, 'The kind of ontology developed
by Heidegger hives ground to what I shall call a hermeneutics of the 'I am',
which is a repetition of the cogito conceived of as a simple
epistemological principle.' The objection voiced by Heidegger against the
starting-point of Descartes is not that it began with the 'I am,' but that
it starts with 'a previous model of certitude.' Indeed, 'a retrieval of the
cogito is possible only as a regressive movement beginning with the whole
phenomenon of the 'being-in-the-world.' Although he recognizes the
centrality of Being and language in Heidegger's later writings, Ricoeur
concludes that even in this later period the 'hermeneutics of the "I am"' is
not entirely abandoned, since the role of 'resolve' and freedom in the face
of death in Being and Time is taken over by 'primordial poeting (Urdichtung)
'as the answer to the problem of the who and to the problem of the
authenticity of the who.'
And this isn't intended to portray Heidegger as a Christian, but it is to
say that several Christian theologians were inspired by Heidegger's
philosophy. Apart from the Christians who were influenced by Heidegtger,
Sartre's Being and Nothingness was written in 1943, some say, as an
atheistic treatment of Heidegger's existential principles (Being and Time
was written in 1927). Surely nothing can be further from the triumphalist,
ethnic oriented Fascism than secular existentialism.
Lawrence Helm
www.lawrencehelm.com
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