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xv Preface The writing of this book is the result of the timely coincidence of two factors. The first factor was an intention of mine further to expand the structural-systematic conception of philosophy, whose general theoretical framework I presented in Structure and Being: A Theoretical Framework for a Systematic Philosophy (2008; Struktur und Sein, 2006), to cover at least some additional, central topics. One of these topics is Being and God, which is the crown of that part of this philosophy that Structure and Being calls comprehensive systematics. The second factor was my conviction that I could and should work to clarify the arena within which, at present, the so-called question of God is being discussed. How this question is currently being posed, considered , and answered can drive philosophers who think systematically nearly to despair. The question “Does God exist?” is in every respect so vague, so indeterminate, so unclear, and above all so ambiguous as to rule out the possibility of its having a direct, clear, and well-reasoned answer . Having given many lectures and participated in many discussions at more than a few universities in many countries over the past few years, I had concluded that the confused state of the discussion is due primarily, even if not exclusively, to a fundamental lack of clarity concerning what it is about (no matter how that may be designated) and therefore also concerning what can, should, or must be presupposed by and demanded of articulations of it. This conclusion led me to envisage this book in its current form. That form was shaped more precisely by two additional convictions. The first, drawn from years of philosophical investigation and reflection, is that what the question of God asks about can be clearly identified only within the framework of a comprehensive conception of reality or—in more precise philosophical terms—of Being as such and as a whole. The second is drawn from intensive analyses of works of authors involved in the current discussions of the question of God, and of the approaches to the question taken by those authors. This second conviction is that the most radical resistance to clarification of the question of God comes not xvi P R E F A C E from the traditional opponents and critics of so-called metaphysics, but instead from authors classified as postmodernist. To make this last conviction more precise but also more complicated —perhaps, one might say, to make matters worse—I must add that the postmodernist authors who most radically reject approaching the question of God via frameworks including conceptions of Being are ones who accept and insistently defend conceptions of God that are putatively Jewish or Christian. As is well known, postmodernism flows from many historical sources, especially the works of authors such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. With respect to the subject matter of this book and the position it defends, Heidegger is doubtless the most important of those sources because the postmodernists who classify themselves as Jewish or Christian rely decisively on him. This book shows that for the most part this reliance is only apparent, because these authors’ interpretations of Heidegger are distortions. I have discovered that in discussions with postmodernist authors, particularly concerning the subject matter of this book, as a rule nothing is said beyond general characterizations and obviously superficial remarks . Scarcely any interpreter or critic gets at the heart of postmodernist positions. It is my intention to do otherwise. I attempt to accomplish two tasks: first, I seek to reveal the initial and fundamental assumptions from which the often astonishing views of postmodernists grow; second, I determine how coherent those positions are. The results of my accomplishing these tasks are themselves astonishing. It is impossible, in a single book, to accomplish these two tasks for the entire spectrum of postmodernist thinking. For this reason I decided to subject to extremely thorough critical analysis the approaches of two of the most important postmodernist thinkers—more precisely, the two postmodernist authors who are the most important critics and opponents of systematic approaches to the question of God such as the one undertaken in this book. These are—how could it be otherwise?— two French authors: Emmanuel Levinas, whose orientation is Jewish, and Jean-Luc Marion, whose orientation is Christian. Required both by the critiques of these authors and for adequate understanding of this book’s systematic conception is a thoroughgoing interpretation and evaluation of Heidegger’s thinking, so the book also includes a...

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