through theology to phenomenologyIn this sense, Heidegger wrote in his lecture of 1927–28: “All theological
concepts contain necessarily this under standing of being that human
Dasein as such has from its own.”^34 But this understanding is necessarily
based on a certain kind of “atheism” of phenomenology.
Is this Heideggerian “atheism” of phenomenology a Nietzschean
gaya scienza^35 after the so-called death of God? Or is this form of
atheistic phenomenology, this phenomenology “without God,”^36 a
subtle exoneration of God? Should “atheism” in this sense be under-
stood as a gesture that consists in turning away from the “God of
philosophers” (simple object of speculation for a theo-logy of glory
whose logos is only idolatric Gerede, gossip, about God) and turning
towards the “God of love”? From this perspective, the “turning to”
would operate in the very heart of the difficult experience of tribulation,
temptation, sin, and the point of maximal distance from God
(a-theism) would therefore also contain the possibility of a return to
God. And thus, this atheistic phenomenology would be close to the
theological silence of a via negativa, such as the one prescribed by
Pseudo-Dionysus, who asked theologians to “honor the ineffable with
a wise silence” (De div. nom., I, 3, 589b).
Finally, I would like to question the essential anthropological
dimension in this phenomenological conceptualization. Through the
“crossed” or chiasmatic reiteration of Aristotle and the New Testament
(Luther), of these two sources of European tradition, it is possible to
articulate neutral and universal anthropological basic structures of
human existence. This view, of course, is only possible when we re-
anthropologize the analytics of human Dasein, against Heidegger’s
initial intention, exploiting its anthropological potential. Is it not
possible to consider that phenomenology and theology could therefore
encounter each other on the neutral field of science, and that this
science, as overcoming the disciplinary limits of both, indicating “new
frontiers,” could be a phenomenological anthropology, since its object
is the primordial phenomenon of “human being” as life [Leben: zoè,
bios, psuchè]? As Löwith went on to remark in 1930:
- GA 9 [1927–28], 63. Cf. GA 61 [WS 1921/22], 154; GA 21 [WS 1925/26], 233.
- Cf. GA 20 [SS 1925], 109f.
- GA 23 [WS 1926/27], 77; 220.