Heidegger’s Atheism: The Refusal of a Theological Voice

332 Pages·20.781 MB·English

by  Laurence Paul Hemming

Heidegger/s
-theism
The Refusal of
a Theological Voice
Paul
Laurence Hemming
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2002 by
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
http://www.undpress.nd.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
A record of the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available upon request from the Library of Congress
ISBN 0-268-03058-8
This book is printed on acidjree paper.
00
for Ferdinand and Susan
and my Parents
of
gifts God
Ausserdem bin ich von Hause aus katholisch.
-Martin Heidegger to Pastor W. D. Zimmermann,
30 June 1968
Contents
FOREWORD ix
CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1
CHAPTER TWO The Basis of Heidegger's Atheism 41
CHAPTER THREE Reading Heidegger's Turn 75
CHAPTER FOUR The Event in Heidegger's Turn 103
CHAPTER FIVE The Death of God as Event 135
CHAPTER SIX Heidegger's Critique of Theology 179
CHAPTER SEVEN Zarathustra and the Death of God 215
CHAPTER EIGHT Jean-Luc Marion and the Contemporary 249
Theological Appropriation of Heidegger
CHAPTER NINE Conclusion 271
APPENDIX The Reply to the Third Question at 291
the Seminar in Zurich, 1951
GLOSSARY OF GREEK TERMS 293
BIBLIOGRAPHY 295
INDEX 323
Foreword
This work has come to fruition over much time and has traversed three
universities, with many friends and supporters along its way. It has
emerged as an engagement with the often troubled experience of think
ing with and writing about Martin Heidegger, especially for men and
women of faith. I am one among many who might have some claim to
have been taught the discipline and practice of thinking by studying
Martin Heidegger. Though I would count myself no Heideggerian, yet
his thought continues to amaze and captivate me.
The translations in this volume are my own, though heavily in
formed by the now many published translations of Heidegger's texts. The
notorious difficulty of translating Heidegger's German has meant that I
have deliberately erred on the side of the literal, and I have provided the
original German in the footnotes. The reader should always refer to the
German for the inner sense of the texts quoted. I have eschewed the usual
rendering of das Sein as 'Being with a big B' (as John Macquarrie used to
say in Oxford) in favor of just 'being.' Das Seiende, which can also mean
'being,' and has often been translated as 'whatever is', I have distin
guished in English by tending to render in the plural: 'beings.' Where I
have deviated from this convention I have made clear in the text why.
I have sought to translate as inclusively as possible and would ask
the reader kindly to bear with me when I have reluctantly resorted to
use of male terms for the sake of simplicity to denote the whole of
humanity. Other solutions seemed too labored, in particular the use of
female pronouns in place of male. As a male author this seems to me to
be colonization under another guise, and I have eschewed it. I would
ask you always to assume that I have intended translations to be under
stood in an inclusive sense even where you are dissatisfied with the
compromises I have made.
Within quotations and translations, I have added words indicated
by square brackets, [. .. J. for the sake of clarification of the sense or for
ix
x - Foreword
grammatical completeness. Perspicacious readers may be perplexed by some
spelling or grammar in foreign-language quotations. Wherever possible, I
have used critical editions and authoritative texts and retained the original
spelling and format found there. Thus apostrophes creep into Nietzsche's
genitives, Descartes's Latin has accented vowels, and Leibniz's French and
St. Catherine's Italian are different from our own. Some of the constructions
from the H,eidegger Gesamtausgahe are questionable; however, in the absence
of a critical edition of his work I have not sought to correct them myself.
With origins in study begun at the University of Oxford in 1992, a good
part of the research reproduced here was carried out as doctoral work at
the University of Cambridge between 1995 and 1998. More latterly it has
benefited from time at Heythrop College of the University of London, where
I now work and have my intellectual home.
I would like to record my debt of gratitude to the late Cardinal Basil
Hume, who, as Archbishop of Westminster, made my going to Cambridge
possible, and the Archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols, who in his
time at Westminster and afterward has encouraged my work. I would also
like to thank John McDade, S.J., Heythrop's Principal since 1999, who has
ensured I have had time and opportunity to develop my work.
Graham Ward, my supervisor at Cambridge, has been a friend to these
researches, and I would also like to thank David Burrell, C S. C, for his sup
port and encouragement and Fergus Kerr, O. P., who since 1999, has from
time to time made good and helpful suggestions. I am indebted as well to
Nicholas Boyle of Magdalene College, Cambridge, for his many corrections
and improvements of my translations. If the improvements are his, the per
sisting errors are entirely mine. I would like to thank John Milbank for
encouraging publication of this work, despite our very different understand
ing of Heidegger. I must also record my thanks to Richard Price for his help
with the weakness of my Greek, and Gemma Simmonds, I. B. V. M., for her
perspicacious help with my French. I would like to thank Julian Goman for
his work on the index.
Earlier fruits of the research of which this book is the latest form
have appeared in print elsewhere. Some of the questions around Jean-Luc
Marion's reading of Martin Heidegger were raised in New BlackJriars in 1995.1
A preliminary discussion of Heidegger's approach to analogy and nihilism
appeared in the collection Radical Orthodoxy under the title "Nihilism" in
I. "Rl>alJiIl~ Ill>idrAAl>r: Is (;od without Bringt· ill NI'W Blackfriars. vol. 76 (1':1':15).
Foreword - xi
1998,2 and questions concerning Heidegger's understanding of God which
formed the basis for what has become chapter 6 appeared in The Thomist
under the title "Heidegger's God" in the same year. Two other publications
3
in 1998 arose out of research which went on respectively to become, in the
first instance, chapters 3 and 4, and in the second chapter 7. My earlier views
on Heidegger's turn appeared under the title "Speaking out of Turn: Martin
Heidegger and Die Kehre" in the Internationaljournal ofP hilosophical Studies, 4
and a preliminary discussion of Heidegger's reading of the figure of Zara
thustra appeared as "Who is Heidegger's Zarathustra?" in Literature and The-
010gy.5 Readers who are bothered to look in these places will see how much my
thought has developed, and I hope matured, in the time that has passed.
Finally, I must acknowledge the people to whom this work is dedicated,
without whose untiring loving friendship and support this work would nei
ther have begun, nor been undertaken, nor carried to fruition. Deo gratias.
Feast of St. Catherine of Siena,
29 April 2001
2. "Nihilism: Articulating Nihilism and Redemption in a Post-Modern Context" in
Radical Orthodox, Milbank, J; Ward, G., and Picks tack, C. (eds.), Routledge, London,
1998.
3. "Heidegger's God: A Reading of Heidegger's Critique of Aquinas' Assertion
Deus est suum esse" in The Thomist, vol. 62 (1998).
4. "Speaking out of Turn: Martin Heidegger and Die Kehre" in lnternationa/journal
ofP hilosophical Studies, vol. 6 (1998).
5. "Who is Heidegger's Zarathustra?" in Literature and Theology, vol. 12 (1998).