ATHEISM Part  8 What does “Effect” versus “Affect” Mean here?

QUOTATIONS FROM HEIDEGGER’S ATHEISM: The Refusal of a Theological Voice by Laurence Paul Hemming, University of Notre Dame Press, 2002

Chapter Two: The Basis of Heidegger’s Atheism

49: The question is how what Heidegger calls the Christianization of God becomes the basis for a fundamental redescription of human being. The persistent question has remained whether Descartes himself was an atheist.

God is infinite substance as opposed to human finite substance, although, as Heidegger notes, this leaves the question of the meaning of substance unclarified in Descartes. This has the effect that “ ‘being’ itself does not ‘affect’ us, and therefore cannot be interrogated (GCM’s italics). ‘Being is not a real predicate’ according to a remark of Kant’s, who was only repeating Descartes’ principle’.35 (Sein und Zeit, [GA2], p. 94. “Das ‘Sein’ selbst ‘affiziert’ uns nicht, deshalb kann es nicht vernommen werden. ‘Sein’ ist kein reales Pradikat’ nach dem Ausspruch Kants, der nur den satz Descartes’ wiedergibt.”).

50: Descartes establishes the ‘I’ of the cogito as the first indubitable thing the self may know.

God already is, but this is dependent upon my knowing in virtue of who I am.

The important point here . . . is the temporal mode of procedure of faith . . . the proper temporal priority of faith is transposed improperly to the order of being, of philosophy itself, so that God lies at the origin . . . in virtue of the structure of the self, the subject. This priority of God as most real being and the creator and cause of all things is precisely the understanding which Heidegger’s atheism is intended to destructure . . . “Modern philosophy made a total turnabout of philosophical inquiry and started out from the subject, the I’.36 (Die Grunprobleme der Phenomenologie (GA24), p. 174. “Die neuere Philosophie vollzog eine totale Umwendung des philosophischen Fragens und ging vom Subjeckt, vom Ich aus.”).

This word—turnabout (Umwendung)—will be critical . . . this turnabout proves to be entirely in consequence of the Christianization of God. It is therefore necessary to see the intimate connection between Heidegger’s critique of subjectivity and his methodological atheism.

Understanding what coming to the self means . . .

51/52: This very inquiry brings questionableness to the fore, so that Heidegger says “thrust within absolute questionableness and thus seeing, to have it, that what’s really grasping philosophy” (GCM’s italics).38 (Phanomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristotles (GA61), p. 37. “In die absolute Fragwerdigkeit hineingestossen und sie sehend haben, dass heisst Philosophie eingentlich ergreifen.” Rojcewicz translation: “To grasp philosophy authentically means to encounter absolute questionability and to possess this questionability in full awareness,” pg. 29).

This questioning, as a placing of the ‘I’ into question, is the means whereby the ontological difference is brought to light: “The questioning must . . . understand what it asks when it asks about being. What it asks for here as such refers back to the very questioning . . . this questioning is a being . . . As what is this being, of which we say that it questions, looks upon, considers as, relates, etc.—already given? It is that being which we ourselves are; this being, which I myself am in each particular instance, we call the Dasein. 40 (Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (GA20), p. 199f. “Das Fragen muss recht verstehen, was es fragt, nach dem Sein namlich. Das Erfragte schlagt hier als dieses Erfragte auf des Fragen selbst zuruck, sofern dieses ein Seindes ist . . . Als was ist dieses Seiende, von dem wir sagen: Fragen, hinsehen auf, ansprechen als, beziehen—vorgegeben? Es ist das Seiende das wir selbst sind; dieses Seiende, das ich je selbst bin, nennen wir das Dasein” (author’s italics). Theodore Kisiel’s translation: “The questioning must therefore rightly understand what it asks when it asks about being. What it asks for here as such refers back to the very questioning . . already given? It is the entity which we ourselves are; this entity, which I myself am in each particular instance, we call the Dasein,” pg. 148.