How Does God Enter Into Philosophy?

HOW DOES GOD ENTER INTO PHILOSOPHY? ''HOWDOES GOD enter into philosophy?" To respond to this Heideggerian question is the purpose of this communication.1 Heidegger's O'Wn response is that God enters into philosophy as causa sui, but that " man can neither pray nor sacrifice " to this God, nor "make music nor dance " nor fall on his knees before him.2 There is no doubt that such a ' God ' is inadequate to religion, but there is likewise no doubt that this is not how God has in fact entered into philosophy. This paper will offer an account of that entrance; it will be an historical and thematic study at once, and will present only the argument of a work in progress QO times its length. In order to specify how God does enter into philosophy, we must first explicate the matter at issue in philosophical reflection and then clarify in a minimal way the God of religion. This done, we will be able to pose the question in a rigorous way: How do the Being that philosophy brings to discourse and the salvational Power that appears in religion relate to each other? It is their identity or coincidence that will answer the question. However, since there is always more to Being than is proper to the salvational Power, and reversely, this identity will at once be a difference or divergence. Accordingly, the argument will fall into three parts: the matter at issue in philosophy (Being) , the correlate of the religious project (the salvational Power), and their identity and difference. 1 Martin Heidegger, "Die onto-theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik," in Identitat und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), p. 70. Hereinafter quotation marks ("like this") will mark only quotations, and inverted commas ('like this') will indicate metaphor, irony, and so on. 2 Ibid. 165 166 DANIEL GUERRIERE I. THE BEING OF PHILOSOPHY This part will have two main sections: the circumscription of the philosophical object, and then the articulation of this object as far as our question demands it. A summary will serve as the transition to the next part. A. The Circurnscription. of the Philosophical Object The first task is to specify what is always at issue for philosophy , that in terms of which the philosopher tries "to save the phenomena," that horizon within which philosophic discourse interrogates anything at all. The history of philosophy is the display of this proper object: the philosophic tradition takes its coherence from a discernible matter peculiar to it. In a formal and neutral way, the matter at issue may be circumscribed as the Arche. It is the 'origin' in the sense of that by reason of which things are and not not, that in virtue of which there is anything at all rather than nothing, that in everything on account of which anything at all is. It is not one origin among others, but is the originary origin: the origin at work in all possible origins. Other neutral names for the Arohe are: the Foundational, the Apriori, the Radical. No matter what' content' be ascribed to it, no matter what ' identity ' be discovered in it, no matter how explicitly it be discussed, no matter through what approach it be first and subsequently defined, this Arche is what remains at issue in the tradition of philosophy. The matter at issue in philosophy is: the ultimate condition for the possibility of any phenomenon whatsoever, that which renders possible the appearance of anything at all, that because of which everything becomes possible. This matter may be delimited in a formal way through various questions which, in the end, are only variations on one question. How does it happen that things are in the first place? Why, ultimately, should anything be? What accounts for the HOW DOES GOD ENTER INTO PHILOSOPHY? 167 fact that anything at all is-not' is in this way or that way,' not ' is of a certain type,' not ' is this particular one instead of that one,' but simply is? How do things emerge as be-ing (in the participial sense 3) - not 'be-ing this, that, or the other,' not 'be-ing in one way instead of another,' but simply be-ing...