Companion to Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy

12 The Last God

12. The Last God David Crown¤eld The primary focus of this essay is the brief but dense and important section of Contributions to Philosophy entitled “The Last God” (GA 65, 403– 17; CP, 285–93).1 Throughout the work we encounter the question of the last god, an oscillation between the singular and the plural, the relation of god and be-ing, and the speci¤c issue of “the passing of the last god.”2 This essay will focus on the speci¤c section, but will draw substantially on these motifs in the work as a whole, as well as the notions of the event and the truth of be-ing, to indicate together the scope of the question of god in Contributions. I begin with an overall interpretive preview, designed to give an orienting sketch of my understanding of the issue of the last god. In order to make more evident the textual basis of my reading of particular questions I will next identify a few key terms on which my reading would be made more evident by English expressions other than those chosen by the translators. These terms are Ereignis, Wesen, Bergung, and berücken/entrücken. (This also gives me a chance to show parenthetically my assumptions about some of Heidegger’s central themes.) There follows a discussion of seven topics central to the theme of the last god: the passing of the last god, the wholly other, refusal, the turning, truth and the last god, the table of commandments, and ripeness. After a brief recapitulation, I identify in conclusion several unresolved problems that require future study and discussion. Interpretive Preview We need to be clear from the outset that Heidegger’s discussion of the question of god(s) is not addressed either to the vindication of belief or to its repudiation. In his view, truth is a disclosiveness inherently inseparable from misdirection and occlusion; thus either af¤rmation or denial of god(s) must, to the extent it is true, mark also an essential untruth. Being is historical—is actual precisely in the sayings and practices and artworks, in the communities and institutions, where it occurs and is articulable. God is thus god in the texts, in the architecture and literature, the works and sacri¤ces, crusades and inquisitions, prayers and confessions, in which the name(s) of god(s) have their places and contexts. And actual also, in all of them, is the absence, default, negativity of god(s). Heidegger’s aim is not to vindicate or discredit faith in god/s, but formally to indicate the extremities in which the question of god/s arises and is contextualized. These extremities include the utter gratuity in 214 David Crown¤eld which being-there occurs for the time being rather than nothing at all; the inescapable exigency, for each of us, of accepting the incomprehensible task of being-there; the constant hemorrhage of unachieved possibilities ; the ever-renewed radicality of the turn away from the passing of what has already charmed us out of ourselves, and toward the ecstatic opening to the novelty of what comes; and the inseparability that binds together our moving toward anything whatever and the necessity of moving toward nothing at all. Heidegger also makes clear that these extremities occur in determinate con¤gurations and articulations for actual histories and communities . There is not a universal essence to be extracted from these particularities, but only the speci¤c forms, practices, associations, and concepts in which a community already lives and comes to engagement with its gods and with their absences. We still face a long history before the extremity may come to some wholly new con¤guration. The passing away of the whole question of god is thus only a possibility for a remote future whose long preparation we can at most only await and seek to anticipate. Throughout Contributions, Heidegger repeatedly speaks of the undecidability of whether the gods are, in their present remoteness, passing¤nally away or again coming toward us, and whether their remoteness is their assault or default (their wrath or their failure). He says that his frequent use of the plural “gods” indicates not a de¤nite polytheism but the “inherent richness” and “immeasurable possibilities” of the question (GA 65, 411; CP, 289). And he often uses the singular, apparently also as a non-quantitative indicator, marking the singularity of the question of god/s. He speaks, without explanation, of “the gods’ decision about their god...