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17 Michael J. Hyde Augustine And heidegger on ACknowledging the imPortAnCe of ACknowledgment And the orAtor’s Art 2 Saint Augustine’s Confessions tells the story of how its author, struggling with his “restless heart,” heard and responded to God’s call. The work, to be sure, is a religious touchstone for the act of acknowledgment. (The word “confess” is from the Latin confiteri, meaning “to acknowledge.”) Martin Heidegger was also influenced by this text; it played a role in his phenomenological investigation of human being (Dasein) in Being and Time, a work that changed the course of twentieth-century continental philosophy and its interest in the question What is the meaning, the truth, of Being?1 Heidegger attended to the “call of Being” as diligently as Augustine attended to the call of God. Augustine would certainly claim that the particular evocation that concerned him and that he acknowledged was a more original and more holy call than the one that caught Heidegger’s attention. Heidegger neither affirms nor rejects this claim. He does, however, maintain that “‘Being’ . . . is not God and not a cosmic ground. Being is farther than all beings and is yet nearer to man than every being, be it a rock, a beast, a work of art, a machine, be it an angel or God. Being is the nearest. yet the near remains farthest from man.”2 Augustine maintains the same thing about God. The Lord “is nearer to me than myself.”3 We forget or do not genuinely understand this condition of the self, according to Augustine, because we are too caught up in and distracted by the routines and habits of everyday life, too preoccupied with “earthly things.” Heidegger makes the same argument with respect to the self’s authentic relationship with Being.4 As discussed throughout the Confessions, Augustine saw the self’s lived experience of some personal crisis—that is, a disruption that causes 18 g Augustine for the PhilosoPhers a breakdown in the self’s everyday relationship with things and with others —as being a crucial catalyst for opening us to God’s call. Heidegger, too, credits such crisis with bringing about, on the part of the self, the acknowledgment that is needed to understand the truth of Being. As will be discussed in greater detail below, Heidegger finds in Augustine’s Confessions existential directives that help to explain the dynamics of this all-important ontological occurrence. Augustine, for Heidegger, is a case study in how the self experiences its existence as it hears and responds to the call of Being.5 Augustine, of course, would have us change this last term, but Heidegger has his reasons for not doing so: only from the truth of Being can the essence of the holy be thought. only from the essence of the holy is the essence of divinity to be thought. only in the light of the essence of divinity can it be thought or said what the word “God” is to signify. . . . How can man at the present stage of world history ask at all seriously and rigorously whether the god nears or withdraws , when he has above all neglected to think into the dimension in which alone that question can be asked?6 The thinking that is being called for here is a product of acknowledgment: that capacity of consciousness that enables us to be open to the world of people, places, and things as much as possible so that we can “admit” (Middle english: acknow) its wonders into our minds and then “admit” (Middle english: knowlechen) to others the understanding we have gained and that we believe is worth sharing. “Acknowledgment,” writes Heidegger, “lets that toward which it goes come toward it.”7 A more detailed understanding of the theological, existential, and ontological workings of the phenomena is advanced throughout this essay. Augustine’s influence on Heidegger is well documented, although, to the best of my knowledge, the relationship has not been discussed with a specific focus on how the phenomenon of acknowledgment plays a role in their work.8 in taking this approach, another topic necessarily comes to the fore: rhetoric. Acknowledgment encourages the practice of the orator ’s art, which, in turn, can help cultivate this state of consciousness. Both Augustine and Heidegger consider this relationship between acknowledgment and rhetoric. Their assessments admit similarities and differences that speak for and against the worthiness of the orator’s art. When all is said and done, however, the importance...

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