The Secular Frontier

Today on "X (Twitter)' Kant Specialist Prof Anita Leirfall posted about the nature of being religious and here is my response: Jesus is speaking here of how his teaching is an innovation of the Judaism of his time: 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," We often go astray trying to understand the nature of religion because we think in terms of the hermetically sealed ego of the enlightenment and so fail to see Heidegger's insight of our "Being in the world." For example, Dickens in David Copperfield writes of love: “I was sensible of a mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of nothing else … it was all Dora to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wildflowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud  (Dickens, 2004, ch 33 Blissful).” We see this when we have a headache or stomachache, and this casts a pall over ... Read Article

It seems that a straightforward reading of our New Testament sources does not equate Jesus with God as we would later see with the gospel of John and even later with the doctrine of the Trinity. For example, Jesus in desperate prayer in Gethsemane doesn't seem to be praying to himself, just as Paul says Jesus "was raised," which suggests something being done to Jesus, not something Jesus did to himself. But here's a connection you might not have considered: Paul seems to be doing exegetical work on the book of Esther. For example, Paul says 5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he existed in the form of God,    did not regard equality with God    as something to be grasped,7 but emptied himself,    taking the form of a slave,    assuming human likeness.And being found in appearance as a human,8     he humbled himself    and became ob ... Read Article

This is my final post on Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin's Hymn The Ister in the lecture course of 1942. The measure of truth in Hölderlin’s river poetry is not found in the actuality of the geographical river, Hölderlin saying “Is there a measure on earth?  There is none (Hölderlin, In Beautiful Blue).”  Heidegger says we must confront Hölderlin's encounter with the Antigone, “which means bearing and suffering it (167).” The titular character in Sophocles’ Antigone can absolutely symbolize how the causes, those gleams in our eyes that animate our lives can lead to destruction (Antigone) and Nothingness (Creon), much like Ahab in Moby-Dick. The characters are driven by an unshakable commitment to a personal principle or obsession, and their stories illustrate how such fervor can spiral into tragedy.  Back in 2002 in my MA thesis on Heidegger I explored that the tragic insight into the human condition by the melancholic is that unlike him, at least the oppressed person has a cause. ... Read Article

I’ve been working to uncover the tragic insight into the human condition that Heidegger finds in Sophocles’ Antigone – in the tradition of Hölderlin’s translation and interpretation.  This is the arche tamechana, that against which nothing can avail. In Sophocles’ Antigone, the conflict between Creon and Antigone can be interpreted as a dramatic representation of the tension between the communal, polis-oriented nature of the ancient Greek soul and the rising individualism influenced by the sophists and philosophers of the time. This clash reflects broader cultural and intellectual shifts in ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE, when traditional values were increasingly challenged by new ideas about personal autonomy, justice, and morality. Creon embodies the ethos of the polis—the city-state as a collective entity that demands loyalty, order, and obedience to maintain social stability. As the newly appointed king of Thebes, he prioritizes the rule of law and the welfare of the state ... Read Article

*This post finishes up party 2 of Heidegger's lecture course. The Parable of Vengeance   Mr. X and Mr. Y were parents of a boyfriend and girlfriend who were killed by a drunk driver.  Mr. X showed up every day for the trial, demanded justice in a victim impact statement, and felt he got it when the criminal was found guilty and sentenced.  Mr. Y didn’t go to the trial or fill out a statement. Often as people we will make time for ourselves to go out for the evening with friends. In doing this we are able to leave ourselves behind for a time, that empty us which we would have had to live with if we remained at home. Even this, though, doesn't allow us to escape our boredom entirely, as evidenced by a slight yawn or polite tapping of the fingers during the conversation. And in any event, you know it is just for one night, and that your desire to eliminate boredom will not be properly satiated by it. Everyone knows that, for instance, the luster of a new favorite song quickly wears off af ... Read Article

Last time I did a standalone post on William Lane Craig and the Kalam Cosmological argument, but now back to Heidegger’s interpretation of Holderlin. Looking on to section 15, Heidegger draws a distinction between kalon and me kalon, “non beings / non beautiful.  We noted previously how the idea of the beautiful in Plato was the vehicle for the appearing of the being (e.g., houseness appears incarnate in the mansion, merely present in the average house, and efficient in the dilapidated shack). Plato calls the beautiful, kala/ekphanestaton, “that which, as most of all and most purely shining from itself, shows the visible form and thus is unhidden” (Heidegger, 1998c [PA], Vol. 1, p. 78; also at 1979 [Nl], p. 80). Referring to Plato’s Phaedrus, Heidegger says that beauty is “what is most radiant and sparkling in the sensuous realm, in a way that, as such brilliance, it lets Being scintillate at the same time” (Heidegger, 1979 [Nl], p. 197). "Kalon" in Antigone leans toward moral or beauti ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeKavDdRVIg My former professor and friend, the late Canadian postmodern philosopher David Goicoechea, gave this assessment of philosophy since Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in the Continental (as opposed to Analytic) tradition: Postmodernism and deconstruction are usually associated with a destruction of ethical values. The volumes in the Postmodern Ethics series demonstrate that such views are mistaken because they ignore the religious element that is at the heart of existential-postmodern philosophy. This series aims to provide a space for thinking about questions of ethics in our times. When many voices are speaking together from unlimited perspectives within the postmodern labyrinth, what sort of ethics can there be for those who believe there is a way through the dark night of technology and nihilism beyond exclusively humanistic offerings? The series invites any careful exploration of the postmodern and the ethical.  (Goicoechea, David. Agape and Personhood: w ... Read Article

One point that needs to be stressed is Heidegger's thought of man as transitionally historical. For example, in this lecture course that was delivered at the height of the Nazi movement in 1942, Heidegger notes the central concepts of polis and apolis in the Antigone, and the central homelessness (apolis) caught between the will of the individual and the will of the collective (Antigone caught between the personal will to bury and state will not bury her brother).  This reflects the historical nature of the Greek polis, which is true of the polis of history and the polis as the historical abode of humankind.  Walker summarizes: Only the Gods and νόμοι now ruled a citizen of the πόλeις. Herodotus claims in the third book of the Histories that ‘Custom (νόμοj) is king of all.’ Demaratus tried to inform Xerxes that the Spartans’ ‘master is the law and they’re far more afraid of it than your men are of you.’ The words of Demaratus are misleading. The Greeks did not fear the law in ... Read Article

Manifold is the uncanny, yet nothing more uncanny looms or stirs beyond the human being (Sophocles Antigone, Heidegger's translation) I’m now into part 2/3 of Heidegger’s lecture course on Holderlin’s Hymn The Ister and we find out one of the reasons Holderlin is such an important poet for Heidegger is Holderlin’s interpretation/translation of Pindar and Sophocles, especially Sophocles’ Ode to Man in the Antigone and the concept of deinon.  This is fundamental for me because my 2002 MA thesis was on Heidegger and the Greeks focusing on this issue: the relationship between parestios (homely) and deinon (unhomely). Heidegger says the concept of apolis (homeless) must be thought together with deinon (uncanny/unhomely) for the Greeks.  The famous Antigone deinon ode to man says: “Many things are wondrous but nothing more so than man,” but this seems to be understood sarcastically, and so means “Many things are unsettling/unsettled but nothing more so than man (“deinon” at this p ... Read Article

The modern scientific world picture is ever refining the mathematical technical projection of inanimate nature, order as calculable and ordered relationality posited in advance.  Heidegger comments Already in the last century, philosophy clearly recognized and spoke of the transformation of the concept of substance into the concept of function.  The actual is conceived as function subject to mathematical and technical calculability.  There is a functional nexus of actual effects in space and time.  The entirety of what is actual is a system of mutually dependent , functional changes of state a=f(b).  "a" is nothing other than a function of "b."  "To be" means nothing other than to be a function and to be a functionary of b.  Similarly, to be a cause of something (causality), the actual effecting of whatever has an effect, that is, the actuality of whatever is actual, is thought "functionally."  Kant was the first to bring this conception of causality, effecting, to ... Read Article

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg1di8sGxWc We've been approaching Hölderlin's talk of gods and their abandoning in an essential way, not merely relying on Hölderlin's text nor secondary literature on Hölderlin. What is demanded, rather is orienteering through the depths of our own existence to let Hölderlin's signposts point us to what is to be found there or what could be. Heidegger comments: And because, instead of reading the works of poets and thinkers, it has become the custom merely to read books "about" them, or even excerpts from such books, there is the even more acute danger of the opinion setting in that the gods in Hölderlin's poetry could be ascertained and discussed via literary means (Heidegger, The Ister, 32)." In this regard, taking a framework of pre-existing concepts and definitions like psychoanalysis or Marxism or feminism and overlaying the framework onto the text is of no avail here. Hölderlin is not pointing to truth as "the correct," but the great truths of the ... Read Article

Parmenides famously said, "apprehension and Being are the same," and Heidegger quipped (I think in his Parmenides lecture course from the 40's) such a thought makes you lose the desire to write books if you really understand it, which becomes obvious when it falls apart.  For example, we might apprehend movement fractionally, which starts out fine but proceeds into thoughtlessness.  In a walk, we might go from point A to point B.  But, in order to get to point B you need to make it halfway between A and B, to point C.  Yet, in order to make it to point C you must make it halfway between points A and C, point D, and this continues infinitely and absurdly until apprehension is impossible.  This breaking down shows the overwhelming majority of the time apprehending and Being coincide. It also shows the further and further we dive into out interpretive categories, the more opaque things become. For example, physicist Carlo Rovelli notes that the more we penetrate into the very small in physics, the less t ... Read Article

Hölderlin’s rivers are not symbolic images of a higher level or a deeper religious content.  They are not a placeholder for already familiar existing German essence and life.  Hölderlin’s hymnal poetry after 1799 was not concerned with symbolic images at all.  The end of The Ister says “Yet what that one does, that river, no one knows.”  The river is concealed.  “The Rhine” poem and “The Ister poem” will not share a common “river essence/river in general” though they are both river poems.  Even if we don’t know the Donau river, the discipline of Geography can provide us precise information about it.  Such knowledge is ascertained by geography and knowable through “everyday experiences.”  But, Hölderlin is going to deny that is what a river truly is. Humans have housing and accommodations on the river, but this doesn’t tell us fully about how the humans dwell.  These dwellings are he asulia, asylums, where life and nature are concentrated and intimate.  The abode is ... Read Article

I noted in my previous article on Hölderlin’s poem “Remembrance” that the modern university is metaphysical in Plato’s sense.  We might see two political science students debate the abortion issue using two equally illustrative but mutually exclusive examples or analogies to support their positions (e.g., arguing pro-life vs pro-choice).  It is this metaphysical reading of Hölderlin’s poem Heidegger is going to be pushing back against. Metaphysics in Plato’s sense means dividing Being into two realms for the purpose of removing ambiguity and hence facilitate learning.  For example, in literary theory you can do a psychoanalytic reading of a poem like The Tyger by William Blake.  The psychoanalytic interpretive paradigm is the “really real,” and the actual interpretation aims at being the paradigm incarnate, in the same way we say the mansion is “houseness” incarnate/personified. Heidegger argues the metaphysical is a realm of thinking that dumbs everything down for the ... Read Article

In the Gospels, Jesus is sometimes called "Rabbi": 50 Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.51 “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.”52 “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.(Mark 10:50-52, NIV) 20 In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. 21 Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.” 22 Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God.(Mark 11:20-22, NRSV Updated Edition) 44 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard.” 45 So when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him. 46 Then they laid hands on him and arrested him. (Mark 14:44-46, NRSV Updated Edition) 24 The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, ... Read Article