21. 01. 2004.

MAJESTIC MEGAVIEWS OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, NOTHING AT ALL

I am finding Laurence Paul Hemming’s book, HEIDEGGER’S ATHIESM, University of Notre Dame Press, 2002, ISBN 0-268-03058-8, very hard going, not because it is obscure, but because every  sentence presents a whole new world of thought.

I just got through an initial study of David Hume in which an old paper by Father Robert Sokolowski (completely by accident), in a footnote of all things, clearly delineated the real problem in Hume: A) radical scepticism is the only consistent, rational, valid, true philosophical position which, in essence destroys its own voice, is, by moral choice, voluntarily mute; and B) tradition, belief, common sense is the only possible source of vocality and action; therefore, in deliberate synthesis, C) Hume creates an absolute "fiction" (like the legal transfer of property in A TREATISE ON HUMAN NATURE) of logically ridiculous but pragmatically necessary "moderate scepticism". The "true" is not only useless but silent, and "vulgar understanding" essentially triumphs, though under the strict and critical eye of reason. Since then I have found a number of Catholics with a great appreciation especially for the TREATISE.

Reading the TREATISE

turned Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger inside out and into commentaries upon it. I never really took British philosophy seriously before. Now I have associated what Thomas Hobbes says about real beings necessarily have position (in relation to angels, spirits, and being "inspired" such as the scriptures or revelation from God) with the sections of Heidegger’s BASIC PROBLEMS IN PHENOMENOLOGY that Hemming notes in his book. I am finding the 19th century editors of Hume, Green & Grose, to be brilliant (and Hegelian) expositors of a radically sceptical Hume, a position very unpopular academically in the 20th Century. And then I rediscovered John Henry Cardinal Newman, especially A GRAMMAR OF ASCENT. He literally operates from the same exact position Hume does, but simply has a different 'tradition' and makes different choices.

Hume in the TREATISE bases ALL thought on the sense impressions, imagination, and passion (specifically), basically combined in one concept - "belief." Of course everybody wants to read this as merely synonymous with "common sense". But Hume is thoroughly honest and uses the word deliberately with its full range of connotations. One implication he brings out is that the ‘source’ of what becomes ‘one’s’ existence, the seed of what becomes one’s character, is almost entirely unknown. Hume brings the concept of God and his interference in human life through miracles and inspiration thoroughly into question.  The exact mirror reflection of this is that the existence of a real soul, self, ego, identity are equally and intraconnectedly brought into question.

This becomes especially acute in the DIALOGUES and NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGION when Hume deliberately trivializes the concept of "God" as much as he can, but is left with an irritating remnant he cannot rid himself of, that man has created this beautiful, inspiring idea which itself is a process of imagining that literally expands man's mind to encompass the universe, of which Donald W. Livingston has related to Kant's "transcendence" "object X" and therefore Heidegger's "being". Suddenly many things started falling into place, and it is only through Hume and Thomas Sheehan that I am even beginning to understand Hemming’s book.

A bad review by Mark Bauerlein got me to thinking about typical misconceptions of Heidegger. Heidegger in the NIETZSCHE lectures somewhere, with difficulty, delineates "being" quite literally as A) the most important human ability is “to question” - at all - literally, and is the root of imagination and thought per se, and B) it is an unanswered and even unanswerable question. It is such literal thinking that is hard to do in philosophy. Aristotle makes a very magnificent attempt in the last chapter of the POSTERIOR ANALYTICS, book II, chapter 19, 99b7-100b17, Jonathan Barnes’ translation. This imphasizes the necessity of Hume’s compromise of “moderate skepticism”.  

This dual questioning of the existence of God and the self subscribes to the Humean prism, the like of which Hemming brings out regarding Rudolf Bultmann. When you think of God you necessarily think of man. When you think of man you necessarily think of God. Even if you do NOT want to believe, your "belief" necessarily in and of itself as a whole is founded on a concept of "God". "Being" is not only not an object, it cannot be a "concept" either. Just as there cannot be such all-inclusive concepts as “infinity” or “wholeness” or “universe” as if one can step outside of them and observe, so the ‘concept’ of “being” must not only be “finite” but also “material”. It is necessarily related to the physical at least through the position of the specific person 'thinking' it. It is like Bishop Berkeley's "natural language" of the sense impressions but not taken nearly so far as he did. So, an "unanswerable questioning" is the nearest we can come to a so-called concept. It gives a place for something to stand in. It dissolves into a Derridean "trace". However, Bauerlin stimulated me to connect "being" with the one thing that is physical, yet subtle enough to SUGGEST a 'communication' of something vaguely like a concept and that is Jean Genet's elaborate development of the empty and completely open 'meaning' of "gestures". A "shrug of the shoulders" says nothing at all definite but can imply a whole world view. And Genet takes it much farther. On top of that, it is always good to remember the book he loved the most, constantly reread, and was reading when he died was THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. "If there is no God, then all things are permitted." Hume and Hobbes and Newman certainly understood and feared that, and each found a solution to that problem in their own way. So did Jean-Paul Sartre. So did Martin Heidegger.

‘Sincerely’

Gary C. Moore