From: "Laurence Paul Hemming" <lph-AT-dircon.co.uk>
Subject: RE: Self-evidently so ...
Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 19:30:56 +0100


Dear Mike,

That's Heidegger's point - "who is the God" - what/who I think God is and
what/who you think God is *is* what is put into question, to be
interrogated.  What we think is not arbitrary.  Though what I think is
always mine, it's also not mine, it has a history which stands against me
and constitutes me.  In this question (that of God and being) to conflate
God and being is to elide the possibility of enquiring into that history.

For Heidegger in particular, "God" is constituted negatively - the very move
in itself of splitting the (metaphysically given) unity of God and being.
How is this move possible?  Is it something Heidegger just "believes"?  No -
he argues that the "basic experience" the "event" (das Ereignis) is
(following Nietzsche's "word") that "God is dead".  Indeed, das Ereignis
itself "sich ereignet" in the space opened up by the proclamation of
Nietzsche's madman "God is dead".  This "word" is, Heidegger says on one
occasion "kein atheistische Satz" (I think I have remembered the German
correctly) but a basic experience in Western thinking.  The thought "God is
dead" (the very thought that God and being are not [metaphysically] the
same) allows for the very possibility of God to be thought again - it is
part of der neue Anfang - the new beginning.  Such a thought may have to be
thought negatively, as in "der Fehl Gottes und des Goettlichen ist
Abwesenheit" (the "default" - using Hofstadter's translation - "of God and
the gods is absence").

So just what does Steiner mean?  I don't know, though I suspect there is a
confusion in his thought.  What I know of Heidegger tells me I can't just
decide "this morning I will no longer think in a two-thousand year rut, I'll
think again (anew)" - as an act of will.  For Heidegger, I think anew when I
think un-willingly.  Can I un-willingly think of God?

Hope this helps.
Best wishes,

Laurence

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> [mailto:owner-heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU]On Behalf Of Mike
> Staples
> Sent: Monday, May 25, 1998 8:12 PM
> To: heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
> Subject: Re: Self-evidently so ...
>
>
> Michael Eldred wrote:
>
> > > >George Steiner makes several references to Heidegger's work;
> > "Replace
> > > >Sein by 'God' in all the key passages and their meaning becomes
> > > >pellucid."
> >
> > Laurence, what is to be done with such pellucidity? As Steiner says,
> > it comes
> > from mapping the thinking of being back into two-thousand-year-old
> > ruts in
> > thinking.
>
> Michael, does one's interpretation of the term "God" make any
> difference
> here? Isn't there a mapping of one's thinking of being back into
> two-thousand-year-old ruts only if the interpretation of "God" is from
> that two-thousand-year-old tradition?
>
> And as I'm writing this, I'm also hearing myself say something like,
> "Well...if you are going to call Heidegger's reference to Being, a
> reference to God, then you either have to redefine Heidegger's "Being"
> in terms of the two-thousdand-year-old tradition, or the term "God" in
> terms of Heidegger's notion of Being." I suppose I tend toward the
> latter. But, then, why not just use the term Being? The term "God"
> already has a meaning of its own.
>
> On another note, why would Steiner say what he did about substituting
> the term "God" for "Being", then turn right around and make the
> statement about two-thousand-year-old ruts in thinking??
>
> Michael Staples
>
>
>
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