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15 one Heidegger How Not to Speak about God One of the deepest concerns of postmodern philosophy is to preserve alterity, to keep the subject, whether personal or corporate, from reducing its object, whether it be God, or neighbor, or social world, or natural world, from its own representations and purposes. Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology expresses this concern in relation to God. But if we are to examine the claim that overcoming onto-theology is necessary for the recovery of divine transcendence and of the corresponding human self-transcendence, we need to be as clear as possible what the term ‘onto-theology’ means. Frequently it is used as a generic term of abuse, much like ‘fascist’ among sixties leftists or ‘liberal’ among eighties and nineties conservatives. This becomes even more irresponsible when the term is treated like ‘yellow,’ a term which cannot be defined, but need not be since its meaning is obvious. For it then becomes possible to dismiss various texts or points of view without argument or careful examination simply by labeling them. All too often any discourse about God (unless, perhaps , it is pagan and polytheistic) is dismissed as beneath discussion simply by calling it onto-theological. This is more like the worst of politics than the best of philosophy. But the Onto-theology and the Need to Transcend Cosmological Transcendence 16 critique of onto-theology need not degenerate into self-congratulatory verbal abuse. It can become a useful hermeneutical tool if it is willing to answer the question: What precisely is onto-theology? And it can become a useful critical tool if it is willing to answer the question: What precisely is wrong with it? Why should we try to avoid it, or go beyond it? My appreciation of this strand of postmodernism presupposes clear answers to these two questions. Fortunately, it is unnecessary to look any farther than Heidegger, who introduced ‘onto-theology’ into our vocabulary in the first place.1 He offers answers to both questions, giving at once precision and limitation to his critique . Because on his account onto-theology involves the sacrifice of divine alterity and a fortiori of the correspondence of divine transcendence and human self-transcendence, it is of great importance for my project, and I will devote the present chapter to Heidegger’s account of what onto-theology is and how he finds it problematic. This will lay the foundation for my interpretation of Spinoza and Hegel as onto-theologians in the next two chapters, where I will try to show that onto-theological interpretations of the divine either enact a fatal separation of speculation from spirituality or, what may not be so very different, reduce spirituality to speculation. This will lead us from the debate with theism over cosmological transcendence to the further issues of epistemic and ethical/religious transcendence. The original point of reference for Heidegger is Aristotle. The science Aristotle calls wisdom or first philosophy, but which we know as metaphysics, deals ‘‘with the first causes and the principles of things.’’2 But Aristotle gives two accounts of what this means. According to one, ‘first’ signifies all-inclusive scope. Thus the science which investigates being as being . . . is not the same as any of the so-called special sciences; for none of these others deals generally with being as being. They cut off a part of being and investigate the attributes of this part. Now we are seeking the first principles and the highest causes, clearly there must be some thing to which these belong in virtue of its own nature. If then our predecessors who sought the elements of existing things were seeking these same principles, it is necessary that the elements must be elements of being not by accident but just because it is being. Therefore it is of being as being that we also must grasp the first causes.3 In this passage ‘highest’ functions logically to signify what is most generic, the all-encompassing. But Aristotle also speaks in quite a different manner about what makes first philosophy first. There are three theoretical sciences: natural science or physics , mathematics, and ‘‘a science prior to both.’’ For while physics deals with 1. Kant used the term, but in a much narrower sense, restricting it in effect to the ontological argument. See Critique of Pure Reason, A 632 = B 660. 2. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981b27. 3. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1003a24ff. [3.143.228.40] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 15:11...

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