whole of being, philosophy remains fixated on beings and forgets being, and this is bad
for philosophy, whose task, according to Heidegger, is to think being.
But it is also bad for theology, and this for two reasons. First, there is the Heideggerian
reason, expressed most emphatically in the “Letter on Humanism”: “Only from the truth
of being can the essence of the holy be thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the
essence of divinity to be thought. Only in the light of the essence of divinity can it be
thought or said what the word `God' is to signify” (1998, 267). Here again the question
arises as to why theology should accept this hegemony of philosophy and whether the
“God” who is understood in terms of a prior understanding of “being,” “the holy,” and
“divinity” will not be an idol.
But Heidegger gives a second Pauline reason why ontotheology is bad for theology. He
says he leaves it to the theologians to decide whether it was for better or worse that
Christian theology wedded itself so tightly to Greek philosophy. But he reminds them of
the Pauline question, “Has not God let the wisdom of this world become foolishness?” (1
Corinthians 1:20) and asks his own question. “Will Christian theology one day resolve to
take seriously the word of the apostle and thus also the conception of philosophy as
foolishness?” (1998, 288).
These two objections are far from identical. Paul speaks of the foolishness of the cross
and of preaching, and it is anything but self-evident that the wisdom of the world was
foolishness in his eyes because it focused on beings and forgot being. Given his earlier
portrayal of philosophy and the faith that is theology's arche and telos as “mortal
enemies,” we can assume that Heidegger realizes this. Theology has its own reasons for
vigilance in the face of philosophy's seductive charms, whether philosophy appears as
metaphysics or as the overcoming of metaphysics for the sake of thinking being.
In 1957 Heidegger published “The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics” as
part of Identity and Difference (1969). Here he adds a series of different but closely
related objections to ontotheology. First, he poses the question, “How does the deity enter
into philosophy?” He answers that “the deity can come into philosophy only insofar as
philosophy, of its own accord and by its own nature, requires and determines that and
how the deity enters into it” (55–56). As we have just seen, there are times when
Heidegger himself seems guilty of this arrogance. To think God, theology must first
come to philosophy to learn how to think being. But here he has a different mode of
philosophy in mind, namely, metaphysics as ontotheology. It allows God into its
discourse only in the service of its project, and it is important to be clear just what that
project is. It begins with the claim that there is a Highest Being who is the key to the
meaning of the whole of being. But beyond that, it is the project of rendering the whole
of being intelligible to human understanding with the help of this Highest Being, whether
it be Nous, or the Unmoved Mover, or the Triune God, or Spirit, or the Will to Power, or
Whatever. For this reason God must function as causa prima, ultima ratio, and causa sui.
Under the rule of the principle of sufficient reason, and in modes of thought Heidegger
calls representational and calculative reason, God's raison d'être is to enable us to explain
everything. “Taken to its extreme, this means that God exists only insofar as the principle
of reason holds” (1991, 28). Although Nietzsche still belongs to metaphysics insofar as
his Will to Power is itself such a Highest Being, his death of God announces the death of
the gods of ontotheology and calls for an overcoming of metaphysics he is unable himself
to achieve (Heidegger 1997).
nextflipdebug5
(nextflipdebug5)
#1