Criticism

[Soul_of_Shu]

In my delving into the psyche of Heidegger, I came across this excerpt from a Quora Q&A regarding the question of MH's seeming ambiguity with respect to theism vis-a-vis atheism. Looking forward to any clarification/elaboration ...

Strictly speaking, yes [MH was an atheist]. But it is more complicated than that, indeed. The analytically-oriented can skip the rest of this answer. If you want a fuller answer, keep reading.

Factually speaking: in Thomas Sheehan’s “Reading a Life: Heidegger and Hard Times” (found in the Cambridge Companion to Heidegger) he outlines Heidegger’s early life as a one-time Catholic seminarian and philosophy student drawn toward medieval texts, even writing a thesis about Duns Scotus. Later on, Being and Time would bear the stamps of Aquinas, Scotus, and Augustine. However, before his academic career really began, he broke with the Church around the time of his marriage to Elfride (a Protestant). At the very least, he was a (mostly) non-practicing Catholic.

The character of Heidegger’s thought is nevertheless recognizably religious (as is Nietzsche’s, and Levinas’s); entire books and other scholarly works have been written about this, and we don’t have the space to recount all the evidence here. Simply, the way in which Heidegger speaks of Sein (Being), and other metaphysical categories he offers to the reader was enough to convince a number of theologians that he was really talking about a supreme being in the way that people usually think of God. It should be said that Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (one of the main interpreters of Heidegger, and a close colleague of his) himself denies this reading of Heidegger’s work. The way that Heidegger conceived of the philosophical project precluded the formulation of the “God-Question” until a number of other questions had been settled, most importantly the question of Being. And Heidegger felt that the question of Being couldn’t be formulated for many lifetimes after his, at least.

This does not mean that Heidegger’s thought isn’t open to the possibility of there being a “god” in the way that it’s commonly thought of — creator of the world, arbiter of morality, worker of miracles. But providing any philosophical proof from Heidegger’s work of this is sketchy at best, to begin with.

Here is an excerpt from Heidegger’s famous interview with Der Spiegel, the year of his death (1976). Many subjects are covered here: Heidegger’s installation as rector at Freiburg by the Nazis, his interactions with Husserl and the Nazi Party, worries over technology, space travel and the atomic bomb. This all is what led to this remark “Only a god can save us,” which has traveled far outside this original text. All emphases are mine:

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

SPIEGEL: Fine. Now the question naturally arises: Can the individual man in any way still influence this web of fateful circumstance? Or, indeed, can philosophy influence it? Or can both together influence it, insofar as philosophy guides the individual, or several individuals, to a determined action?

Heidegger: If I may answer briefly, and perhaps clumsily, but after long reflection: philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god, or for the absence of a god in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline.

SPIEGEL: Is there a correlation between your thinking and the emergence of this god? Is there here in your view a causal connection? Do you feel that we can bring a god forth by our thinking?

Heidegger: We can not bring him forth by our thinking. At best we can awaken a readiness to wait [for him].

SPIEGEL: But can we help?

Heidegger: The first help might be the readying of this readiness. It is not through man that the world can be what it is and how it is -- but also not without man. In my view, this goes together with the fact that what I call "Being" (that long traditional, highly ambiguous, now worn-out word) has need of man in order that its revelation, its appearance as truth, and its [various] forms may come to pass. The essence of technicity I see in what I call "pos-ure" (Ge-Sull), an often ridiculed and perhaps awkward expression.

To say that pos-ure holds sway means that man is posed, enjoined and challenged by a power that becomes manifest in the essence of technicity -- a power that man himself does not control. Thought asks no more than this: that it help us achieve this insight. Philosophy is at an end.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

In other words: science is leaving humanity (Dasein) behind, and ultimately human destiny is incompatible with the ends of science. If a god exists, it is not known to philosophy, and certainly philosophy’s offspring (science) doesn’t care to ask about it. At all.

You could say Heidegger’s an atheist, but it’s more cleanly expressed in the old Zork-style computer gaming phrase: “I see no god here.” If that means “agnostic” to you, okay. But agnostic doesn’t begin to cover it.

Other more traditionally-minded figures want to turn Heidegger into an out-and-out theist (Caputo, for example, who attempted to say the same of Derrida), if not a Christian, but the answer to all that is no. The answer to any such question cannot be given in any of our lifetimes.

[AshvinP]

Eugene,
This really sounds like your many objections to "phenomenological idealism" boil down to a desire for more people to take notice of what you hold to be true, regardless of whether it is the best and most accurate and concrete formlation of that underlying truth, or whether it transcends naive realism and dualism.

I never objected to phenomenological idealism, my understanding of idealism has always been phenomenological. But I understand that for many people it is so inconceivable that it is often better and more practical to speak with them about idealism in metaphysical language. I believe BK is doing the same thing.

So you think BK is adopting naive realism and subject-object dualism of abstract metaphysical idealist formulation for the sake of convenience of communication with others?

[AshvinP]

Heidegger: We can not bring him forth by our thinking. At best we can awaken a readiness to wait [for him].

I will try to respond with more thoughts later, but for now, some Wise quotes:

"For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober."

"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come. But understand this: If the homeowner had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into..."

[JeffreyW]

Yeah, I think we are just arguing over whether there is at least some ability for Reason to bring us to the doorsteps of esthetic exploration (imaginative cognition), which I feel is absolutely necessary because the reasoned conceptual foundation will be like a map when entering into unexplored territory. What I really want to know is about after you get a chance to read Steiner (or maybe you already have), and how you feel about the possibility that others have already developed esthetic cognition to the extent that they can give us very concrete and precise illustrations (remembering they are always mere analogies for a Reality which cannot be repreesnted in spatiotemporal concepts) of what is found in this unexplored territory of our subconscious. One such person participates on this forum (Cleric), but you guys haven't had a chance to interact yet. You may want to a browse a few of his essays here, like Beyond the Flat MAL (critique of BK's idealism which also puts forth another idealist perspective).

I have evaded Steiner, but perhaps I should look into him. One of my graduate advisors, Saul Bellow, was almost obsessed with him. There might be something to the notion that the preconscious mind works prior to our sensibilities of space and time and is directly entangled with the elemental universe. That would allow for such things.

Wow, that's one hell of an advisor to have... and I am excited to hear he was almost obsessed with Steiner. Now I will need to actually read his novels!

Yes, if you are open to that possibility in bold, then I think you will greatly appreciate Steiner's PoF. I think he has even you beat for sheer distaste of abstract analytic philosophy (and psychology and religion). Even if he resonated with the underlying ideas, he knew that was not the direction of thought we should align ourselves with. Although one of my favorite quotes from him is the one which follows, because it really highlights how all of these views, from hardcore materialism-atheism to Kantian idealism and dualist religious fundamentalism, have something to offer us IF we understand how they are functioning in a more holistic evolutionary context. Through this higher knowledge we can turn what is supremely distasteful and annoying in philosophical thought into a great instructive tool for ourselves and others.

If one wants an exact nomenclature, one can call the formations of the intellect “concepts” and the creations of reason “ideas.” And one sees that the path of science is to lift oneself through the concept to the idea. And here is the place where the subjective and the objective element of our knowing differentiates itself for us in the clearest way. It is plain to see that the separation has only a subjective existence, that it is only created by our intellect. It cannot hinder me from dividing one and the same objective unity into thought-configurations that are different from those of a fellow human being; this does not hinder my reason, in its connecting activity, from attaining the same objective unity again from which we both, in fact, have taken our start. Let us represent symbolically a unified configuration of reality (figure 1). I divide it intellectually thus (figure 2); another person divides it differently (figure 3). We bring it together in accordance with reason and obtain the same configuration.





This makes it explainable to us how people can have such different concepts, such different views of reality, in spite of the fact that reality can, after all, only be one. The difference lies in the difference between our intellectual worlds. This sheds light for us upon the development of the different scientific standpoints. We understand where the many philosophical standpoints originate, and do not need to bestow the palm of truth exclusively upon one of them. We also know which standpoint we ourselves have to take with respect to the multiplicity of human views. We will not ask exclusively: What is true, what is false? We will always investigate how the intellectual world of a thinker goes forth from the world harmony; we will seek to understand and not to judge negatively and regard at once as error that which does not correspond with our own view. Another source of differentiation between our scientific standpoints is added to this one through the fact that every individual person has a different field of experience. Each person is indeed confronted, as it were, by one section of the whole of reality. His intellect works upon this and is his mediator on the way to the idea. But even though we all do therefore perceive the same idea, still we always do this from different places. Therefore, only the end result to which we come can be the same; our paths, however, can be different. It absolutely does not matter at all whether the individual judgments and concepts of which our knowing consists correspond to each other or not; the only thing that matters is that they ultimately lead us to the point that we are swimming in the main channel of the idea.

Thanks, you’ve convinced me to read more. Saul used to make it sound more like something weird feeding his strong desire for an afterlife, and at a time I was far more conservative than I am now. I was so much older then,

[JeffreyW]

Same answer. One aspect of where Heidegger and I differ.

I'm guessing that this is an answer to my question about your take on the numinous, which is to say that, like the noumenal, the numinous is "an archaic metaphysical error." So what then are we to make of this earlier exchange?

I don't think JW ever said it is "forever" a mystery. In response to me, he said there are evolutionary reasons to think we have already started piercing the veil of intellectual cognition to reach deeper, more numinous layers of Reality via "esthetic knowledge". But I am sure he can elaborate on that later.

To which you replied : "No need to elaborate, you said it well."

Me thinks Kimosabe speaks with forked tongue.

If you had actually quoted me using the word “numinous” there might be something to discuss.

[Soul_of_Shu]

If you had actually quoted me using the word “numinous” there might be something to discuss.

The point is that, if Ashvin mis-characterized your take on the numinous, then why did you say there's no need to elaborate, as he said it well, suggesting that you're in congruence with his take on the numinous. I have to say that you critics of BK surely make strange bedfellows.

[JeffreyW]

In my delving into the psyche of Heidegger, I came across this excerpt from a Quora Q&A regarding the question of MH's seeming ambiguity with respect to theism vis-a-vis atheism. Looking forward to any clarification/elaboration ...

Strictly speaking, yes [MH was an atheist]. But it is more complicated than that, indeed. The analytically-oriented can skip the rest of this answer. If you want a fuller answer, keep reading.

Factually speaking: in Thomas Sheehan’s “Reading a Life: Heidegger and Hard Times” (found in the Cambridge Companion to Heidegger) he outlines Heidegger’s early life as a one-time Catholic seminarian and philosophy student drawn toward medieval texts, even writing a thesis about Duns Scotus. Later on, Being and Time would bear the stamps of Aquinas, Scotus, and Augustine. However, before his academic career really began, he broke with the Church around the time of his marriage to Elfride (a Protestant). At the very least, he was a (mostly) non-practicing Catholic.

The character of Heidegger’s thought is nevertheless recognizably religious (as is Nietzsche’s, and Levinas’s); entire books and other scholarly works have been written about this, and we don’t have the space to recount all the evidence here. Simply, the way in which Heidegger speaks of Sein (Being), and other metaphysical categories he offers to the reader was enough to convince a number of theologians that he was really talking about a supreme being in the way that people usually think of God. It should be said that Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (one of the main interpreters of Heidegger, and a close colleague of his) himself denies this reading of Heidegger’s work. The way that Heidegger conceived of the philosophical project precluded the formulation of the “God-Question” until a number of other questions had been settled, most importantly the question of Being. And Heidegger felt that the question of Being couldn’t be formulated for many lifetimes after his, at least.

This does not mean that Heidegger’s thought isn’t open to the possibility of there being a “god” in the way that it’s commonly thought of — creator of the world, arbiter of morality, worker of miracles. But providing any philosophical proof from Heidegger’s work of this is sketchy at best, to begin with.

Here is an excerpt from Heidegger’s famous interview with Der Spiegel, the year of his death (1976). Many subjects are covered here: Heidegger’s installation as rector at Freiburg by the Nazis, his interactions with Husserl and the Nazi Party, worries over technology, space travel and the atomic bomb. This all is what led to this remark “Only a god can save us,” which has traveled far outside this original text. All emphases are mine:

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

SPIEGEL: Fine. Now the question naturally arises: Can the individual man in any way still influence this web of fateful circumstance? Or, indeed, can philosophy influence it? Or can both together influence it, insofar as philosophy guides the individual, or several individuals, to a determined action?

Heidegger: If I may answer briefly, and perhaps clumsily, but after long reflection: philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god, or for the absence of a god in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline.

SPIEGEL: Is there a correlation between your thinking and the emergence of this god? Is there here in your view a causal connection? Do you feel that we can bring a god forth by our thinking?

Heidegger: We can not bring him forth by our thinking. At best we can awaken a readiness to wait [for him].

SPIEGEL: But can we help?

Heidegger: The first help might be the readying of this readiness. It is not through man that the world can be what it is and how it is -- but also not without man. In my view, this goes together with the fact that what I call "Being" (that long traditional, highly ambiguous, now worn-out word) has need of man in order that its revelation, its appearance as truth, and its [various] forms may come to pass. The essence of technicity I see in what I call "pos-ure" (Ge-Sull), an often ridiculed and perhaps awkward expression.

To say that pos-ure holds sway means that man is posed, enjoined and challenged by a power that becomes manifest in the essence of technicity -- a power that man himself does not control. Thought asks no more than this: that it help us achieve this insight. Philosophy is at an end.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

In other words: science is leaving humanity (Dasein) behind, and ultimately human destiny is incompatible with the ends of science. If a god exists, it is not known to philosophy, and certainly philosophy’s offspring (science) doesn’t care to ask about it. At all.

You could say Heidegger’s an atheist, but it’s more cleanly expressed in the old Zork-style computer gaming phrase: “I see no god here.” If that means “agnostic” to you, okay. But agnostic doesn’t begin to cover it.

Other more traditionally-minded figures want to turn Heidegger into an out-and-out theist (Caputo, for example, who attempted to say the same of Derrida), if not a Christian, but the answer to all that is no. The answer to any such question cannot be given in any of our lifetimes.

This is largely true. I did much of my graduate worked with Paul Ricoeur on Nietzsche and Heidegger. He was a Christian philosopher who focused on these two thinkers because they ask the same questions as do theologians: what is the source of the Holy, and how do we ground our values. Heidegger grew up in a devout Catholic family and originally entered the university to become a Jesuit priest. He had an intense interest in Medieval mystics, which informed his thinking of Being for the rest of his life. During his Jesuit studies he became fascinated with Protestantism, then had a “nervous breakdown”. When he came back he left theology to study “atheistic” phenomenology with Husserl.

The question of gods is extremely nuanced. To even consider the question, we would first have to remove any concept of gods we now have and first assess the question of Being. Without Being properly thought we are simply creating metaphysical conjectures which can never be sufficient. We first have to understand the ground of the “Holy”, which we are far from doing now. It is clear, however, whatever a god must be it is no more than a revealed aspect of Being, and not Being itself. He and Nietzsche were thinking more along the lines of the Ancient Greek god Dionysus, who organically appears from the physical world in one guise.

I think his position in the long poem “Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens” is more in line with his writings on the need to move beyond conceptual gods and discover the essence of Being instead:

“Wir kommen für die Götter zu spät, und zu früh für das Sein, dessen angefangenes Gedicht ist der Mensch

[Soul_of_Shu]

I think his position in the long poem “Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens” is more in line with his writings on the need to move beyond conceptual gods and discover the essence of Being instead:

“Wir kommen für die Götter zu spät, und zu früh für das Sein, dessen angefangenes Gedicht ist der Mensch

Alas, I'm left to resort to a translation of the poetry (even more fraught with challenges than translating prose) which I'm assuming is from the following ...

When the early morning light
grows quietly over the mountains ...

The darkening of the world never reaches
the light of being.

We come too late for the gods and
too early for being. The poem he
has begun is man.

Walking towards a star ...

Thinking is the restriction to one
thought that will one day
stand still like a star in the sky of the world.

Good to know that there is the poetry though, however inadequate the translation/interpretation may be, as it brings MH closer to this psyche's sensibilities and heart, and thus leaving me inclined to disregard the prose altogether.

[JeffreyW]

Poetry infused everything he wrote after the “turn”, almost none of which translates. That is why he is impossible to understand in translation, and even for most people in the original German. We expect philosophers to define their terms and apply logic, the metaphysical method he rejects. Words are not to be defined, but explored. Words originate in poetic thought and accumulate history over time. That is the revelation of the history of Being.

[Soul_of_Shu]

So you think BK is adopting naive realism and subject-object dualism of abstract metaphysical idealist formulation for the sake of convenience of communication with others?

I now seem to recall that in a recent interview BK said something to the effect (paraphrasing) that his take on the relational subject><object dynamic, born of so-called dissociation into M@L as conceiver of archetypal ideation vis-a-vis M@L as alter-mode perceiver of the corresponding percepts, is not as some dichotomous duality, irreconcilably set apart one from the other, but rather more of an ever-evolving feedback-loop polarity. Which would seem to be in accord with Scott's take on the formlessness><form polarity, with the subjective ipseity being the formless pole, and the objective percept being to form aspect. But I may be misrepresenting this here. Any edification is welcome.