Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 13:41:55 +0000
From: Allen Scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: RE: FW: Self-evidently so ...



         Reply to:   RE: FW: Self-evidently so ...

Laurence Paul Hemming wrote:

>
>
>Perhaps existence gives Dasein to be, existence does not give the tree to
>be.  Existence gives Dasein to know the being of (the "to be" of) the tree.

And so Heidegger comes to compare the question " What is philosophy?" to the question "What is a Tree" because the being  of each has to do with the way they are given to Dasein to know in and through lanaguge.  So the question " What is a tree?" Heidegger translates as"What do we mean when we say 'tree'"? And such saying is  an historically  contingent saying, so it becomes important to qualify the question "What do we mean when we say 'philosophy'"? who "we" is, and in case of philosophy, according to Heidegger, the "we" of the saying of philosophy of course is grounded in, originates in, Greek.

Now if the being of god were similar to the being of tree, that is to say if they both "do not exist" in the same way, then it would follow, from Heidegger's thinkng in "What is Philosophy" as least, that the question of the  being of god, the sort of "to be" that God is, should likewise be translated as " What do we mean when we say "God"?  At that point I would probably  insist that the most originary historical meaning-saying of the word God in our tradition is in Hebrew; and so we should  look to the meaning-saying of the Hebrew name for God ( Eheyeh asher Ehyeh ( usually mistranslated, I think, as " I am that I am," in Exodus  as the next step in our questioning.

But I don't think that the being of God doesn't exist in the same way that the being of tree doesn't exist.  You seem to agree.

>
>What is interesting about the GA40 passage (trees are but do not exist, God
>is but does not exist etc.) is that each of the things named is different
>from the others, as if the essence of each (das Wesen) differs or is
>differed in some way.
>
>A final point: Eckhart, I am sure, believed that God "is" but does not
>exist.

But of course "The Word" does exist and existed at the beginning, and "The word was God," ( not tree) which I think makes all the difference to Eckhardt and Heidegger.  So Heidegger would not ask " What do we mean when we say 'God'?" But rather. . . well, I'm not sure of the appropriate Heideggerian way to frame the question here.

Thanks,

Allen
>

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