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
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