The Situation of Heidegger in the Tradition of Christian Philosophy

THE SITUATION OF HEIDEGGER IN THE TRADITION OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY THE THOUGHT of Martin Heidegger is strange not only in its language, but in its effect upon philosophers of the most diverse orientations. As is well known, he has caused reactions ranging from adulation to virulence. But within scholastic circles both philosophical and theological, as well as among Protestant intellectuals, his writings seem to have created more than anything else a ferment and stirring of ideas already bearing rich fruit through influences felt in the writings, among others, of Rahner, Bultmann, and a number of fine scholars of Louvain. This sphere of influence, particularly within scholasticism, provides some important clues as to the nature of Heidegger's "Thought of Being." Dondeyne, Rahner, De Waelhens, and the centers of thought they represent -all were profoundly influenced by the scholasticism of Joseph Marechal in its overriding concern with the history and theory of the problem of knowledge.1 In these currents of Marechalian scholasticism Heidegger's notion of Being has remained , as elsewhere, disconcertingly enigmatic, but with this difference: the notion somehow seemed to match the mood and share the spirit of that thought which first brought scholasticism into confrontation with the full complexity and radical concerns of the epistemological problematic. It is by no means incidental to note that the deepest influence of Heidegger has been in this circle of scholasticism. Another quite distinct and highly influential circle of scholasticism is that of Gilson and Maritain, which has primarily affected the intellectual clime in America (even as Marechal's 1 According to Joseph Donceel, the " school " of Marechalians " has begun to call itself the Thomasian system of philosophy or transcendental Thomism." " Philosophy in the Catholic University," America, 115 (24 September, 1966), 881. 159 160 JOHN N. DEELY strongest influence has been toward Germany), and where the Heideggerean thought of Being has found little resonance or deep sympathy. This scholastic circle was stirred in its depths and centered originally not by Kantian critical philosophy, as was the case for Marechal's research, but by Bergson: " What Banes considered the correct interpretation of the Thomistic notion of being has been spontaneously rediscovered by some of our own contemporaries, and it is worthy of note that among these there is hardly one who, at one time or another, has not been under the influence of Bergson." 2 What is important to us is the difference in primary concern separating these men from the Marechalian circle. It is the domain of conscious awareness taken precisely as such: primary in Marechalian thought, it definitely plays a secondary role in the thought of, say, Maritain. True enough, a major work of Maritain is titled The Degrees of Knowledge, and even states at one point that " ' philosophy of being ' is at once, and par excellence, ' philosophy of mind.' " 3 But this affirmation must be seen in context, as an affirmation of the organic place of noetic within the larger and more fundamental concerns of Metaphysics: " Critique of knowledge or epistemology does not exist as a discipline distinct from metaphysics.'' 4 Moreover, " the task of critique is purely and exclusively reflective and secondary (not only in the order of time but by its very nature as well) .'' 5 The vocabulary of Metaphysics " has to do with the operations and means of knowledge taken in their relation to extramental being.'' 6 What would happen if a methodology were founded which precisely circumscribed and in that sense isolated the full noetic problematic as such from, or better, within metaphysics? " To • Etienne Gilson, The PhiloBophllT and Theology, trans. by Cecile Gilson (New York: Random House, 1962), pp. 157-8. 8 Jacques Maritain, ThB Degreu of Knowledge, trans. from the 4th French ed. under the supervision of Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), p. ix. • Ibid., p. 80. " Ibid., p. 75. 8 Ibid., p. 898. HEIDEGGER IN THE TRADITION OF CHIUSTIAN PHILOSOPHY 161 give it a separate existence is to set a third term between realism and idealism, between yes and no." 7 We shall return to this. The Thomistic scholasticism of Joseph Marechal faces the problematic of human awareness more directly and radically than that of Jacques Maritain...