Heidegger

>>From: allen scult
>
>>As for religion, like, philosophy, it’s imcomparable. Religion IS,
>>and IS like nothing else is.The fact that it is, is what makes it
>>so well suited to phenomenological investigation. As Heidegger
>>said by way of properly orienting his students to the course,
>>religion is as real as the train station in Freiburg. . .not just
>>any train station, mind you, but that very train station. Go,
>>touch it. Then come back and we’ll talk about religion.
>>
>>You’re confusing faith with science (about which Heidegger was
>>right). Faith by its very nature is independent of contingencies,
>>especially effects. It takes no object. It’s totally useless, to
>>say nothing of baseless. I think Heidegger’s essay on theology and
>>phenomenology makes the distinction between philosophy (of
>>religion) and religion quite sharply, perhaps too sharply. I think
>>philosophy and religion desire each other. They are separate and
>>must remain so. The idea is to think them as close as possible one
>>to the other, without either being absorbed into the other. Like
>>some other games we’ve all enjoyed.
>
>Philosophically, there is still a strong parallel with the
>Husserlian take on equipmentality: the philosophical prioritization
>of the bare ISness of religion apart from its particular
>embodiments, with his scientific prioritization of the bare
>presence/thingness of equipment apart from its particular use. So
>the parallel response (mine to you with Heidegger’s to Husserl)
>would be: religion can be philosophically explicated in terms of
>isness, but at the price of its *true* nature (i.e., at the cost of
>faith in THIS particular embodiment rather than others), just as
>equipmentality can be scientifically (objectively) explicated in
>terms of its thingness, but at the price of its equipmentality.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but your view of the
particular embodiment of religion in faith is peculiarly Christian,
which fact, I think would easily overlooked by a Christian. The
particular embodiment of Judaism is in the people of Israel and the
practices which define them. God nowhere demands faith, rather
obedience to his will as embodied in the Torah. I find myself using
the word “embodied” here twice because Israel and the Torah are one
(see Levinas). The point of these embodiments, their entelechy, so
to speak, their beginning and end is in the relationship between God
and Israel, a relationship constituted not by faith, but by practice,
not in believing, but in acting. Again, the is-ness of science and
religion cannot be compared or analogized, especially in their
relationship to philosophy, which relationship I tried to
characterize in the second paragraph above.

> In that case, instead of treating religion as showing itself
>philosophically, the priority could be reversed, and philosophy
>could be treated as showing itself religiously - as deprived of
>faithful absorption. Only from that deprived perspective does faith
>then appear to not “know enough” to abstract from its particular
>embodiment, just as from a (deprived) scientific point of view,
>concernful involvement appears to not “know enough” to abstract from
>its being-alongside. Philosophically, I don’t see an essential
>difference between the two moves - by which I mean, I don’t see how
>one can consistently rule out one while accepting the other.

Nicely done! I think science and religion can be defined (in part)
by what each does not know about itself in order to be what it is,
and I think you’re on the right track in describing what science
doesn’t know about itself. I want to think about what the
not-knowing-factor is in religion, but although you appear to
evidence a typical not -knowing of Christianity (not knowing the ways
in which other religions are different[an occupational hazard of
Christianity’s universalism]), I don’t think it represents the
defining not-knowing of religion as such.

Yours in ecumenical brotherhood despite our differences,

Allen

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Posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 3:15 am
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