Heidegger

allen scult wrote:

> I thought some people might be interested in a realization I came to
> while preparing the syllabus for a course entitled “Philosophy of
> Religion.”
>
> I was thinking anew about what a philosophy of religion might be. (I
> learned this approach from Heidegger.)
> What I came to is not as important as how I came to it. First I
> decided what I would like the course to be about, perhaps what I
> think it “should” be about philosophically; and then I figured out
> how to make philosophy out of my concern, my preoccupation with
> religion. My conclusion was that I needed to put it ( the idea I
> wanted to investigate)into the form of the question, “What is
> religion?” That is, what is the quality or characteristic that makes
> religion religion( akin to Socrates’ question in the Euthyphro: What
> is the characteristic that makes pious actions pious?
>
> Questioning religion in this way assumes that religion is fundamental
> to the being of Dasein, which seems to me the only way a philosopher
> can study a phenomenon, that is in the light of dasein’s seeing. How
> else could a philosopher investigate anything? It would be all up to
> the psychologists, and we all realize how dull that is.

First and foremost, it seems, would be the strict dichotomy between
religion and the sight of scientific knowing. This has been acknowledged
equally both by scientists (to whom religion is deficient in evidence)
and by theologians (to whom the need for evidence would be a
deficiency). This parallels Heidegger’s distinction between concernful
circumspection (which science sees as deficient in thoughtful analysis -
“just” using “without” stopping to think) and knowing (which is
deficient in comparison to concernful circumspection due to a separation
from original meaningful context).

Posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 2:45 am
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