Raja Mylvaganam wrote:
"Heidegger derives his concept of the overwhelmingness of the future as ultimate importance in and of itself ..."

30th July 2004

GARY. C. MOORE
As to Heidegger and Christianity, I have not read the new translation of his phenomenology of religion. Maybe this will motivate me. John Van Buren's analysis of this lecture series (from about 1921) should be in paperback now and is fairly good, relating Heidegger to Paul mainly through Martin Luther. But I find Rudolf Bultmann's THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT still by far the best description of of Paul's emphasis of the immediate emphasis on future expectation as parousia . Everything is justified by future expectation. Heidegger, Bultmann's close friend and associate from the early 1920s at Marburg, took this expectation as describing the human condition in general. Hubert L. Dreyfuss has, at his web site, an extremely good essay relating skill expertise to "wisdom" which is then related to readiness for immediate decision making for future situations which he connects to van Buren, Paul, and Kierkegaard. This is what might be called a very well prepared "leap of faith", that is, in knowledge and action one has learned expertise in making wholly encompassing decisions regarding the immediade future that can exceed rule bound action because one has thoroughly absorbed what the purpose of the rules are and now have the confidence and ability to jump beyond them even to the point of a re-evaqluation of the rules themselves, i. e., good and evil. I have written several times on the inherent danger of this if approached irrationally, but, on the other hand, this is still the necessary way to "jump" in any situation to attain new, original ideas of how things should be pragmatically done. And in every situation, even religious and ethical, practical efficiency and consistency comes to be the Final judge. There one can stand back and ask did people like Kierkegaard or Karl Barth actually accomplish anything in their everyday lives that was worth while, first according to their own standards which must be clear in your mind, and most of all according to your own future expectations. In other words, in real life like Kierkegaard, could you really stand to be a pastor to poor, ignorant people who neither understand nor value the reasons behind your decisions and merely want you to provide religious formulae to get through their miserable lives? For me, this comes directly back to what I have been saying about a highly educated religious elite whose at least partial purpose in such religion is helping the mass of 'fellow' believers who really have absolutely nothing in common with your thinking? Who may very well think such thinking 'abtruse' and pointless since, for them, real religion is involved in purely practical affairs, i. e., determining an auspicious day, amulets, prayer wheels, formula prayers repeated over and over again to attain merit, all that in general Martin Luther raged against. Modern Protestants do not now understand what Luther was "all about" since his 'image' was thoroughly revised by his student Melancthon into a much more ordinary mold. All popular religion 'of course' assumes there is a heaven and hell -- I remember the shock when I read Shankara's description of hell, so inapropriate and out of place in the BRAHMASUTRABASYA and that I consider a subtrafuge upon Shankara's part -- and one climbs a ladder of merit to escape hell and achieve heaven. This is a money lender's theology and not an intellectual's.

I would consider Heidegger's point, and even Paul's, is that one never achieves in the present what one truly wants, that all passion can only be futural, that, as Sartre said, "Man is a futile passion". The present is the only reality, a material reality, but overall the present is not where passion desires to be.

Raja Mylvaganam:
I hope I am not taking Heidegger out of context. My background in philosophy comes of attending numerous Protestant seminaries where it is now thought that the cleric is not properly trained if she does not get a dose of Dasien. I suspect seminary professors who really prefer to teach in a real University think that there is too much exegesis and not enough hermeneutics among their returning D. Min candidates. What I have gleaned from these admittedly unreliable sources is that Heidegger's notion of beings being thrown into existence (throwness?)encompasses the present. There is according to my professor in Heidegger no viewing point from which to have a point of view including history. Is this where faith (religion) becomes a very human activity?

GARY. C. MOORE "Very human" indeed, in fact, wholly human. By the intellectual definitions of the elite theology of any religion God is wholly unknowable, wholly other. Quite literally then this leaves God wholly outside ANY human consideration, a completely null term. Your statement, "There is according to my professor in Heidegger no viewing point from which to have a point of view including history," is confusing because it can mean many different things. Can one "know" history like one knows the mechanics of an automobile? Not at all. It is essentially an imaginary enterprize built up from matterial building blocks whose value and revelance each historian must judge by themselves. This is why I don't like 'Marxist" history.

David Hume's history is explicitly built this way. He declares his purpose, essentially the evolution of law as the foundation of the complex state. But these are not generalizations to him. History can only be actually written texts as they are actually used by specific individuals. And these real individuals of course have no serious regard for "progress", but just to get an immediate at-hand problem resolved. To a historian standing in an 'objective' viewpoint, he WANTS to find a pattern to history otherwise there is simply no reason to write it. That's why Hume's explicit declaration of the really random evolution of law, sometimes getting better from his point of view and sometimes getting worse, is so appropriate. It has a very practical application politically and he specifically used it against the English Whigs of his day. He establishes a relatively honest point of view from which to judge immediate politics. He understands fairly well where present issues actually came from and therefore what they are built upon and what their real elements are, not like the Whigs presupposing a mythical constitution back in the Anglo-Saxon passed that guarenteed each man his liberty. Politics to Hume is the naked evolution of power in conflict and compromise with other powers. This is a legitimate point of view of history BECAUSE Hume states he has constructed it himself therefore implying other people can construct it in different ways according to their own purpose. Hume majestic virtue here is that he is honest about his purpose and that it is HIS point of view.

'Sincerely' Gary C. Moore

It helps us (me) get up and get a move on (one can be more erotic) from one day to the next. Of course most of us when we discover a good thing want to codify it and organize it but that is not my question. We already know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I have rambled enough but I am interested on your thoughts on Heidegger's Dasein.

Yours in mendicancy

Raja Mylvaganam