From: Martin Weatherston[SMTP:mweather@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 19 April 1996 10:59
<<If it is right to claim that Heidegger retained his Catholic faith
(and this is a point that is being hotly disputed), then Heidegger's
position is certainly odd. Presumably Heidegger is saying:
1) ontically, I am an atheist, and
2) I have faith in God and Jesus Christ. Most people would regard
these statements as mutually contradictory>>
He says sometimes that _philosphically_ he is an atheist - ie that
thinking about the basic ground structures of human existence - this
preworldly, primial something - that is the subject matter for
phenomenology cannot concern itself with the particularities of other
ontological regions. These are bracketed out for the purposes of his
thinking. This is not to say that they are groundless - simply that they
are not the subject matter of phenomenology.
So philosophically - he is an atheist - but ontically he sometimes
believes.
<< But the contradiction is not easy to shrug off in this way.
Doesn't Christian faith demand that we believe the claim that Jesus was
the son of God and that he died for our sins is indeed a fact, in the same
way that the claim that Julius Caesar died on M arch 15th is a fact?
Or should we follow Kierkegaard, and claim that faith is
ultimately absurd? (I would not be surprised if Heidegger were influenced
by Kierkegaard here). The difference would be that Kierkegaard urges us
to cling to faith and to shun all else, while Hei degger seems to be
claiming at least equal validity (if you will excuse the word) for asking
the question of Being. (The temptation to equate Kierkegaard's
"objectivity" with Heidegger's "metaphysics" is tempting, but ultimately
unconvincing).>>
Following Luther H. does seem to think that faith is groundless - it is
pure grace - without reason, absurd. The validity H. claims for the
question of Being - is often - not in competition with faith but rather
just different. Faith is gounded in God's grace - and that alone. The
question of Being concerns (in one way) the basic structures of
temporalised facticity.
The complexity is that whilst God is in no way dependent upon Being - and
so the word Being should not appear in a theology according to H. - God's
revelation (grace), on the other hand does, of necessity, appear within the
order of Being. It does not have its origins within the order of Being - as
presumably all other things do - since it has its origins alone in God -
but it does manifest itself within the order of Being - since for H., in a
way, all that is, if it is, appears within Being - ie within the basic
structures of human existence. How then is the thinking of lived existence
to speak of the possibility of this grace?
Derrida has written a few words on this at the end of his article 'How to
avoid speaking:denials'.
Cheers,
Jacob Knee
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