The Wholly Other: Being and the Last God in Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy

References

• M. Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymnen „Germanien” und „Der Rhein”, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1980, p. 166. Reference to this work will be abbreviated HH. All translations of this text are my own.
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• In addition to Contributions, with the recent publication of Heidegger's other being-historical texts, such as Besinnung (GA 66), Die Geschichte des Seins (GA 69), and Über den Anfang (GA 70), it has become clear how important the question of a more divine god was for Heidegger in this period: “For this is the foremost non-propositional ‘truth’ of being-historical thinking: only in the grounding of the truth of be-ing does the countering of gods and man enown itself and never again does a god come to man and a world arise for him out of the objecitification of beings.” M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, tr. P. Emad and T. Kalary, London: Continuum 2006, p. 220.
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• A. Gethmann-Siefert, Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie im Denken Martin Heideggers, Freiburg/München: Alber 1974. J.-L. Marion, Dieu sans l'être, Paris: Fayard 1982, translated by Thomas A. Carlson as: God Without Being, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press 1991. G. Kovacs, The Question of God in Heidegger's Phenomenology, Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press 1990. J. Prudhomme, God and Being: Heidegger's Relation to Theology, New Jersey: Humanities Press 1997. F. Schalow, Heidegger and the Quest for the Sacred: From Thought to the Sanctuary of Faith, Dordrecht: Kluwer 2001. L. Hemming, Heidegger's Atheism: The Refusal of a Theological Voice, Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press 2002. B. Vedder, Heidegger's Philosophy of Religion: From God to the Gods, Pittsburg: Duquesne Univ. Press 2006.
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• M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), tr. P. Emad and K. Maly, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1999 p. 60. Further references to this work will be given in the text and abbreviated C. Reference to the original German edition will be abbreviated B and refer to: Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), Gesamtausgabe Bd. 65, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann 1989.
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• E. Brito, “Light and Shadows from the Heideggerian Interpretation of the Sacred“ in Religious Experience and the End of Metaphysics, ed. J. Bloechl, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press 2003, p. 59. This charge is also made by David Law: “Heidegger's God, then, is subordinate to Being. God's being is temporal, bound up with time, and expressed and comes to light in time. This is what gives Being precedence over God.” “Negative Theology in Heidegger's Beiträge zur Philosophie”. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 48, 2000. Jeff Prudhomme goes even further, charging that Heidegger's last god “remains an entity subsumed under the genus of being.” God and Being: Heidegger's Relation to Theology, New Jersey: Humanities Press 1997, p. 135. Richard Polt has also framed being as enclosing the last god: “The god is as finite as be-ing.” The Emergency of Being: On Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press 2006 p. 210. Cristina Ionescu's “The Concept of the Last God in Heidegger's Beiträge: Hints Towards an Understanding of the Gift of Sein” in Studia Phaenomenologica, II 1–2, 2002, pp. 59–95, although instructive, also remains within this framework in that it attempts to understand the last god as an articulation of the gift of being. Although it was developed prior to the availibility of Contributions, Jean-Luc Marion's charge that Heidegger reduced god to being can also be seen to be derived from an insufficient account of the relation of the last god to being in Heidegger's thought.
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• Cf. J. Greisch, “The Eschatology of Being and the God of Time in Heidegger“ in International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Vol. 4 (1), 1996, pp. 17–42.
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• The close connection between this daimonic framing of being and the project of Contributions can also be seen in Heidegger's choice to describe being in Contributions as an “indicating trace” (Wegspur) (C 163; B 230) toward the last god. This is the same term Heidegger used in the second Hölderlin lecture course to describe the function of the demigod Dionysus: “Dionysus brings the trace (Spur) of the flown gods down to the godless. To bring the trace—each further hinting of the hints of the gods to the humans, each being-in-the-middle between the being of humans and the gods” (HH 188).
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• One of the few studies which have adequately emphasized the importance of this sense of middle for understanding Contributions is Günter Figal's “Forgetfulness of God: Concerning the Center of Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy” in C. Scott, S. Schoenbohm, D. Vallega-Neu, A. Vallega, eds. Companion to Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press 2001.
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• Heidegger's understanding of the turning between the creator and the god in the middle of being can be seen to be the basis for his contemporaneous Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche and above all his understanding of the eternal recurrence (ewige Wiederkehr) as the innermost center of Nietzsche's thought. For an extended treatment of this relation see my: “Telling Silence: The Question of Divinity in Heidegger's Early Nietzsche Lectures” in Epoché Vol. 9 (1), Fall 2004, pp. 117–136.
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• This sense of independence is further developed in Mindfulness: “Being is the distressing need of gods so that, availing themselves (sich bedienend) of being's swaying and in the complete detachedness unto the unconcernedness with each and every being, gods let come true.” Mindfulness, p. 224.
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• While it is beyond the scope of this essay to develop, it is also at this point that Heidegger's last god can be seen as yet another philosopher's god, however, not in the way that this charge has traditionally been made. As I have argued, on Heidegger's understanding, being does not apply to the god itself but only to its manifestation. And yet, insofar as being is, in a sense, dependent upon human beings, the last god can be seen to be dependent upon human beings for preparing the space required for its manifestation. The originally final paragraph of Contributions describes the last god as “waiting” for this precondition: “god awaits the grounding of the truth of be-ing.” (C 293; B 417) While Jean-Luc Marion famously charged Heidegger with making god a “divine prisoner of being” (‘le divin prisonnier'de l’ tre), the reverse is actually the case. Heidegger has made his last god a prisoner in its abysmal alterity from being and has placed the key in the hand of the philosopher.
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• I. Thomson, “The Philosophical Fugue: Understanding The Structure and Goal of Heidegger's Beiträge”, in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 34, No. 1, January 2003, p. 62.
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• Hans Ruin, “Contributions to Philosophy“ in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. H. Dreyfus and M. Wrathall, Oxford: Blackwell 2005, p. 362. Daniela Vallega-Neu has also rightly stressed this aspect of Contributions, see her excellent: “Thinking in Decision” in Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 33, 2003, pp. 247–263.
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