God is Dead: The Destruction of Onto-Theo-Logy

  • Robert S. Gall
Chapter
Part of the Studies in Philosophy and Religion book series (STPAR, volume 11)

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.

Keywords

Religious Thinking Religious Dimension Pure Possibility Philosophical Hermeneutic Christian Concept 
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Notes

  1. 1.
    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 And all of this does not take into account Heidegger’s unpublished work, just now being published.Google Scholar
  2. 2a.
    Erich Heller and Anthony Thoreby, “Idealism and Religious Vision in the Poetry of Hölderlin,” Quarterly Review of Literature X (1959), pp. 25, 33Google Scholar
  3. 2b.
    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.Google Scholar
  4. 4.
    Otto Pöggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (Pfullingen: Neske, 1963), p. 261.Google Scholar
  5. 5.
    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).Google Scholar
  6. 6.
    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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. 7.
    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.Google Scholar
  8. 8.
    Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking,” pp. 183–84.Google Scholar
  9. 9.
    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.Google Scholar
  10. 10.
    Lawrence Lampert, “Heidegger’s Nietzsche Interpretation,” Man and World 7 (1974), pp. 354, 363; Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking,” p. 110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. 11.
    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.Google Scholar
  12. 12.
    Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task of Thinking,” pp. 23, 35, 118; Lampert, pp. 357–58. Cf. Nietzsche, Will to Power, # 19, 28.Google Scholar
  13. 15.
    Nietzsche, Zarathustra, Preface, 3.Google Scholar
  14. 16.
    Ibid., I, 22:2 (my emphasis); see also Preface, 1, and I, 3.Google Scholar
  15. 17.
    Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task,” p. 166.Google Scholar
  16. 18.
    Ibid., pp. 16, 25, 320–21.Google Scholar
  17. 19.
    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.Google Scholar
  18. 20.
    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.Google Scholar
  19. 21.
    Krell, “Nietzsche and the Task,” p. 294.Google Scholar
  20. 23a.
    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, 74–75Google Scholar
  21. 23b.
    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 GodGoogle Scholar
  22. 23c.
    see Robert Masson, “Rahner and Heidegger: Being, Hearing, God,” The Thomist, 37 (1973), p. 487.Google Scholar
  23. 24a.
    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. 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. 24b.
    Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Sein Geist, Gott” in Heidegger: Freiburger Universitätsvorträge zu seinem Gedenken, 2nd ed. (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 1979), pp. 50–51Google Scholar
  25. 24c.
    James L. Perotti, Heidegger on the Divine (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974), p. 18Google Scholar
  26. 24d.
    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.Google Scholar
  27. 26a.
    Alasdair Maclntyre, “The Fate of Theism” in Maclntyre and Paul Ricoeur, The Religious Significance of Atheism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 21–23Google Scholar
  28. 26b.
    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.Google Scholar
  29. 27.
    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.Google Scholar
  30. 28a.
    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. 214Google Scholar
  31. 28b.
    Hans Jonas, “Heidegger and Theology,” Review of Metaphysics 18 (December 1964), p. 212Google Scholar
  32. 28c.
    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 Google Scholar
  33. 28d.
    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.Google Scholar
  34. 29a.
    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. 30Google Scholar
  35. 29b.
    William J. Richardson, “Heidegger and God — and Professor Jonas,” Thought 40 (1965), pp. 15, 37Google Scholar
  36. 29c.
    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.Google Scholar
  37. 30.
    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.Google Scholar
  38. 31.
    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.Google Scholar
  39. 32a.
    Jäger, Gott. Nochmals Martin Heidegger (Tübingen: Mohr, 1978)Google Scholar
  40. 32b.
    O’Leary, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition (Minneappolis: Winston/Seabury, 1985).Google Scholar
  41. 33.
    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”.Google Scholar
  42. 34a.
    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. 9–10Google Scholar
  43. 34b.
    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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  44. 36.
    Contra Charles H. Malik, “A Christian Reflection on Martin Heidegger,” The Thomist 41 (1977), p. 60.Google Scholar
  45. 37.
    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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  46. 38.
    Heller and Thoreby, “Idealism and Religious Vision,” p. 34.Google Scholar
  47. 39.
    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.Google Scholar
  48. 40.
    T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” p. 126.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht 1987

Authors and Affiliations

  • Robert S. Gall
    • 1
  1. 1.American Academy of ReligionUSA

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