From: Laurence Paul Hemming[SMTP:llh21@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 21 April 1996 22:57
<<1.Is it self-evident what "methodological atheism" means? I really am
not being gnomic here.>>
No, I don't think it is 'self evident' - but I do think it is explicable.
It is, in my view, apparent from what we know of H's early lecture courses
that he explicitly saw hmself as engaged in reflection upon
phenomenological methodology as a means to enter deeper into the ownmost
subject matter of phenomenology. Indeed in B & T it goes under the moniker
of 'the formal structure of the question of Being'. Viz. a reduction from
particular 'worldviews' to the their pretheoretic, preobjective origins -
the wellspring of life itself. This - life in and for itself - (as H. calls
it at one point in 1919) - is the subject of phenomenology. 'Back to the
things themselves'.
Thus the fact of fatih, along with all other grounded existences, is, so
say to say, explicitly distilled out, by the radicalising plunge of
phenomenology into the well springs of all life.
For the particular regions, whilst they are grounded in Being, do not take
Being as the object of their reflections. This is as true of say, biology,
as it is, of faith.
Their fault is they have mistaken their reflections exactly for that which
only phenomenology can speak of (eg H's criticisms of biology, psychology,
anthropology in B & T).
<<2.Is it self-evident what the "mythopoetic" is?>>
I think this is much more difficult. For it actually implies not just an
explication but also something like a critique of aspects of H's thinking.
The term mythopoetic - I ran across in John van Buren's book 'The Young
Heidegger' - although similar themes are in Caputo's book 'Demythologising
Heidegger' - Very, very broadly - van Buren argues - H. aggravated the
abstract structuralisms of B & T by reinscribing them as historicised
cosmological structures (the 'lighted clearing, the 'topos' of Being) &
historicised transcendental poetic essences (the essence of humanity,
technology etc - of course including the essence of National Socialism).
This hyperbolic attitude reductively dismisses the concrete manifestation
of these realities in embodied factical life (as in the famous question
about Jews in the death camps - 'Do they die. They succum...but to die is
to endure death in its essence').
Looking again through van Buren's book - I note he raises almost exactly
the questions I have tried to raise about H's changing attitude to faith
(between say 1928/9 - 1940 something) - on p386 of the Young Heidegger.
<<I am troubled by your reading of the earlier Heidegger. Is there any
case to be made for saying that in the opeing section of Sein und Zeit
Heidegger is beginning the deconstruction of the (Thomist) experience of
God as that being whose essence it is to exist? Ask yourself this question
in relation to Dasein.>>
There are an enormous number of influences comabated in the opening section
of B & T - Thomism or even scholasticism isn't obviously prioritised.
Indeed in the whole of Kisiel's book on H's development up to B & T Aquinas
merits only 4 entries (according to the index).
Even so - my response to your question would be that for H. (as Luther)
philosophical theology - is indeed a gravely mistaken path, and he does
criticise it both in B & T and in the lectures which preceeded it - because
it claims to speak universal truths abut God and man - arising out of a
philosphy of Being (existence). By so doing it mistakes its own 'subject
matter' (faith) and also is able to offer no insight into that subject that
phenomenology penetrates to - the question of Being. Like Luther, H. seems
to think that the possibility of fact of faith arises from nowhere but the
grace of God. The analytic of dasein is an analytic of that being for whom
its _own_ being is questionable - faith arises not out of dasein's own
questionable being - but out of the order of grace.
The paradigmatic theologian for H. is, it seems to me, Martin Luther.
Luther was at least as violently critical of philosophical theology (the
theology of glory, as he called it), and at least as engaged in a creative
destruction of metaphysics, as was Martin Heidegger - in order to carve out
space for the sphere of grace. Indeed in the introduction to one of his
Aristotle lectures of the early 20's (Winter semester 1921) - H. quotes
Luther's violent criticisms of Aristotle as the introduction to the whole
course.
<<One final question - what province or region do we inhabit when we
undertake *not* to speak of God. (In this province would our not-speaking
lead him to utter a word?)>>
I'm not sure I follow you here - our doing/ not doing anything can't coerce
God into anything. God acts as he acts. But here we speak of the order of
faith. As St. Paul says - again quoted by H. in his early lectures - this
is the foolishness of God, which is wiser than the wisdom of the world.
When you speak of 'province' region' - or place (topos) - this is surely
the sphere of the question of being. It is one version of H's reinscription
of his path of questioning - the question of Being.
And even if we enter into the anayltic of this sphere - is there any _one_
place from which silence is maintained in respect of the God of faith?
Cheers,
Jacob Knee
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