From: robert scheetz[SMTP:76550.1064@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 25 April 1996 19:07
<<The notion - that ontology can set so potentially momentous a
category as the possibility of a supreme being outside its analytic,
on the basis of some mechanical 'division of labor' notion of hierarchial
levels of knowledge - still seems somehow specious? "Ontology" purports
to compass the entirety, by definition includes the notion of
methodological generality. Its concern with History, Science,
Art,...Religion is not , of course, empirical but would logically be
entailed thematically in the notion of the "questioning
being".>>
My guess is that exactly the inverse of this is H's point (excluding the
period 1928/9 - 1940 something). Ontology concerns the realm of Being. Man
is that being whose _own_ being is questionable - and out of this analytic
H. hopes to gain an insight into Being as such - the primal, pretheoretical
something.
However since H. explicitly says in the early 50's that if he were to write
a theology it would not contain the word Being - and also in the 1927
lecture Theology and Phenomenology - that faith is not grounded in dasein's
own being - that the possibility of faith (note - not the question of 'a
supreme being' - but the possibility of faith in the Crucified) - is not
within the questioning of Being.
Hence the principal question here is not a conceptual one - as you seem to
say - a question of understanding (the catergory 'God') - but rather a
question about the possibility of a genuine faith life. It is this
possibility that H. places outside the arena of the question of being
.
<<One can legitimately say that the question of God's
existence/non-existence, like the squared circle, is nonsense; and
therefore, logically excluded. >>
I've tried all along to distinguish carefully that the methodological
atheism of phenomenology concerns not ' - 'God in general' or God as
'highest being' or 'most real reality' - which H. clearly writes about -
but God as Crucified and Risen One. The God of faith.
<<Or, otoh, that History, Science, Art , Religion are all material forms
of man-the-symbol-maker's metaphysical response to his endless questioning
the meaning of being. But, to stipulate for the possibility of a deeper,
higher,more general, etc. level of being, God, and then, by method,
exclude that possibility, all its momentous implications, thematically from
an excursus on human being, would make the latter a moot (howsoever
virtuosic) exercise...phenomonology's equivalent of the angels dancing on
the head of a pin problem.>>
These particular ontological regions - (history, sciences, even religion
etc) are grounded in an analytic of the fundamental structrues of man's
questioning being. Faith concerns not 'religion', but God's grace and its
sphere - it's possibility is specifically grounded in grace - ie outside
man's own being.
To call the God of faith - a deeper, higher , more general (more real) form
of being or Being (as theologians have in varying degrees done) - is to
make exactly the mistake of onto- theology. It is thus exactly to leave
faith's own grounding. The God of faith is neither being nor Being. He is
other than Being (though grace presumably manifests itself in the realm of
Being - it does not have its grounding there).
<<Piety can take many shapes short of authentic "faith", especially in
young and old man. H's, better said, the author-of-B&T's dismissiveness of
theology appears the "nonsense" judgement (tho his substantivizing
"nothingness" seems the ironic equivalent); and his own system, his
totalizing dasein and death, insuperably contradictory to Xianity ("grave
where is thy victory"). And indeed B&T appears precisely an onto-theology,
a death-of-god-theology???>>
Indeed - H. calls his own thinking a kind of piety - but this is not 'short
of authentic 'faith'' it is other than authentic faith - for the life of
faith is not generalized spirituality or pious feelings (in however exalted
a degree) - it is faith in the Crucified - arising out of God's uncalled
for, and uncontrolable grace. Luther compares God's grace to a bird flying
above and then shitting on you, or to the uncontrollability of the weather.
The Spirit blows where it wills.
I'm not sure what you mean at the end of this paragraph - some of it is too
compressed for me to follow. I don't think B & T is any kind of theology -
though in the late drafted bits - there is a beginning of the move into
'dramaturgy' (if you want to put it this way) - which is later taken up and
into mythopoetic 'thinking'. In addition H's thinking on death, it seems to
me, has no bearing on the possibility of the resurrection of the dead - for
the resurrection of the dead is not a 'theoretical' question (cf p292 of B
& T) - it will not arise out of an analytic of dasein's own being - it will
arise out of that possibility which is wholly other than any being or Being
- the grace of God.
Why H. thinks B & T failed - and this is never a total jettisoning - so
perhaps this is better, why it needs re-orientating in fundamental ways;
this is a whole other subject. An interesting one though - anyone care to
start a discussion?
Cheers,
Jacob Knee
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