International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 48: 139156, 2000. 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Negative theology in Heideggers Beitrge zur Philosophie

DAVID R. LAW
University of Manchester, UK

Introduction Even by Heideggers standards Beitrge zur Philosophie1 is a difcult book. Jeff Owen Prudhomme speaks of the books densely compacted and bewildering formulations and comments that, This is a difcult text even for veteran Heidegger readers.2 George J. Seidel is even blunter, writing that, By all accounts the Beitrge, or Contributions, is a weird work, even by Heideggerian standards.3 Joan Stambaugh comments that, At times it is more hermetic than hermeneutic. In a way, it is less a train of thought than a circling around what he is trying to say.4 The difculty of the work is further compounded by its unnished and fragmentary nature. Indeed, some parts of the work seem almost to be in shorthand. Otto Pggeler rightly describes the text as aphoristic,5 and it is fair to say that much of the text is reminiscent of a brainstorming session.6 Beitrge zur Philosophie, then, is far from an easy read, even for those well-versed in the complexities of Heideggers thought. At the same time, however, Beitrge zur Philosophie has been recognized as one of the Heideggers most signicant works. Both Pggeler and Emad7 regard it as Heideggers second major work after Being and Time and for Fred Dallmayr it is the magnum opus of Heideggers mature years.8 Dallmayr sees Beitrge as a study comparable in weight to Being and Time and as the crucial link between Heideggers earlier and later phases.9 Similarly, Tom Rockmore comments that the Beitrge is without doubt a key text for a grasp of the thought of the later Heidegger.10 Despite its bafing nature, then, the Beitrge zur Philosophie is not a work that can be ignored. The difculty of the Beitrge zur Philosophie seems to have been intentional on Heideggers part, for late on in the work he writes that, philosophy commits suicide when it makes itself intelligible (Beitrge, 435).11 Philosophical intelligibility means dragging Being down into categories and thought-forms that are inappropriate to it. To understand Heideggers philosophy is thus to force it into the straitjacket of traditional metaphysics, that is, to imprison it in precisely those modes of thought which Heidegger sees it as his task to overthrow. The difculty of the Beitrge, then, is due not

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merely to the unnished and fragmentary nature of the work, but is a deliberate methodological principle on Heideggers part: he wishes to shatter his readers attachment to traditional modes of thinking and enable them to make the transition to seynsgeschichtliches Denken,12 a kind of non-metaphysical thinking in which the human being becomes the clearing in which Being comes to be as Being. This methodological principle bears some resemblance to negative or apophatic theology, a resemblance I wish to consider in this paper.13 Our rst task, however, is to set the scene for our discussion by briey sketching the structure and task of the Beitrge zur Philosophie.

The structure of the Beitrge zur Philosophie Heidegger describes the structure (Gefge) of the Beitrge zur Philosophie as a fugue14 consisting of six Fgungen15 (Beitrge, 8182), namely, assonance (der Anklang), play (das Zuspiel), leap (der Sprung), grounding (die Grndung), the future ones (die Zu-knftigen), and the last God (der letzte Gott). These six Fgungen are framed by a further two sections, namely, section I, Preview (Vorblick), and section VIII, Being (Das Seyn).16 As its name indicates, the Vorblick is a preview of the issues Heidegger wishes to address in Beitrge zur Philosophie. The rst of the Fgungen, namely, der Anklang, is concerned with the rst beginning, Heideggers term for Western philosophy from Anaximander to Nietzsche. The rst beginning of Western philosophy has been dominated by what Heidegger terms the Leitfrage, the leading or guiding question, namely, What is ontic being? (Was ist das Seiende?) (Beitrge, 12). Heidegger holds that Western metaphysics arrives at a conception of Being by searching for a common substance held to underlie all (individual) ontic being(s) (das Seiende). Western philosophy is thus a metaphysics of presence, understanding Being as a suprahistorical and enduring presence, undergirding all that is. For Heidegger this concern with the underlying, enduring substance of entities means that Western philosophy has been concerned not, as it has erroneously supposed, with Being (Sein) but with an abstract form of ontic being (das Seiende). The consequence of this identication of Being (Sein) with ontic being (das Seiende) is, Heidegger argues, that Western thought has now forgotten, indeed abandoned Being (Sein).17 Nevertheless, there remains a dim resonance (Anklang) or echo of the question of Being in Western philosophy, which Heidegger sees it as his task to recover. The second Fgung is concerned with the transition from the rst beginning to the other beginning. This transition accounts for the title Zuspiel, which is a sporting term denoting the passing of the ball from one player to another. The question of Being is, as it were, passed from the rst beginning

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to the other beginning. A new beginning is being made, a beginning that takes up the rst beginning but transforms it.18 Thinking the question of Being from the other beginning means dispensing with thinking about Being in terms of substance. It means interrogating not ontic being, but posing what Heidegger terms the Grundfrage, the ground or fundamental question. The Grundfrage asks the question of the truth of Being (Seyn), namely, Wie west das Seyn? (How does Being essence?) (Beitrge, 7). This transformation of the question of Being is the theme of the remaining Fgungen of Beitrge zur Philosophie. The transition from the rst to the other beginning is achieved by means of a leap (Sprung) in which the realization dawns that Being has been forgotten and abandoned. This marks the beginning of a new positing of the question of Being. This new beginning, however, is not a direct transition, but a leap in which Being is understood not in metaphysical terms but as an Event of appropriation (Ereignis). By means of this leap into the Ereignis of Being, the grounding of the place of Being (Augenblickssttte) becomes possible. This grounding is to be undertaken by the future ones (die Zu-knftigen). Seyn, Wesung, and Ereignis What, then, is this Being with which Heidegger is concerned? Heidegger provides us with a denition of Being in the following passage: Being (Seyn) means not merely the reality of what is real (die Wirklichkeit des Wirklichen), nor does it mean merely the possibility of what is possible (die Mglichkeit des Mglichen), and it certainly does not merely mean Being (Sein) from the perspective of the respective ontic being (das Seiende). Rather, it means Being (Seyn) out of its primordial essencing (Wesung) in the complete ssure (Zerklftung), essencing (Wesung) not restricted to presence (Beitrge, 75). What Heidegger seems to mean by this and similar passages is that Being is not an enduring, underlying substance. Being is not an objective presence, but presences in the moment of the Event of Being. This lack of objective presencing means that Being is not Grund (Ground) but also Abgrund (Abyss). Heidegger writes: A-byss is the hesitating denial of the ground. In the denial the primordial emptiness opens itself, the primordial clearing occurs, but [it is] simultaneously the clearing whereby the hesitation shows itself (Beitrge, 380; original emphasis). In understanding Being in terms of not-Ground or Abyss (Ab-grund) one passes beyond substance ontology and creates a clearing in which a new sense of Being beckons (winkt). To articulate his conception of Being without falling back into substance ontology, Heidegger makes use of a number of neologisms. Wesung and

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wesen are the terms Heidegger employs to describe the mode of being of Being. The verb to be is appropriate to ontic being (das Seiende), but in order to make clear that Beings mode of being is of a different order and to avoid Seyn being understood metaphysically as Seiendheit, Heidegger describes Beings mode of being as Wesung. As Heidegger puts it, Das Seiende ist. Das Seyn west (Ontic being is. Being essences) (Beitrge, 30, 74).19 To grasp what Heidegger means by these neologisms, it is helpful to consider the distinction he makes between das Vergangene and das Gewesene. Das Vergangene is the term Heidegger employs to designate the conventional, everyday understanding of the past as that which once happened, is now over, and is irretrievably separated and distant from us in time. Das Gewesene, on the other hand, expresses the idea that although the past has passed into the past, it is nevertheless a past that reverberates into the present and future. Following on from this, we could perhaps render Wesung and its cognates as coming-to-be-as-having-been. That is, Wesung is historical event (Ereignis) in which Being has come to be and as having come to be opens up possibilities of appropriation in the present. As Heidegger puts it on the opening page of Beitrge zur Philosophie, No longer is it a case of acting on something and portraying an objective reality, but of being made over to the Event (sondern dem Er-eignis bereignet werden), which is equivalent to the transformation of the human beings essence (Wesenswandel des Menschen) from rational animal into Dasein (Beitrge, 3). Being is a temporal event of disclosedness in which Being moves into presence through its appropriation by and in Dasein. When Heidegger attempts to explain the nature of Beings Wesung, he makes use of the concept of Ereignis.20 As he puts in the opening pages of Beitrge, That is the essencing of Being (Seyn) itself; we call it the Ereignis (Beitrge, 7).21 The interpretation of Being as Ereignis is Heideggers attempt to establish an understanding of Being that is distinct from that of traditional metaphysics. Ereignis is Heideggers counterpart to substance, and is his answer to the question of the mode of being of Being. For Heidegger, Being (Seyn) essences (west) as the Ereignis (Beitrge, 30). Whereas in Western philosophy (ontic) being was understood as substance, for Heidegger Being should be understood as an event, an event in which Being comes-to-be-ashaving-been through appropriation by Dasein.

The nature of negative theology There are two ways of drawing parallels between negative theology and the Beitrge zur Philosophie. The rst, more general way is to point to features

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of Heideggers thought that seem to resemble the concerns and interests of the negative theologians. Certain features of Heideggers treatment of Being in the Beitrge zur Philosophie lend themselves to this treatment. In particular, Heideggers discussion of the problems of speaking about Being seem, at rst sight at least, to have parallels with certain aspects of the negative theologians discussion of the incapacity of human language to speak of God. The second approach to considering Beitrge zur Philosophie in terms of negative theology is to compare Heideggers notion of God in the Beitrge with that of negative theology. To set the scene for our discussion, let us know turn to a brief sketch of negative theology. Negative theology emphasizes the transcendence of God. Clement of Alexandria speaks of God as the absolutely rst and oldest principle22 and as above both space, and time, and name, and conception.23 Dionysius the Areopagite describes God as the Super-Essential, who is not at the pinnacle of a hierarchy of being but utterly transcends being. Similarly, Meister Eckhart writes that God is something that necessarily transcends being,24 and that, if I say that God is a being, that is not true: he is a transcendent being, and a superessential nothingness.25 A consequence of Gods transcendence stressed by all three of the aforementioned theologians, is that human thought and language are unable to grasp and express Gods nature. Because God is utterly transcendent, Clement writes, he is not a subject for demonstration,26 for the science of demonstration . . . depends on primary and better known principles. But there is nothing antecedent to the Unbegotten.27 God is thus a Being difcult to grasp and apprehend, even receding and withdrawing from him who pursues.28 Consequently, God is not capable of being taught by man, or expressed in speech,29 but is above all speech, all conception, all thought, [and] can never be committed to writing.30 Similarly, Dionysius writes, We cannot know God in his nature, since this is unknowable and is beyond the reach of mind or of reason.31 For Eckhart, the brightness of the divine nature is beyond words32 and he warns his listeners that, If you understand anything of him, that is not he, and by understanding anything of him you fall into misunderstanding.33 Does this incapacity of human thought and language to grasp God mean that we are condemned to silence? Ultimately, yes, but the negative theologians wish to show us a path to a knowledge of God that transcends the limitations of human reason. The rst stage in this process, however, is to construct a cataphatic or afrmative theology. Cataphatic theology is concerned with providing positive concepts which go some way to expressing some aspect of the divine nature. The two methods upon which cataphatic theology is based are the via eminentiori and the analogia entis. That is,

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concepts from human experience are applied to God in an analogous and qualitatively higher way. Thus terms such as wisdom, goodness, love, and so on, can be applied to God provided it is understood that they are being predicated of him to a pre-eminent degree that transcends human experience and comprehension of these qualities. We thus gain some (limited) insight into the nature of God by envisaging human attributes transposed on to a divine plane. For the negative theologian, however, the insights arrived at by means of cataphatic theology are not sufcient. To achieve a deeper knowledge of God, we must go beyond the conceptuality of afrmative theology to the Divine Mystery that underlies them. This is achieved by negating the terms developed by cataphatic theology, a classic example of which is Eckharts plea to his congregation: You should love [God] as he is: a non-God, a non-spirit, a non-person, a non-image.34 Similarly, Dionysius speaks of our relationship with God as an ascent towards the super-essential Godhead, which takes place by means of a threefold negation of positive terms predicated of God. First, Dionysius negates concepts drawn from the physical world. He sets up polar opposites such as greatness and smallness and rejects the applicability of both terms to God. Secondly, Dionysius rejects terms which are based on or related to the concept of being. Terms such as being and non-being, eternity and time, etc., are rejected as inadequate descriptions of the Super-Essential. Thirdly, Dionysius negates traditional descriptions of God such as power, wisdom, and divinity. These terms are simply not capable of grasping the transcendent mystery that is God. It might seem from this process of negation that the via negativa involves the utter abandonment of God and ultimately leaves us standing before sheer nothingness. For the negative theologians, however, it is precisely negation that enables us to sweep aside the impediments that stand in the way of the souls ascent to an ultimate union with the transcendent, super-essential Godhead. As Dionysius puts it, But my argument now rises from what is below up to the transcendent, and the more it climbs, the more language falters, and when it has passed up and beyond the ascent, it will turn silent completely, since it will nally be at one with him who is indescribable.35

Apophatic elements in the Beitrge zur Philosophie The incapacity of language An area in which the concerns of Beitrge zur Philosophie seem to overlap with those of negative theology is Heideggers emphasis on the incapacity of language. Talk about Being, Heidegger tells us, presents considerable

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difculties. The primary reason for this is that language is constructed in relation not to Being (Seyn) but to ontic being (das Seiende): All talk (Sagen) keeps itself in words and namings which, because they are intelligible to the everyday thinking (Meinen) of ontic being and have been thought out exclusively in this direction, are capable of being misinterpreted as a pronouncement of Being (Seyn) (Beitrge, 83). Indeed, human language actually conceals Being: The word itself reveals something (something known) and thereby conceals that which is supposed through intellectual talk (denkerisches Sagen) to be brought into the open (Beitrge, 83). There is nothing that can be done to eliminate this problem; human language will always and inevitably be incapable of speaking about Being: It is impossible to remove this difculty, indeed the attempt to do so indicates a misjudgement of all talk (Sagen) about Being (Seyn) (Beitrge, 83). Does this mean that we can say nothing meaningful about Being? The answer to this question must be yes, if by meaningful we understand only that which can be expressed in the language of ontic being. There is, however, another approach in which the difculty of languages concealment of Being is taken on and grasped in its essential belongingness to the thinking of Being (Wesenszugehrigkeit zum Denken des Seyns) (Beitrge, 83). This will require, however, the development of a new type of thinking. As Heidegger puts it, This requires (bedingt) a procedure that, within certain boundaries, at rst always has to accommodate conventional thinking (das gewhnliche Meinen) and has to accompany conventional thinking on a certain path for some distance, in order then at the right moment to demand the reversal (Umschlag) of thinking (Denken) but under the power of the same word (Beitrge, 8384). An important feature of this new way of thinking about Being is its employment of the logic of silence. Heidegger employs two terms to describe the logic of the new thinking. The rst term is Erschweigung, which, Heidegger writes, is the logic of philosophy, as far as philosophy asks the ground question on the basis of the other beginning (Beitrge, 83). This term Erschweigung is a neologism derived from the verb schweigen, to be silent or to keep silent. By adding the intensifying prex er- Heidegger makes clear the fundamental nature and persistence of the silence required by the new thinking. The second neologism Heidegger employs to denote the logic of silence of the new thinking is a Germanized form of the Greek term that corresponds to Erschweigung, namely, die Sigetik. This term, which we shall translate as sigetics, is derived from the Greek , meaning to be, fall, or keep silent. The point Heidegger wishes to make by these two neologisms is that Being cannot be immediately or directly expressed and that we only

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express it, if I may speak loosely and in a non-Heideggerian way, when we refrain from expressing it and fall silent. But precisely this falling silent is an expression of Being, for as Heidegger puts it, Erschweigung originates (entspringt) from the coming-to-be source of language itself and in sigetics the coming-to-be of language is grasped for the rst time (Beitrge, 79). Like the God of the negative theologians, then, Being is a highly elusive concept. It is indenable and can be spoken of only by falling silent. Deity in the Beitrge zur Philosophie Beitrge zur Philosophie is permeated with references to deity. Heidegger, however, prefers to speak of the God or the gods rather than God, not because he is a pantheist, but because he wishes to indicate indecision concerning the Being of the gods, whether of one God or of many (Beitrge, 437). The God, Heidegger makes clear, is not to be identied with Being (Beitrge, 26). Neither is monotheism, nor pantheism, nor atheism appropriate to God, for all three of these terms are miscalculating denitions derived from Jewish-Christian apologetics, which has metaphysics as its intellectual presupposition (denkerische Voraussetzung (Beitrge, 411). Perhaps the most intriguing designation of deity employed by Heidegger is der letzte Gott, the last God. Beitrge is unique among Heideggers writings in introducing this concept. The last God, Heidegger tells us, should not be equated with other conceptions of God (Beitrge, 403). To speak of the last God is not disparaging, nor is it blasphemous, nor does it mean the cessation (Aufhren) of God. Such interpretations arise only when we think calculatively. Far from being blasphemous, in speaking of the last God we are addressing the question of the essencing or mode of be-ing (Wesung/Wesen) of the God, indeed we are raising it, Heidegger tells us, to its highest form. What Heidegger seems to mean by this is that in order to make God an issue again, we have to recover the Gods uniqueness, which means liberating the God from metaphysics and its treatment of God as an entity. This means recovering the strangeness of God, Gods unsettling (befremdend) and unpredictable nature (Beitrge, 406). Such a God is the most profound beginning (Beitrge, 405, cf. 406). It is the task of the future ones (die Zu-knftigen) to prepare for what Heidegger terms the passing-by (Vorbeigang) of the last God. Ours is an age of transition from the rst to the other beginning, from metaphysical thinking to seynsgeschichtliches Denken, and this also plays itself out in relation to deity. We live in an age which nds itself situated between the passing-by of the last God. The rst passing-by of the god has already taken place (cf. Beitrge, 412). But the second or future passing-by has yet to come. The task of the future ones is to prepare for this and to create the space in which it

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can take place. This entails creating a place of silence (Stille) in which the passing-by of the last God can be brought about. The last God is the beginning of the longest history in its shortest path (Bahn). Long preparation is needed for the great moment of the passingby of the last God. Nations and states are too small for this task because they have withdrawn themselves from growth and have been handed over to manipulation. Only the great and hidden single individuals will create the silence for the passing-by of the last God. (Beitrge, 414) As a result of the future ones preparation for the last God and their creation of the silence necessary for the last Gods passing-by, Being, Heidegger tells us, is being withdrawn from the massiveness (Massenhaftigkeit) of ontic being (Beitrge, 414415), a withdrawal which will only come to pass when the truth of Being comes to the Being of truth (Beitrge, 415). However, this moment is a long way off. At present we are living in the age of transition and our task is to prepare for the moment when the last God passes by. What, then, is this last God? Seidel interprets the phrase Christologically. It is Christ who is the last God.36 This interpretation seem unlikely, however, in view of Heideggers critique of Christianity in the Beitrge and, above all, in light of the apparently anti-Christian subtitle or motto of the chapter entitled The Last God, namely, The quite different God against those [Gods] who have been, especially against the Christian God (Beitrge, 403). Although it is improbable that the last God has a Christological origin, Heideggers description of the last God as passing by may have biblical roots. It is possibly an allusion to Moses encounter with God on Mount Sinai, where Moses is granted the favour of seeing the glory of the Lord pass by (Exod. 33.1834.9). However, although Exodus may have been one of the sources for Heideggers development of the concept of the passing by of the last God, the most signicant inuence on Heidegger was most probably Hlderlin, whom Heidegger had begun to read intensively in the 1930s.37 It is in particular Hlderlins verses on the temporality of the divine that seem to have most impressed Heidegger. In the poem Friedensfeier, Hlderlin speaks of God touching the dwellings of human beings only for a moment (Augenblick), and yet, despite the momentary nature of this contact with the divine, its effects reverberate through time. It is this idea of briey touching human existence before moving on which prompts Hlderlin to employ the term vergnglich. But, as Heidegger points out in his lectures on Hlderlin, this term should not be understood in its usual sense of transitory or passingaway, but is rather to be understood as the passing-by of the God. Heidegger replaces vergnglich with Vorbeigang in order to make clear that the passing-

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by of the last God does not mean that the God has disappeared forever into the past. The God has touched time in the precipitous moment of his passingby. But the correct term for this is not das Vergangene (that which is past) but das Gewesene (that which is as having been). Prudhomme succinctly sums up Heideggers point as follows: The gods who have passed by are as having been around, that is, they are present in their having been there as the ones who have own, and yet who in their absence still determine who we are.38 But why is this passing God the last God? What does Heidegger intend to convey by means of this enigmatic word? Prudhomme prefers to translate letzt not as last but as ultimate. The term letzt, he argues, does not mean the last in a succession, in the way that to talk of a last bottle of wine is to say that after this bottle there will be no more. The term letzt is not to be understood as if Heidegger were referring to the nal god in a series of gods, after whom there will be no more gods. The term, Prudhomme claims, is used in the sense of ultimate, that is, in the sense that the God of whom Heidegger speaks embodies all that God can be. As Prudhomme puts it, The last God is not the nal deity in the sense of the end appearance at the close of the historical series of deities, but is, strictly speaking, the God of God . . . The nal God is the God of God (in more traditional terms, the Godhead or the divinity of God) in the sense that it gathers together all the possibilities of the deity; it shows what it means for God to be God; it is the being of God.39 Why does Heidegger speak in this way? According to Prudhomme, it is to avoid misleading the reader into thinking that here we are dealing with the essence or idea of that entity which is conceived of as the highest most supreme entity, and thus is the cause of the being of all other entities.40 For Prudhomme, then, the phrase the last God does not mean the end or death of God, but is an attempt to recover the Being of God in such a way that Gods Being does not fall back into metaphysical conceptions of God. This being of God is expressed when the God or the gods are passing by or have already passed by. Esposito, on the other hand, interprets the phrase der letzte Gott in Nietzschean terms. The last God refers to the death of the Christian God and the God of traditional metaphysics. He writes: The God who enters the history of Being by passing by is not the last in so far as he is God (which would still imply a grounding of a transcendent type), but is on the contrary God in so far as he is genuinely the last, in a supra-metaphysical sense, and that means not as full and highest presence, but as pure withdrawal. This is his lastness, namely that the last God does not want to be understood as the only God, and still less does the phrase describe a persona Dei.41 In Espositos opinion, Heidegger wishes to bring to fullment the death of God prophesied by Nietzsche by radicalizing it still further through its application

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to Being. The nitude of Dasein, which has been laid bare through the death of the metaphysical Christian God, provides the foundation for a more radical nitude, namely that of Being itself. The last God is a symbol of the absence of Being and expresses the insight that human beings recover or re-discover themselves in and through the non-being of God. Which of these two interpretations is to be preferred? The answer to this question depends on whether we regard Hlderlin or Nietzsche as the primary key to the interpretation of the last God. While acknowledging Nietzsches inuence on Heidegger, it is clear that at the time of the composition of Beitrge zur Philosophie, Hlderlin was beginning to exert a powerful inuence on Heideggers thinking. On these grounds Prudhommes interpretation of the last God in terms of Hlderlins poem Friedensfeier is probably to be preferred. Clearly, Prudhommes interpretation lends itself more readily to theological appropriation than that of Esposito. Can we know the last God? Can we know his passing-by? Heideggers answer seems to be that we cannot, if we mean knowledge in the conventional sense, for the conventional understanding of knowledge is contaminated by metaphysics. But God does appear, but in a way which removes God from metaphysical knowledge. Both points are made in the following passage: Coming from an attitude towards ontic being (zum Seienden) that is determined by metaphysics we will only with difculty and slowly be able to know the Other, that neither in personal nor in mass experience (Erlebnis) does the God appear but only in the abysmal space (abgrndigen Raum) of Being (Seyn) itself. (Beitrge, 416) The passing-by of the last God is not something we know in any normal sense of the word, then, but it is possible for us to create a place of silence in which the Gods passing-by can come to pass, a passing-by which creates a nexus of possibilities for our own being. Conclusion: Negative theology and the Beitrge zur Philosophie There exist certain structural parallels between Heideggers thought in the Beitrge zur Philosophie and negative theology. As we saw earlier, the negative theologians are intent on removing the modes of thinking and language that impede the pure vision of God. Similarly, Heidegger is concerned to shatter conventional ways of thinking in order to lead the reader to a deeper, almost intuitive understanding of Being, but an understanding that resists being dragged down into the intelligibility of conventional conceptuality. In doing so, he speaks of the withdrawal of Being and the necessity of silence, ideas that resemble the negative theologians emphasis on the

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incapacity of language and thought to grasp God. Both Heidegger and the negative theologians can be said to be clearing space for, on the one hand, Being and, on the other, God. It is this concern to clear space that accounts for the similarities between them. When we look more closely, however, we discover that underlying these parallels are some fundamental differences between the two parties. The thrust of Eckharts statement that God is not a being, for example, is to emphasize Gods transcendence. God is so beyond human conception that even the concept of Being is inadequate to describe him. That Heideggers grounds for rejecting the identication of Being and God are rather different is indicated by his rejection of the concept of transcendence upon which the Christian conception of God is based. The problem with the Christian understanding of transcendence, he argues, is that it is dened as that which goes beyond (bersteigt) present-at-hand ontic being (das vorhandene Seiende) (Beitrge, 24). This reverses the proper order, which is that transcendence should be the principle upon which the understanding of human nature is constructed; indeed, it is precisely the xity of human nature that has to be shattered if human being is to be properly dened. Heideggers rejection of transcendence also expresses itself in a different view of Gods relationship to time and being. For the negative theologians God is utterly above and beyond time, so much so that the creation of a hierarchy of Being is necessary in order for the eternal, innite God to be able to relate to the temporal, nite world. For Heidegger, however, the last God is temporal. The last God briey touches time before passing by into the past, leaving only the nexus of possibilities created by his temporary and temporal presence in time. A further signicant difference between Heidegger and the negative theologians concerns Heideggers understanding of the relation between God and Being. Whereas negative theology and Christian theology in general has tended to identify the two terms, Heidegger holds them strictly apart. We are told that God needs Being (Beitrge, 415) and that Being is the middle or between where God and human beings meet. Heidegger speaks of the essential preparation of the clash of the God and human beings in the midst of Being (Seyn), which no previous cults and churches can provide (Beitrge, 416). The God or gods need Being as the time-space (Zeit-raum) in which they can come to light. Heideggers God, then, is subordinate to Being (Seyn) (cf. Beitrge, 67). Gods being is temporal, bound up with time, and expressed and comes to light in time. This is what gives Being precedence over God. In this respect Heideggers thinking about God is very different from that of traditional metaphysics, including that of the negative theologians.

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Finally, perhaps the most signicant difference between Heidegger and the negative theologians is that the reality at which they are aiming is fundamentally different. For the negative theologians, although human thought and language are incapable of grasping the mystery that is God, the term God nevertheless designates a real reality. For Heidegger, however, such an approach remains at the level of ontic being. The Christian God, he argues, is an abstraction from ontic being that must be left behind if Being is truly to come to be. In a sense, then, Heidegger can be said to be more radical than the negative theologians, because he does not simply negate conventional, cataphatic descriptions of God, but attacks the very ontological foundations upon which such descriptions are based. What insights can we derive from this comparison of Beitrge zur Philosophie with negative theology? There are, I believe, two lessons that we can draw from our discussion. The rst concerns the interpretation of what we might loosely term the theological elements of Heideggers thought. It is clear that the understanding of God in the Beitrge is not Christian. The concepts of the last God and the gods are an expression of Being and of the possibilities open to Dasein. This is far removed from the God of the negative theologians, who, for all his ineffability and transcendence, still remains a reality with which the believer can commune. A similar point is made by Caputo in his comparison of Heidegger with Eckhart. Caputo points out that the fundamental difference is that for all his transcendence and ineffability, Eckharts God remains a God who loves and is loved. This is very different from Heideggers Event of Being. As Caputo puts it, There is nothing benevolent about the giving of the Event; there is no gratitude in the thanking of Dasein.42 Such fundamental differences between Heidegger and that form of Christian theology which has most in common with his thinking supports the claim of Karl Barth43 and others that Heideggers God is non-Christian and lends weight to those commentators who draw parallels between Heidegger and Eastern mysticism.44 The second lesson I would like to draw from our discussion concerns the use of the Beitrge as a theological resource. To what degree, if any, can Heidegger help the theologian out in thinking theologically in the current climate? It is uncontroversial to claim that the experience of many people in the West has been that of the absence of God. Classical negative theology was, of course, also conscious of the absence of God. The thought-forms of traditional negative theology, however, are no longer able to address this problem in a language that speaks to modern human beings. Firstly, negative theology is based on an outmoded metaphysics, namely neoplatonism, and secondly and more importantly, the starting-point for classical negative theology was

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the utter transcendence of God. The modern experience of Gods absence stems not from a sense of Gods transcendence, however, but from the widespread modern conviction that God is simply irrelevant. In Beitrge zur Philosophie Heidegger provides us with a profound analysis of the modern experience of this absence and may thereby may create the space for theological thinking in the context of this absence. Heidegger provides us with a trenchant critique of the metaphysical basis of the modern forgetfulness of Being that may enable us to question the assumptions of modern Western agnosticism and atheism. However, to make use of this critique we must employ it in an unHeideggerian manner by putting it at the service of the defence of the concept of God. The Christian theologian, however, has no choice. God is too important a concept to allow it to be discarded by Western culture and too much of a reality to allow Heideggers critique of metaphysics to undermine it. This Christian correction of Heideggers critique of metaphysics is necessary because in wishing to avoid treating Being as ontic being (Seiendheit), Heidegger leaves us ultimately with nothing. His concept of Being is the emptiest of all. In rejecting the God who stands over against us, Heidegger leaves a void that can all too easily be lled by other things. Indeed, this may be one of the reasons that Heidegger succumbed to Nazism.45 Quite simply, he had no standard of judgement by means of which he could assess the validity of different expressions of Being. As Heidegger famously said in his Spiegel interview, Only a God can save us. This saviour God, however, surely cannot be the God of Beitrge zur Philosophie.

Acknowledgments An earlier version of this paper was given in the Philosophy of Religion Section at the American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, November 1997. I am grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung for the award of a Research Fellowship, which has enabled the reworking of the paper.

Notes
1. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 65: Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1989). Heidegger wrote the Beitrge zur Philosophie between 1936 and 1938, but abandoned it before completion. It was not published until 1989. An English translation has recently been published by Indiana University Press: Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999).

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2. Jeff Owen Prudhomme, The Passing-By of the Ultimate God: The Theological Assessment of Modernity in Heideggers Beitrge zur Philosophie, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59/3 (1993): pp. 443454; p. 444. 3. George J. Seidel, A Key to Heideggers Beitrge, Gregorianum 76/2 (1995): pp. 363 372; p. 363. 4. Joan Stambaugh, The Finitude of Being (New York: SUNY, 1992), p. 112; original emphasis. 5. Ottom Pggeler, Neue Wege mit Heidegger (Freiburg/Munich: Karl Alber, 1992), p. 465. 6. This fragmentary and shorthand quality of the work may well be due to the fact that the work was not published and it is possible that Heidegger did not intend to publish the work. Esposito tells us that the Beitrge zur Philosophie was written precisely with the intention of not being published. Costantino Esposito, Die Geschichte des letzten Gottes in Heideggers Beitrge zur Philosophie , in Heidegger Studies, Vol. 11 (1995): The Onset of the Thinking of Being (Berlin: Ducker & Humblot, 1995), pp. 3360; p. 33 (original emphasis). If Heidegger did not intend to publish the Beitrge zur Philosophie, then the fragmentary nature of the work may well be due to the fact that Heidegger was content merely with a draft of his new understanding of Being and was not concerned to produce a manuscript that would be accessible to the general public. This view would seem to be conrmed by the fact that the work most closely related to the Beitrge, namely, the Grundfragen der Philosophie (19371938), deals with many of the same issues and yet is expressed in a more intelligible form than the Beitrge. Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 45: Grundfragen der Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984). 7. Parvis Emad, The Echo of Being in Beitrge zur Philosophie Der Anklang: Directives for its Interpretation, Heidegger Studies, Vol. 7 (1991), pp. 1535, p. 15. 8. Fred Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 55; cf. p. 97. 9. Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger, p. 110. 10. Tom Rockmore, On Heideggers Nazism and Philosophy (London: Harverster Wheatsheaf, 1992), p. 182. 11. All translations are by the author. 12. To distinguish his conception of Being from that of traditional metaphysics, Heidegger adopts the archaic spelling Seyn. The inappropriateness of the verb to be to Seyn also accounts for Heideggers practice of omitting the verb from sentences dealing with Seyn. Elsewhere Heidegger makes the same point by crossing out the word Being: Sein. It is ! difcult to nd an adequate translation for Seyn. David Farell Krell opts for Beyng, but unlike Seyn, which is the Middle High German spelling of Sein, Beyng has no history in the English language (David Farell Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy). We shall translate it as Being, but will make clear its distinctiveness by placing the German Seyn in parentheses. It is also difcult to nd an appropriate translation for the term seynsgeschichtlich. The most obvious translation of onto-historical is unable to capture the meaning of Seyn rather than Sein, and as a consequence risks reducing the notion to precisely the sort of metaphysical concept Heidegger is anxious to combat. 13. Among Heidegger scholars to have drawn parallels between Heidegger and negative theology are John D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heideggers Thought (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1977); Michael E. Zimmerman, Heideggers Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, and Art (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 241242; Reiner Schrmann, Meister Eckhart: Mystic and Philosopher (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990). See Wolfgang Ullrich for

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14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

a brief comparison of the God of Dionysius the Areopagite and Nicholas of Cusa with Heideggers concept of Being; Wolfgang Ullrich, Der Garten der Wildnis. Eine Studie zu Martin Heideggers Ereignis-Denken (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1996), pp. 85 90. See Pggeler, Neue Wege mit Heidegger, pp. 387389, 426442, for a discussion of Heideggers life-long interest in Meister Eckhart. The translation and interpretation of the term Fuge presents considerable difculties. The term Fuge has two meanings in German. Firstly, it can mean fugue, i.e., a piece of music in which the theme is given by one part and is then successively taken up and answered by the other parts. Applying this to the Beitrge zur Philosophie, we can understand the work as consisting of a taking up and repetition of the main theme, namely Being as Event (Ereignis). That is, the Beitrge should be understood as a fugue that plays out the theme of Being in a variety of related ways. This musical interpretation of the structure of Beitrge zur Philosophie is supported by the other musical metaphors Heidegger employs in the work. The rst section after the preview is entitled Anklang, a word which means echo, resonance, or reverberation. Another term with musical connotations that frequently appears in Beitrge is Stimmung, which can mean both mood and the tuning of a musical instrument. The use of musical terms has the advantage of avoiding the metaphysical concepts of which Heidegger is so suspicious. It also allows us to obviate conceiving of reality in visual terms, which lend themselves more easily to the metaphysical objectication Heidegger wishes to avoid. The second meaning of Fuge comes from the construction industry, where the term designates the space or gap between adjacent elements or parts of a building. Thus the gap between two adjacent bricks can be described as a Fuge. It is likely that Heidegger intends these meanings also to be present in our minds in our reading of the Beitrge zur Philosophie. The Beitrge constitute an attempt to provide an insight into Being as that joint, juncture, or fulcrum upon which history, God, and Dasein turn. The fugue of the Beitrge zur Philosophie, Heidegger tells us, falls into six Fgungen. Again, it is very difcult to nd an adequate English translation for this term. Its meaning in everyday German is dispensation, chance, or stroke of fate. It is possible to speak of eine Fgung Gottes, an act of divine providence, or eine Fgung des Schicksals, an act of fate. Within linguistics the term can also be employed to refer to a grammatical construction or sequence of words. It can also convey the meaning of das Sichfgen, meaning to be obedient, to obey, or to bow to or accept something (e.g., fate, the inevitable). Fgung is an odd term for Heidegger to choose to describe the structure of his fugue on Being. What is clear, however, is that the Fgungen are closely related to the fugue-like structure of the Beitrge zur Philosophie. They constitute elements of the fugue of Being. Heidegger writes: The six Fgungen of the Fuge each stand for themselves, but only in order to make the essential unity more urgent (eindringlich). In each of the six Fgungen the attempt is made to say the same thing (das Selbe) about the same thing (das Selbe), but in each case from a different region of essencing (Wesensbereich) of that which the Ereignis names (Beitrge, pp. 8182). Perhaps the closest approximation to Fgung in English is dispensation. For an excellent summary of the contents and main arguments of the Beitrge zur Philosophie see Stambaugh, Finitude of Being, pp. 111151. Der Anklang is permeated with references to Seinsvergessenheit (forgetfulness of Being) and Seinsverlassenheit (abandonment of and/or by Being). See, e.g., Beitrge, pp. 107, 110112, 113114, 115124. Thinking Being from the other beginning does not mean, however, the simple rejection of Western metaphysics. Such an outright rejection, Heidegger argues, remains imprisoned

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19.

20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

within the metaphysical thinking that it claims to reject (Beitrge, p. 5). It is this that accounts for Heideggers assessment of Nietzsche. Although Nietzsche marks the end of traditional metaphysics, for Heidegger he nevertheless remains within its framework. It is this conviction that enables Heidegger to speak of Neitzsche as the greatest Platonist. The term west is the third person singular of a neologism created by Heidegger. The verb wesen and cognate terms such as Wesung are derived from the noun das Wesen, meaning essence or nature, which is in turn derived form gewesen, the past participle of the verb to be (sein). The term should not be understood in its traditional sense of an underlying essence. By transforming Wesen into a verb, Heidegger wishes to make clear the active, dynamic sense in which Being is. This raises the difcult problem of how best to translate the term wesen and its cognates. Emad opts for unfold, while Rockmore prefers essencing, a translation which we shall adopt here, although it is unable to capture all the nuances of Heideggers use of Wesen and its cognates. Rockmore, On Heideggers Nazism and Philosophy, p. 184. This is again a difcult term to translate. Krell opts for propriation (Krell, Daimon Life, ch. 6). Emad translates its as appropriation (p. 15 and passim), while Dallmayr prefers happening of being (Dallmayr, The Other Heidegger, pp. 5, 55), but this translation fails to capture the notion of appropriation that Ereignis also contains. Pggeler suggests that Heideggers concept of Ereignis was inuenced by Bultmanns book Jesus (1926) and by Bultmanns conception of Christian revelation as an (Christ-) event. Pggeler, Neue Wege mit Heidegger, pp. 3637. Clement, Str. v. 81. 4 (ii. 269). The rst reference is to Otto Sthlins Greek edition of Clements works: Clements Alexandrinus, ed. O. Sthlin (Die Griechischen christliche Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte), i (2nd edn, Leipzig, 1936), ii (3rd edn, Berlin, 1960), iii (Leipzig, 1909). The reference in parentheses is to the Ante-Nicene Christian Library translation: The Writings of Clement of Alexandria, iii, trans. W. Wilson (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 18671889). Clement, Str. v.71.5 (ii, p. 264); cf. ii, p. 6 (ii, p. 4); Paed. i. 71. 1 (i, p. 161). Meister Eckhart: Sermons and Treatises, iii, trans. and ed. by M. OC. Walshe (Shaftesburg, Dorset: Element, 1979), ii. pp. 67. 149. The rst Arabic numeral refers to the sermon, the second to the page number. Not all of Eckharts sermons are contained in Walshe. For this reason reference will sometimes be made to: Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. and intro. by E. Colledge and B. McGinn (London: SPCK, 1981). It should be noted that Walshe numbers the sermons differently from Colledge and McGinn. Walshe, Sermons, ii, 96. 332. Str. iv. 156. 1 (ii, p. 212). Str. v. 82. 3 (ii, p. 270). Str. ii. 5.3 (ii, p. 4). Str. v. 71. 5 (ii, p. 264); cf. v. 78. 3 (ii, p. 267); v. 79. 1 (ii, p. 268). Str. v. 65. 2 (ii, p. 260); cf. v. 79. 1 (ii, p. 268). Dionysius, The Divine Names vii. 3 (869C869D). All translations are taken from PseudoDionysius: The Complete Works, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Colm Luibheid (London: SPCK, 1987). Colledge and McGinn, Sermon 53, p. 203. Walshe, Sermons, ii. 96. 333. Walshe, Sermons, ii. 96. 335. Dionysius, Mystical Theology iii (1033 C), cf. ii (1025 B). Seidel, A Key to Heideggers Beitrge.

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37. Heidegger gave a lecture course on Hlderlin during the winter semester of 1934 1935, published as Gesamtausgabe 39: Hlderlins Hymnen Germanien und Der Rhein (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1980). 38. Prudhomme, The Passing-By of the Ultimate God, p. 449. 39. Prudhomme, The Passing-By of the Ultimate God, p. 450. 40. Prudhomme, The Passing-By of the Ultimate God, p. 450. 41. Esposito, Die Geschichte des letzten Gottes in Heideggers Beitrge zur Philosophie , p. 51. 42. John D. Caputo, Meister Eckhart and the Later Heidegger: The Mystical Element in Heideggers Thought, in Christopher Macann, Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments, 4 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), vol. 2, ch. 21, p. 169. 43. Barth writes: In Heideggers thought, nothing seems lacking in none of the essential features of the conventional features of God (aseity, uniqueness, omnipotence, omniscience, innity, etc.), but nothing has of course no relation to the biblical concept of God, which is not taken into account by either Heidegger or Sartre in their respective mythologies. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1961), III/3, p. 344. 44. See, for example, Graham Parkes, Heidegger and Asian Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987); Reinhard May, Heideggers Hidden Source. East Asian Inuences on his Work, trans., with a complementary essay by Graham Parkes (London: Routledge, 1996). 45. It is interesting to note that there are a number of passages in which Heidegger makes a connection between Being and the nation. See Beitrge, 15, 45, 196, 251, 252. See Philipse for a magisterial and penetrating analysis of Heideggers question of Being and its connection with Heideggers involvement with National Socialism. Philipse goes so far as to argue that Heideggers later works are a continuation of Nazism by other means, and advances the argument that, Heidegger tried to develop an authentically German relgion in Beitrge zur Philosophie, and this unpublished book informed his entire later oeuvre. Hitler and Himmler wanted to replace the Christian God of love with a German God of strife and war, to which individual Germans might be willing to sacrice themselves. Heideggers Being is a plausible candidate for this job, for Heidegger talks repeatedly about strife (Streit) and sacrice (Opfer). Herman Philipse, Heideggers Philosophy of Being. A Critical Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 299. Address for correspondence: Dr David R. Law, Department of Religions and Theology, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK Phone: +44 161 9620297; Fax: +44 161 2753613; E-mail: david.law@t-online.de