Heidegger's Roots

I have been thinking about the recurring nature of the question "What is metaphysics?" in Heidegger's thought for the past few weeks. I found this image to go with Heidegger's essay, "The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics." Here, he develops an analogy between philosophy and a tree, arguing that the tree trunk and branches, or all we see, is what the sciences explore. Greek metaphysics inquired into the roots. But what of the ground the roots grow within? In asking about the ground of those roots Heidegger calls for a kind of Metaphysics of metaphysics, or Ontology of ontology? Heidegger's Metaphysics are puncuated with a question mark because by the end of his philosophy in essays like "Time and Being," he talks about leaving Metaphysics to itself in favor of another path to thinking (Denkweg) altogether.

What is meant by this other kind of post-ontological thinking remains difficult to understand. For instance, in "The Question of Being" Heidegger crosses being out in order to remind th reader not to objectify being. Rather Heidegger wants to inquire into the event of being as it gives existence to beings, i.e. human beings. Derrida, in his "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," comments on this crossing out of being in Heidegger's thought and suggests that Heidegger did not go far enough in his attempt to leave ontological thought behind. Being remains under the sign of the cross, still haunting his philosophy. Derrida's alternative is what he sometimes refers to as a "khora" or a more radical nothing point out of which language and thought might arise.

My considerations as of late concern the logic of Heidegger's thought and the manner of the end of metaphysics which he described. In his essay "The End of Philosophy and the New Task of Thinking," he makes it clear that the end of which he speaks is a completion of metaphysics. In this sense, metaphysics must be fulfilled not abandoned or be completely banished from our thinking. In the end, it is still human beings who are thinking and inquiring into the manner in which being gives us our existence. As such, being must remain under the sign of a cross if only to remind us that although our inquiry must go further than being by looking into the event which arises out of the relation between being and beings, it is nonetheless this event which is under discussion. My contention with Heidegger, like Derrida, is also with the adequacy of the cross which covers being. Unlike Derrida however, I consider the cross to be a necessity insofar as Heidegger's reflections upon the transcendent event of being remained, ultimately, incarnational. That is to say, could it be that a more adequate crossing out of being might allow us to see the event all the more clearly? Could it be that it is precisely here that the early Protestant investigations of Heidegger return us to Luther's theologia crucis?

Comments

[Rein Zeilstra]

Hi Tim
The question you raise whether Heidegger's thesis can be categorised under a metaphysical flag stemming back to Lutheran precepts is interesting. Jonathan Ree in his discussions on Heidegger seems to exclude that possibilty as in his view any recall to ontological roots and Uhr beginnings don't serve the existentiality of the straightjacket of thought of Enlightenment philosophy, and are therefore from any outset excluded from consideration. Barth and Miskotte were both two theologians who saw that trend of Heidegger as emblematic of the continuum of Nietzsche's cogent nihilism. While Heidegger also was cogent enough and in my view quite admirable in his heuristic development of his theme yet he never allowed metaphysics a say in human determination beyond that of the construct of symbol. The God pole was therefore excluded from the essentiality of its kerygma and hence from revelation in its clausal metaphysical demand of contigency upon humanity; and that basic opposition became over time the hallmark of philosophical thought. Heidegger more than anyone paved the way for that metaphysical rebuff in post modern thought, where the aseitical elements of being and metaphysics are gagged and omitted from the very thought patters of (at least western) humanity. Miskotte moreover likens that Heideggerian analysis of meaning and existence as an effective capitulation, now to a modern paganism with new symbols and slogans and sets out the reasons why Heidegger et al so easliy succumbed to the Nazi ideological status quo without the real sense of guilt for the effects that accrued without seemingly the notion of guilt, even post WWII. While the goodness of God was subsumed in human ethical mores the severity and judgement of God was removed from the arenas exclusively set aside for the dissemination and discussion of human frames of reality