From: Robert V. Scheetz[SMTP:ay581@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 20 April 1996 16:01
<<Two questions:
1. Can't one be a Christian atheist in the Spenglerian sense?
i.e. Christianity qua worldview constitutive of the ethos of
the West...as Olympos for the Classical? a secular humanist,
tradition based piety?...Anneas carrying the ancient Anchises.>>
Hi,
Ontically you can be all sorts of things - H's question is to reflect on
this facticity but to radicalise it so that his reflection is not upon,
say, (what H. sometimes called worldviews or ontologcal regions) eg
biology, or aesthetics, or religion - but rather on that which gives rise
to their possibility.
Philsophically my sense is that in the 1930's and for some time in the
1940's H. held the view that faith/Xianity/the church/the Xian God (never
widely distinguished - as far as I can see) shared in the fundamental ethos
of the West -summarised in the broad sweep H. speaks of as
onto-theo-ology/metaphysics.
His thought, and/or the task of the Party, or the German people, or the
german language (etc) - is to create space for a confrontation out of which
comes another beginning. So, his thinking both diagnoses and, in a way,
criticises the onto-theological history of the West. And in as much as
christianity/the Trinity/faith/grace is inseparable from this - it is also
a diagnosis and critique of them.
So it is exactly when faith (etc) in its lived reality becomes simply
another sphere of onto-theology, that H. more or less totally distances
himself from it - ie ontically loses faith.
But both before this preiod, and again after it, H. does not seem to be
willling to travel so far down this path. Yes - theology is often mired
with onto-theology, yes the life of faith is often articulated in
inappropriate (philosophical) categories - but in some way it is, or may be
yet, a genuine reality. But a reality - which because of its origin - in
God (rather than in Being) - simply cannot be spoken about by the thinking
of _Being_.
<<b. Isn't any possibility of conventional Christian faith
absolutely precluded by the theme "being-toward-death"?>>
I'm not sure what you mean. At the time of B & T, H. still seems to think
that there is a possibility of a genuine life of faith, a genuine theology
- but one that is 'prescribed by the meaning of faith and remaining within
it.' (p30 translation). Or in the 1927 lecture, Phenomenology and Theology
- theology - as 'faith's conceptual interpretation of itself.' (p12 of
translation).
So genuine theolgy -as against what H. speak of in B &T as christian
anthropology (p74) - concerns not the fact of 'God' or gods but rather the
fact of faith in the Crucified, or more bluntly, the faith of man in the
event of Christ's being put to death - it is, if you will, not the science
of 'God' but the science of faith.
'Being-towards-death' arises from the analytic of dasein in itself, whereas
faith and its language (theology) - precisely do not arise from dasein in
itself (dasein's questionability) - .'The essence of faith....does not
arise from Dasein and is not freely temporalized by it.' (Phenomenology and
Theology - trans. p9).
Faith, if you will, 'lives' out of entirely other grounds than those that
phenomenology/philosophy concerns itself with.
(This, in my view, is H's way of thinking until about 1929 - it is then
taken up again in the mid/late 40's. But within this period c.1929-1944/5
he moves to the onto-theological sense of faith's facticity that I tried to
write aout in the answer to your first question).
Cheers,
Jacob Knee
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