Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 05:48:59 -0700
Subject: Re: Self-evidently so


Laurence Paul Hemming wrote:

> 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.

Hence, one of your possible complaints with Steiner.

> For Heidegger in particular, "God" is constituted negatively - the
> very move
> in itself of splitting the (metaphysically given) unity of God and
> being.

Such that substituting God for Being would not be appropriate?

> 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.

Well I do see the point here, and I assume the same point applies to
Kovacks. I'm pressed for time right now, but I wanted to respond as best
I could. I need time to let this kick around a bit, and hope to return
to your posting in a couple of days. Thank you for sending your
reflections.

Michael Staples



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