Laurence Paul Hemming wrote:
>The passage is from Seminaire de Zurich, translated from German into French=
by
>D Saatdjian and F Fedier, Po&sie 13, Paris 1980, pp 60-1. There is also a
>translation in "Heidegger et la question de Dieu", ed Kearney R and=
O'Leary J
>S Paris 1980 p 334. The German text is in Gesamtausgabe 15, Seminare,
>Klostermann, Frankfurt 1978, p 436 f. The German reads:
>
> "Wenn ich noch eine Theologie schreiben wuerde, vozu es mich manchm=
al
>reizt, dann duerfte in ihr das Wort Sein nicht vorkommen. Der Glaube hat da=
s
>Denken des Seins nicht noetig. Wenn er das braucht, ist er schon nicht mehr
>Glaube. Das hat Luther verstanden, sogar in seiner eigenen Kirche scheint m=
an
>das zu vergessen. Ich denke ueber das Sein, im Hinblick auf seine Eignung, =
das
>Wesen Gottes theologisch zu denken, sehr bescheiden. Mit dem Sein, ist hie=
r
>nichts anzusichten. Ich glaube, dass das Sein niemals als Grund und Wesen v=
on
>Gott gedacht werden kann, dass aber gleichwohl die Erfahrung Gottes und sei=
ner
>Offenbarkeit (sofern sie dem Menschen begegnet) in der Dimension des Seins
>sich ereignet, was niemals besagt, das Sein koenne als moegliche Praedikat
>fuer Gott gelten. Hier braucht es ganz neue Unterscheidungen en und
>Abgrenzungen."
>
>It is worth adding that in my opinion Jean-Luc Marion misinterprets this te=
xt
>so that he reads it as saying the complete opposite of what it actually doe=
s
>say. He interprets it as saying: "Une seule indication nous parvient: le m=
ot
>*etre* ne doit pas intervenir dans un discours theologique." (Dieu sans l'e=
tre
>p 95) (Carlson's translation - God without Being - p 63 has "a single
>indication comes to us: the word *Being* must not intervene in a theologica=
l
>discourse.")
As usual the supplement supplants! I find that tail-end comment of
Laurence's about J-LM really intriguing.
The Semainaire de Zurich passage Laurence qoutes, is, except for its first
line, identical to one quoted in translation by JS O'Leary in Questioning
Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in the Christian Tradition (New York:
Winston-Seabury, 1985) p 13. He sources his passage to
Vortragsausschuss der Studentenschaft der Universit=E4t Z=FCrich: Aussprache
mit Martin Heidegger am 6 November 1951 (Zurich, 1952), 11. and translates
it as
God and being are not identical...Being and God are not identical, and I
would never attempt to think the essence of God by means of being. Faith
does not need the thinking of being. If it needs it, it is already not
faith. Luther understood this. Even in his own church people seem to
have forgotten it. I think very modestly of being in regard to its
suitability for thinking the essence of God theologically. With being one
can do nothing in this area. I believe that being can never be thought as
the ground and essence of God, but that, however, the experience of God and
his revealedness (insofar as it encounters man) takes place in the
dimension of being, which never means that being can be accepted as a
possible predicate for God. Here we have need for quite new distinctions
and delimitations.
(I think four dots after the second sentence would allow the quotes to be
>from the same place as Laurence's (the dots may be there;I haven't
O'Leary's book to hand - just some writing I did using it))
My German is sketchy but 'being can never be thought of as the ground or
essence of God' seems accurate enough to me, and if so, H's point is that
Being must be spared the 'grounding' function that inclusion in a theo-logy
would inevitably give it. Perhaps Laurence makes of this that Heidegger is
suggesting Being (itself) as more sacred than a theological God (who,
imagined as a ground of being, becomes just that, a 'creation of being') An
interesting thought indeed (though it still leaves Marion's translation
intact!)
I have seen reference to another Heidegger statement that "the word Being
has no place in a theology". In Kevin Hart's Trespass of the
Sign,(Cambridge, CUP 1991) p.254, it is said to be from The Piety of
Thinking, trans., ed., notes and commentary by James G. Hart and John C.
Maraldo (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1976).
Hart also says that "at the 1960 meeting of the Old Marburgers,
[Heidegger] suggested that philosophical thinking is to Being as
theological thinking is ti the self-revealing God" (p.254). He also refers
in the same place to the LOH remark that Being 'is not God', grouping this
and the other comments together, though admitting that he finds them 'by no
means self-evident'.He would seem to agree with J-L M in finding the 'No
theology using *Being*' and 'Being is not God' statements to be comparable.
But then there is the 'Faith does not need the thinking of Being'
statement. What is Heidegger associating with the sacred (God) here? Being?
=46aith? Theology? Does he swap his associations in any of statements?
Which brings us back to what Laurence means...
John
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---