Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 12:33:37 -0500
From: allen scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: RE: God and Philosophy


>mp now:
>Anthony, fine, but why don't you just say "atheist" or "American" then? why
>the added (redundant?) "dasein" if the adjective is not constitutive of
>dasein, given that dasein is precisely not a thing (e.g., to be
>adjectivised)?
>
>
>    In the thirties  - i believe somewhere in the Beitraege -  Heidegger
>    criticizes his own usage of the combination 'human Dasein'. Dasein
>    is not of itself 'des Menschen' (gen.subj.), nothing human, therefore
>    Heidegger proposes, that one better say: Das Dasein im Menschen, like
>    in the Kant book, but also: Der Mensch im Dasein'.
>
>    The goal seems to be to abstain from all that is known: gods, men, animals
>    flowers (the rose), because when there is no truth (metaphysics 
>as the truth
>    about what is) anymore, but rather 'nothing', that only this 
>nothing can lead
>    to a (necessary) new understanding, but not beings (god is a 
>being too) of which
>    the Being has become nothing.
>
>   rene
>

Rene,

The abstention from all that is "known" is precisely what I meant to 
point to in my
response to Michael yesterday.  How does one 
observe/think/investigate (teorein)
the nothing of Being's becoming which becomes evident through said 
abstention?  The
knowing language of metaphysics misses the point, of course.  But the 
circumspective
observation  of Dasein in the "how" of its grounded, but at the same 
time far-reaching
movement toward, gives thinking a "moving" focus, which overcomes 
metaphysical presumptions.  That movement necessarily incorporates 
Dasein's  "past" which is not passed, but rather is and always has 
been "futural."  The "becoming nothing" you speak of is is essential 
to the retrieval of authentic historicity in contemporary theology 
(so-called negative theology) as well as philosophy.

Regards,

Allen


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