Lorenz Jäger: Heidegger: Ein deutsches Leben, Rowohlt, 2021

Heidegger: Ein deutsches Leben Book Cover Heidegger: Ein deutsches Leben
Lorenz Jäger
Rowohlt
2021
Paperback 28,00 €
592

Andreas Beinsteiner: Heideggers Philosophie der Medialität

Heideggers Philosophie der Medialität Book Cover Heideggers Philosophie der Medialität
Heidegger Forum 17
Andreas Beinsteiner
Klostermann
2021
Paperback 29,00 €
318

Reviewed by: Daniel Neumann (Universität Klagenfurt)

In Heideggers Philosophie der Medialität, Andreas Beinsteiner sets out to reconceive Heidegger’s central term “Being” as mediality. The overarching goal of the book is twofold: giving a coherent interpretation of the meaning of Being throughout Heidegger’s oeuvre, as well as contributing to the foundational thought of media studies. In doing so, Beinsteiner takes a cue from Dieter Mersch, whose concept of “negative mediality” is based on the assumption that what constitutes the mediality of media has yet to be philosophically elucidated. The “manifest justification deficit of the media concept” (Mersch 2015, 19) could be remedied, Beinsteiner argues, with Heidegger’s thinking of Being. Thirty-seven years before Marshall McLuhan famously pronounced that “the medium is the message”, shifting the focus on the elusive role the medium itself plays in the process of mediation, Heidegger had similarly discovered the constitutive withdrawal of Being itself in the unconcealment of beings (205). The role of mediality is thereby expanded beyond that of media in the strict sense. By looking at Heidegger’s philosophy, Beinsteiner suggests that the way we experience digital media, but also art and technology in the broader sense, has to be grasped from how we experience anything at all, in other words, how we come to experience the Being of beings. As he makes clear in later chapters of his book, Beinsteiner is convinced that Heidegger does not just speak to the fundamental mediality of our being in the world, but also to specific modern forms of mediality of technology, such as autonomously operating machines. The aim of the book is of philosophical and media theoretical interest not just because it aims at laying the groundwork for a concept of mediality, based on a close reading of Heidegger’s philosophy up to his later years, but also because this reading promises an integrated account of mediality, comprising its fundamental and specific aspects equally.

In the first two thirds of the book, Beinsteiner develops this idea vis-à-vis central concepts found in Heidegger’s works, such as presence, event and equipment. In Sein und Zeit, the interested involvement which unveils Being as equipment (Zeug), putting me in a pragmatic mode in which I use this equipment without thinking about its significance, is conceived as a paradigmatic case of mediality. It is not just my existence, being oriented around the care of the being that I am, which mediates the concernful handling of equipment. It is also the equipment as concrete artifact that helps to shape my access to the world. Thus, “contrary to the dominant anti-hermeneutical reading of Heidegger in media studies” (33), artifacts play a central role in the constitution of mediality and the mediation of sense. Mediality here is shown to depend on an interplay of our pre-understanding (Vorverständnis) for equipment to even be recognized as such (a requirement that Beinsteiner shows to be based on Heidegger’s understanding of Platonic ideas) as well as the material artifact, in which understanding, purpose and craftsmanship have coagulated into a being which mediates our access to the world in different ways. Here, basic Heideggerian terminology such as availableness (Zuhandenheit) and occurrentness (Vorhandenheit) are coherently interpreted as modes of mediality. While the scope of the meaning of being in Sein und Zeit seems to follow the paradigm of the availability of being-as-equipment, in later writings Heidegger thinks of the meaning of Being as taking on historical proportions: the meaning of Being concerns historicity, instead of the temporality of an individual existence (51). Yet across the Kehre, mediality retains its central significance for how Heidegger thinks Being. Thus, Beinsteiner argues for a continuity and an expansion between Heidegger’s earlier and later writings, instead of a break, based on the interpretation of Being as mediality.

Throughout the book, a consistent vocabulary is developed to capture this continuity. The early Heidegger’s concern with the meaning of finite existence is conceived by Beinsteiner as the “existential-hermeneutical as” (existentialhermeneutisches als). The “as”, that Being appears as is hermeneutically motivated, following the existential structure of existence. In other words, how we grasp Being, e.g. via equipment, language and mood, is a matter of the constitution of Dasein’s being in the world. In later Heidegger, the way Being discloses the world is still a question of the “as” of Being. But to account for the historical dimension of Heidegger’s questioning, Beinsteiner now speaks of Being appearing as “regimes of accessibility” (Zugänglichkeitsregime), which imply an unavoidable reduction of the ambiguity of Being, i.e. mediality. The regime (or paradigm) of accessibility is what pre-selects the way in which Being is perceived (vernommen). Just as the manners of being (Seinsarten) in Sein und Zeit are shown to be forms of mediality, the historical regimes of Being (roughly, physis in Antiquity, creation in Medieval Times and subjective representation beginning in Modernity) turn out to be forms in which Being is collectively understood. Through this synthetical reading of early and later Heidegger, Beinsteiner is able to demonstrate a basic selectivity of mediality, which spans the understanding of individual being, Being as a whole as well as the selectivity of accessibility to Being itself (65).

The latter aspect is especially important as Heidegger’s interest is not just in discussing the multivalence of Being in existential or historical terms, but more fundamentally in showing that the way Being can be grasped, perceived and understood, is irreducible to any one meaning. According to Beinsteiner, Heidegger comes closest to the idea of Being as mediality when discussing Being in terms of immediacy and mediatedness:

“What is first present in all gathers everything isolated together into a single presence and mediates to each thing its appearing. Immediate allpresence is the mediator for everything mediated, that is, for the mediate. The immediate is itself never something mediate; on the other hand, the immediate, strictly speaking, is the mediation, that is, the mediatedness of the mediated, because it renders the mediated possible in its essence.” (Heidegger 2000, 84).

“Das in allem zuvor Gegenwärtige [d.h. die physis, AB] versammelt alles Vereinzelte in die eine Anwesenheit und vermittelt Jeglichem das Erscheinen. Die unmittelbare Allgegenwart ist die Mittlerin für alles Vermittelte und d.h. für das Mittelbare. Das Unmittelbare [die physis] ist selbst nie ein Mittelbares, wohl dagegen ist das Unmittelbare, streng genommen, die Vermittelung, d.h. die Mittelbarkeit des Mittelbaren, weil sie dieses in seinem Wesen ermöglicht.” (cited in Beinsteiner, 76f)

In opening and selecting our access to the world, Being (or mediality) takes on the double role of immediate allpresence and mediation. Being is immediate, insofar as everything we perceive is necessarily a manner of it. Yet Being is mediation, since it is never grasped in itself, but only in a certain way. Being is immediate mediation or mediated immediacy. From this, Beinsteiner concludes that “nothing is immediate, except for mediality” (77), while also conceding that grasping this “accessibility of accessibility” confronts us with a fundamental difficulty in thinking about the unconcealment of Being.

Yet neither for Heidegger nor Beinsteiner does this constitute a purely epistemological issue. One of the challenges in interpreting Heidegger lies exactly in characterizing the meaning of Being itself, and the role of the philosopher in taking up this meaning. Beinsteiner’s approach is to grasp this as a fundamentally ethical question: to be sensitive to the irreducible meaning of Being and to become aware of the historical and philosophical contingency of a specific regime of accessibility is to increase one’s own freedom, whereas to insist on an established form of mediality without even realizing its ontological antecedents is to become less free. While this may be characterized as the individual’s share in the exercise of freedom, equally important for Beinsteiner’s interpretation is the fact the specific regime of mediality precedes individual thinking and understanding. Taking up the idea of thrownness (Geworfenheit), Beinsteiner deems this the “ek-sistential disempowerment” (ek-sistentiale Depotenzierung) of human beings. In other words, the fact that we are always already participating in the modes of Being of a certain regime cannot be overcome by philosophical reflection. The “thinking of Being” will not lead to a supreme position from where all its meanings unfold in a cohesive picture. No matter how many ways of Being’s mediality are grasped, neither any one of them, nor their totality, amounts to a grasping of Being itself.

Instead, Beinsteiner takes Heidegger’s thinking of the event as the paradigmatic case in which the sensitivity for Being’s irreducible and abyssal meaning is articulated. Since his discussion is mostly restricted to the works published in his lifetime, Heidegger’s thinking of the event is considered only cursorily. Yet what matters to Beinsteiner’s approach is that the event is what brings us closest to the contingency of the being we perceive. To understand the event (the happening of Being) as event means refocusing thinking from one’s immediate engagement with ontic things towards that which makes this engagement possible. Grasping the fact that Being happens enables us to realize the openness in which we stand as reasonable (vernünftig or vernehmend) beings. The exercise of freedom, according to this interpretation, is this movement or “stepping back”, as Heidegger calls it in his Beiträge zur Philosophie, which decenters our place in the world and which simultaneously makes thinkable our taking place in the world, which is inseparable from Being, taking on a specific meaning. Beinsteiner connects this exercise of freedom with Heidegger’s terminology of comportment (Verhaltenheit) and releasement (Gelassenheit), the latter taking the place of the former in the writings after the Second World War (145). The two terms express a somewhat different attitude towards abyssal Being, Verhaltenheit insinuates a timidity and hesitation, while Gelassenheit seems to emphasize a receptive and patient attitude. The semantics get plausibly streamlined so that in Beinsteiner’s interpretation, both terms are shown to attempt to think the necessary selectiveness of our access to the world.

In Heidegger’s own writings, the thinking of the event is often, though not always in a clear way, connected to the mediality of language. Language is what lets things be, it enables the meaningful grasping of things. In this sense, Beinsteiner speaks of the “as-like structure” (alshafte Struktur) of language. In speaking and hearing language, something can be thought, perceived or grasped as something. Language is medium of sense as well as mediality, because in using language we are not merely participating in a specific regime of accessibility, but we are shaping and changing its mechanism of selectivity. Thus, a poem might make us see a statue in a completely new way and Descartes, in writing a meditation about the nature of his mind, helps to create and stabilize subjectivity, making possible a new understanding of our being in the world which becomes our representation. These examples are to suggest that the thinking of Being in Heidegger doubtlessly relies on language as a key paradigm of mediality, though it certainly is not exclusively a philosophy of language. In arguing that Heidegger strives to critically examine and question the meaning of a regime of accessibility by broadening the scope (Spielraum) of how we understand the meaning of being (169), Beinsteiner seems to concur with the emphasis on language without clearly separating the mediality of language from Being as mediality. The “politics of reinterpretation” (172) that Heidegger is said to put into motion presumably operates on different levels of mediality.

This equivocality might be due to the interpretative decision underlying the whole book, which is to understand Being as mediality. The expression of the “mediality of Being” used above is thus not wholly accurate, as it is not Being itself which mediates our access to the world but mediality in its stead. Beinsteiner speaks of a “forgetting of mediality” (Medialitätsvergessenheit) instead of a Seinsvergessenheit, and a “history of mediality” (Medialitätsgeschichte) instead of a Seinsgeschichte to indicate the shift his interpretation operates. Yet it seems to me that the reconfiguration of the ontological difference between Being/beings (Sein/Seiendes) as Medialität/Seiendes is not fully reflected upon. The notion that all beings refer to mediality has different implications than their referral to Being: beings are of Being, in the sense that Being ontologically comprises what beings are, whether this be in a more general, immediate or truer fashion. One of the momentous assumptions of Sein und Zeit was the idea that what is most proper to beings, their being (or Being) itself, has yet to be fully grasped. There is an intimate connection between Being and beings, which might be compared to the relationship between presence (Anwesenheit) und present things (Anwesendes), bearing in mind that presence for Heidegger is merely one way to understand Being temporally. But there is no such relationship, ontological or otherwise, between mediality and beings. Rather, when we understand the specific form of beings as due to an underlying mediality, this necessarily turns these beings themselves into media of this mediality and thus narrows their ontological meaning. While a being might be considered a unity in many ways (following Aristotles’ famous dictum of being as pollachos legomenon), a being that is the medium of mediality is already designated to present something as something else.

Possibly to avert such difficulties, Beinsteiner does not build his interpretation on the ontological difference of Being and beings, but instead suggests speaking of “a difference between mediality and the phenomenal” (42). While this solves the issue of the missing affinity between mediality and what it discloses, it raises another problem because it seemingly restricts phenomenality to what is made available by mediality, whereas in Heidegger there is a sense in which Being itself, even though it does not manifest itself in an ontic way, has a phenomenal quality as well. An essential aspect of the experience of the event consists in Being, in order to disclose beings, withdrawing itself. This withdrawal of Being, as Beinsteiner shows as well, is not something purely negative, but a concealment which can be experienced as such (198). Instead of a simple absence, concealment draws our attention to the fact that there is concealing. But when Beinsteiner quotes Heidegger in insisting that this concealment is one of the characteristics of artworks (200), an aesthetic or phenomenal quality is evidently involved. If it is thus correct to speak of a phenomenality of concealment, then what conceals itself (i.e. mediality in Beinsteiner’s interpretation) cannot be clearly distinguished from the phenomenal. It seems to me that this aesthetic aspect of withdrawal hinges on the intrinsic affinity between Being and beings, which is abandoned when replacing Being with mediality.

Would the situation have been different if mediality was not understood as replacing Being but instead as the way that Being discloses itself to us, in other words, if it was a matter of the mediality of Being? This would have added another conceptual layer between Being and beings, one in which Being would be grasped as itself in a concrete form. But this would turn Being into an absolute entity, existing beside beings. The strength of Heidegger’s philosophy, and one which is amply expounded in the book, is to resist hypostasizing either Being or beings as absolute, and instead implicating them in what Beinsteiner calls a constant “hermeneutical oscillation” (155ff). With Dieter Mersch, one could say that the question is not how Being is mediated, or how something can appear as something else, but instead how the “as” itself comes to be (Mersch 2015, 20). This in turn means that mediality, the “as itself”, is foundational, in the sense that it enables the appearance of something as something, but that it remains concealed, or rather, that it can only be noticed in the seamless way in which it operates ontic unconcealment.

The last third of the book deals with the specific forms mediality takes on, and the role of media in the usual sense of the word. These issues are tackled by Beinsteiner’s interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, in which a dominant form of mediality threatens to permanently bar alternative accesses to phenomenality. In this approach, two things seem especially remarkable. Firstly, Beinsteiner forcefully argues for the idea that Heidegger’s thinking of technology is one of artefacts, not an abstract philosopher’s critique of the contemporary world, making an empirical turn against Heidegger unnecessary (237). Secondly, the different forms of “phenomenological artifacts”, comprising not just technological objects but also artworks, are seamlessly integrated into the idea of Being as mediality. Beinsteiner suggests that equipment and the artwork are two paradigmatic artifacts which refer to the maximum concealment (as technological Gestell) and unconcealment (as event) of mediality. In other words, these artifacts exist on a continuum of concealment, as it were, which either question and broaden the regime of accessibility, or by contrast, insist in it, naturalizing the criteria of accessibility to the point where they almost seem without alternative.

This latter stage is reached with technology when the handling of technological objects becomes more and more a manner of maintenance. With fully automated, interoperative machines, the scope of possible meanings diminishes in the face of efficient, planned and unceasing repetition. Beinsteiner emphasizes that this is not meant as a scathing critique, nor as a call to simpler times in which the relationship between techne and physis was less determined, but that it merely follows the logic of increased insistence within a specific regime of accessibility. While the whole argument of the book mostly focuses on Heidegger’s own writing, at this point a sideways glance to other contemporary theories of technology would have been interesting. Gilbert Simondon, in his On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (originally published in 1958) offers for instance a much more positive account of the relationship between man and automated machine, which is not merely one of maintenance but of engineering. More to the point of Heidegger, Simondon also constructs a genealogy of technical objects stretching back as far as animist theories. But in Simondon, increased levels of technological ingenuity are described as enabling more creativity and openness, based on the knowledge of the modes of existence of these technological objects. Thus, the complex inner workings of an automated machine present not merely a closed system to the outside observer, but an intricate set of ideas which have taken on a fixed form that can be amended and emended through playful experimentation. This creativity that is manifest in the complexity of the machine is not found in Heidegger. On the other hand, Heidegger’s philosophy of technology could be construed as a lifelong struggle with the “technological condition” of his own thinking, for instance as an underlying technological bias dating back as far as Sein und Zeit, where the world is disclosed in the form of technical or pragmatic affordances (Hörl 2008, 651f).

Some of the ambivalences in Heidegger’s view of the role of technology are conveyed by Beinsteiner’s concepts of the hermeneutics of the user and designer, respectively. Technological objects always entertain a complex relationship to their surrounding sense. They are not abstract functions, but first of all projected ideas. In their objective form, they are subject to the sense the user, as a hermeneutical creature makes, of them, just as their design is not merely the application of a form on matter, but an Entwurf and Zuwurf in which the possibility of unexpected discovery appears (246). In this sense, there is a Simondonian quality to Heidegger’s technological thinking. Outside the realm of subservience, technological artifacts may thus gain relevance in the play with accessibility.

In the last chapter, Beinsteiner draws some consequences from the fact that humans are constitutively related to media strictly speaking and to mediality broadly speaking. This exteriority, which is tied back to the basic condition of ek-sistence, is distinguished from concepts in which technology is understood as the extension of an interiority, like Ernst Kapps’s thesis of technology as organ projection. The argument Beinsteiner makes is that Heidegger does not think technology as an anthropological feature: technology will never determine what humans are, or vice versa, as it is just one part of a broader regime of accessibility which is always open to variability through language (283). This variability of language is also at play when Heidegger’s writing process is deemed a “media-philosophical strategy” (289) which mediates the volatile movement of thinking and the crystallization of thought in letters.

It is not just in this work-biographical self-attribution (Wege, nicht Werke is the epigram of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe) that Beinsteiner follows Heidegger. Throughout the book, it becomes clear that the defense of the coherence of the thesis of Being as mediality coincides with the defense of Heidegger’s philosophy itself. But in arguing for Heidegger’s continuous effort to hold open and question existing regimes of accessibility, the mediality elucidated by the interpretation appears much more uniform than Heidegger’s own term of Being, which, as Dasein or event, signifies quite different forms of mediality. It would have been thinkable, for instance, to distinguish mediality as disclosedness and as unconcealment, relative to the ontological framework in which mediality operates. I also disagree with Beinsteiner’s negative assessment of “critical Heidegger studies”, which historicize Heideggerian terminology, thus going against Heidegger’s own semantic intentions (173). On the next page, Beinsteiner warns that, for it not to seem dogmatic and authoritative, one has to follow closely Heidegger’s own “expanding reinterpretation” of metaphysical concepts to liberate and transform thinking (174). Thus, while Heidegger is granted maximum semantic freedom, reading him seems to require abstaining from calling his semantics into question. From this hermeneutical attitude also follows that the historicity of Being, i.e. mediality, remains elusive. In other words, the regime of accessibility is always already in place and we may increase our freedom by thinking its very mediality, but this remains an exercise of reason, not a media archaeology. Yet it would have been possible to grasp Heidegger’s thinking of mediality, especially as it relates to media in the strict sense, in a more empirical way, that is by consulting the invention and distribution of machines. Likewise, paradigm changes in artworks, for instance from figural to more abstract paintings, emphasizing the creative act rather than reproducing ontic features, might have played a role in describing the artwork as an event showing us the limits of our selectivity of accessibility. But the fact that Beinsteiner chose to follow Heidegger closely instead results in a very consistent interpretation, one which is able to convincingly incorporate ideas and terminology from early to late Heidegger.

Thus, the book succeeds in what it set out to do: providing a coherent interpretation of “Being” as mediality, which is shown to be of central importance for concrete media such as artworks, equipment and interoperative machines. Through this careful and thorough reading, Beinsteiner also exposes the limits of a mediality according to Heidegger, thereby laying out premises for media ontologies to come.

References:

Heidegger, Martin. 2000. Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry. Translated by Keith Hoeller. Amherst: Prometheus Books.

Hörl, Erich. 2008. “Die offene Maschine. Heidegger, Günther und Simondon über die technologische Bedingung.” MLN 123(3): 632-655.

Mersch, Dieter. 2015. “Wozu Medienphilosophie? Eine programmatische Einleitung.” Internationales Jahrbuch für Medienphilosophie 1(1): 13-48.

Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Francesco Alfieri: Martin Heidegger and the Truth About the Black Notebooks, Springer, 2021

Martin Heidegger and the Truth About the Black Notebooks Book Cover Martin Heidegger and the Truth About the Black Notebooks
Analecta Husserliana, Volume 123
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Francesco Alfieri
Springer
2021
Hardback 88,39 €
X, 361

Rudolf Bultmann, Hans Jonas: Briefwechsel 1928–1976

Briefwechsel 1928–1976: Mit einem Anhang anderer Zeugnisse Book Cover Briefwechsel 1928–1976: Mit einem Anhang anderer Zeugnisse
Rudolf Bultmann, Hans Jonas. Edited by Andreas Großmann
Mohr Siebeck
2020
Paperback 69,00 €
XXV, 161

Reviewed by: Ian Alexander Moore (Loyola Marymount University; Faculty Member, St. John’s College)

This volume contains letters, spanning nearly fifty years, between the Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann and the Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas. It also includes a helpful editor’s introduction and a nine-part appendix, containing, among other documents, Martin Heidegger’s and Bultmann’s previously unpublished evaluations of Jonas’s 1928 dissertation on Gnosticism, as well as Jonas’s brief, previously unpublished correspondence with Heidegger.

In the first substantive letter (13 July 1929), which is more of a book proposal than a letter properly speaking (Jonas called it a Briefmonstrum, an “epistolary monster,” 7), Jonas attempts phenomenologically to derive a universal truth about humanity from St. Paul’s famous description of his struggle to fulfill the Law in Romans 7:7–25. The existential, hence not specifically Christian structure of Paul’s statements consists, according to Jonas, in the tension between a free, primordial self-willing (volo me velle) and its inevitable lapse into the objectification of the universe and, correlatively, of the self (cogito me velle). Here we have Entmythologisierung (“demythologization”) avant la lettre.

But, it should be noted, we are not far before the letter: the very next year, in his first book, Jonas would introduce the language of demythologization, which would become one of the defining and most controversial features of Bultmann’s theology, into the scholarly world. This important, but still-untranslated book, titled Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem: Ein philosophischer Beitrag zur Genesis der christlich-abendländischen Freiheitsidee (Augustine and the Pauline Problem of Freedom: A Philosophical Contribution to the Genesis of the Christian-Western Idea of Freedom), builds on Jonas’s “epistolary monster.” Bultmann published it in 1930 in his prestigious series “Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments” (“Research on the Religion and Literature of the Old and New Testament”).[1]

Although, apart from a few largely perfunctory letters, the extant correspondence does not resume in earnest until 1952, Jonas and Bultmann remained in contact in the interim. For example, in a later memorial tribute to Bultmann (included in the appendix to the correspondence), Jonas relates that Bultmann was the only teacher whom he had visited before emigrating from Germany in 1933 in response to the SA troops’ harassment and persecution of Jews. Bultmann, moreover, would also be one of the first teachers Jonas would visit when he returned to Germany fifteen years later as a soldier in the victorious Allied forces. It is worth reproducing Jonas’s recollections here, as they attest not only to his intellectual respect for his teacher (which he also had for Heidegger, for instance), but above all to his respect for Bultmann’s character and ethical bearing (which, to his great dismay, he found tragically lacking in Heidegger). After reading this, it should come as little surprise that Jonas kept a picture of Bultmann by his desk in New York (108), or that, in 1934, Bultmann was bold enough to write a preface for the publication of the first volume of his Jewish student’s work on Gnosticism and even to confess an intellectual debt to Jonas (117–18; see also XIX–XX, 143).[2] As Jonas tells it:

It was in the summer of 1933, here in Marburg. […] I related what I had just read in the newspaper, but he [Bultmann] not yet, namely, that the German Association of the Blind had expelled its Jewish members. My horror carried me into eloquence: In the face of eternal night (so I exclaimed) the most unifying tie there can be among suffering men, this betrayal of the solidarity of a common fate—and I stopped, for my eye fell on Bultmann and I saw that a deathly pallor had spread over his face, and in his eyes was such agony that the words died in my mouth. In that moment I knew that in matters of elementary humanity one could simply rely on Bultmann, […] that no insanity of the time could dim the steadiness of his inner light.

Of their next meeting, amid the ruins of war, Jonas recalls:

barely done with the hurried exchange of first welcomes, scarcely over the emotion of this unexpected reunion—we were both still standing—he said something for which I recount this highly personal story. I had come by military transport from Göttingen and held under my arm a book which the publisher Ruprecht had asked me to take to Bultmann, as civilian mail services had not yet been restored. Bultmann pointed at this parcel and asked, “May I hope that this is the second volume of the ‘Gnosis’?” At that, there entered into my soul too, still rent by the Unspeakable I had just learned about in my erstwhile home—the fate of my mother and of the untold others—for the first time something like peace again: at beholding the constancy of thought and loving interest across the ruin of a world. Suddenly I knew: one can resume and continue that for which one needs faith in man. Countless times I have relived this scene. It became the bridge over the abyss; it connected the “after” with the “before” which grief and wrath and bitterness threatened to blot out, and perhaps more than anything else it helped, with its unique combination of fidelity and soberness, to make my life whole again. (125–26; see also 99, 118–19)[3]

The next major highlight of the correspondence pertains to Jonas’s text “Immortality and the Modern Temper,” which he delivered as the annual Ingersoll lecture at Harvard University in 1961.[4] Jonas sent a copy of the lecture, which attempts to explain what sense immortality could have in today’s disenchanted world, to Bultmann in January 1962. In his prefatory letter, Jonas explains that he felt compelled to go in the opposite direction of his erstwhile mentor: whereas the don of demythologization strives, as Jonas had earlier in his career (see especially 115–116), to uncover the true, existential content of myth behind its fantastical garb, Jonas thinks that myth, in the manner of Plato, is the best we have to go on when it comes to questions such as the meaning of immortality and the meaning of God after Auschwitz. Of his lecture, Jonas writes—and here I quote and translate at length, since it is uncertain if and when the correspondence will be translated in its entirety—

It was a daring attempt at a metaphysical statement. When developing it, I saw myself compelled to have recourse to myth—to a self-invented myth. This was not intended as a general method of metaphysics, but as a personal form of symbolic answer to a question that I could not answer in any other way but whose right to an answer was undeniable.

[Es wurde ein gewagter Versuch zu einer metaphysischen Aussage, in deren Entfaltung ich mich genötigt sah, zum Mythos—einem selbsterdachten—Zuflucht zu nehmen. Das war nicht als generelle Methode der Metaphysik gedacht, sondern als persönliche Form der symbolischen Antwort auf eine für mich nicht anders beantwortbare, aber in ihrem Recht auf Antwort unabweisbare Frage.]

It is not enough, Jonas continues, to refer to the authentically human content of mythological form, as Bultmann would have it.[5] Myth itself can, and must, also be deployed—consciously and with full recognition of its inherent inadequacy—in service of being as such:

when, in a seriously non-dualist fashion, the authentic reality of the human points back to the authentic reality of the universe […] and when it is necessary to speak also of this—of the totality of being and its ground—without there being any identifiable terminology for it, then we are directed to the path of the objectifying, indicative symbol; then a momentary, as it were experimental mythologization, a mythologization that holds itself in suspense, can again come closer precisely to the mystery. And here the revocability of the anthropomorphic symbol would have to wait to be replaced by other, for their part likewise revocable symbols, not, however, for a subsequent demythologization, which would have to relinquish what was to be signified only in the symbol.

[wo, ernsthaft undualistisch, die eigentliche Wirklichkeit des Menschen auf die eigentliche Wirklichkeit des Universums zurückweist […] und also auch davon—vom All des Seins und seinem Grunde—gesprochen werden muss, ohne dass es die ausweisbare Begrifflichkeit dafür gibt, da sind wir auf den Weg des objektivierend andeutenden Symbols gewiesen und da kann vielleicht eine momentane, gleichsam experimentelle, sich selber in der Schwebe haltende Mythologisierung gerade dem Geheimnis wieder näher kommen. Und hier würde die Widerruflichkeit des anthropomorphen Symbols auf Ersetzung durch andere, ihrerseits ebenso widerrufliche Symbole zu warten haben, nicht aber auf eine nachkommende Entmythologisierung, die preisgeben müsste, was nur im Symbol zu bedeuten war.] (51–52)

In his myth, which he would later develop in such essays as “The Concept of God After Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice” and “Matter, Mind, and Creation: Cosmological Evidence and Cosmogonic Speculation,”[6] Jonas imagines a god who, in the beginning, divested itself of its power and gave itself wholly over to the becoming of the cosmos. It now falls to the radical freedom of the human being to reshape the face of God, whether by restoring it to its former glory through good deeds, or by creating a disfigured perversion of it through evil deeds.

Jonas received countless replies to his lecture, none, however, more profound and impressive (see 63, 77) than that found in Bultmann’s letter from 31 July 1962. Indeed, Jonas would later publish an edited version Bultmann’s response, together with his own subsequent reply to Bultmann, in his book Zwischen Nichts und Ewigkeit: Drei Aufsätze zur Lehre vom Menschen (Between Nothing and Eternity: Three Essays on Anthropology).[7] Jonas even claims in a letter from 1963 that, without their epistolary exchange, “my immortality-essay would seem very incomplete to me” (“Ohne es käme mir jedenfalls mein Unsterblichkeitsaufsatz jetzt sehr unvollständig vor”) (77). Here Jonas refers to the essay as his “fragmentary and searching philosophical manifesto” (“mein fragmentarisches und versuchendes philosophisches Manifest”) (78).

Bultmann, in his response to “Immortality and the Modern Temper,” makes several objections, chief of which is that Jonas’s perspective on God’s relation to the universe is, first, aesthetic and, second, external to the existential situation of the being that, in Heidegger’s language, is in each case mine. Jonas contests the first, since he aims not at the final reconciliation of oppositions, but at the triumph of good over evil through the free choice of human beings. His view is ultimately ethical, not aesthetic. Regarding the second, Jonas concedes that it is necessary to take an external perspective if one wishes to interpret the whole. Today, there is little interest in such speculation. But Jonas takes it to be imperative:

For precisely this is now my conviction: that ethics must be grounded in ontology, that is, the law of human comportment must be derived from the nature of the whole; and this is so because self-understanding follows from understanding the whole (thus “from without”)—namely when the whole is understood in such a way that it comes about that the human being is there for the whole, and not the whole for the human being.

[Denn eben dies ist nun meine Überzeugung, dass die Ethik auf der Ontologie gegründet sein muss, das heisst: das Gesetz menschlichen Verhaltens aus der Natur des Ganzen abgeleitet werden muss; und dies, weil das Selbstverständnis aus dem Verständnis des Ganzen folgt (also “von aussen”)—dann nämlich, wenn das Ganze so verstanden ist, dass sich ergibt, dass der Mensch für das Ganze da ist, und nicht das Ganze für den Menschen.] (67)[8]

Bultmann also invites a consideration of the relation between Jonas’s myth of the fate of God and Heidegger’s idea of the destiny of being (Seins-Geschick). Jonas ignores this invitation in his rejoinder to Bultmann, although he will later take it up in his famous critique of Heidegger, “Heidegger and Theology,” first delivered before a group of theologians at Drew University in 1964.[9]  (Jonas describes the event on 84).

Despite Jonas’s often scathing critique of Heidegger’s thought and person,[10] it is interesting to note that, in a letter to Bultmann from July 1969, Jonas relates that he had met with Heidegger and had “finally reconciled [endlich … ausgesöhnt] with him” (92). Moreover, in 1972, Heidegger supported Jonas’s efforts to receive reparations from the German government for the difficulties inflicted on his academic career under National Socialism. At Jonas’s request, Heidegger promptly wrote the following official explanation of Jonas’s circumstances at the time, testifying to his respect and admiration for his one-time student:

I, Martin Heidegger, was a full professor of philosophy at the Philipps-University in Marburg between 1923 and 1929. / Hans Jonas, who graduated with his doctorate summa cum laude under my directorship in 1928, was one of the most gifted students at the university and predestined to be a university lecturer. Before I left Marburg, Dr. Jonas had discussed with me the basic conception of the work he intended as a habilitation thesis on the position of Gnosticism in the entire thought of late antiquity. The finished work was published in 1934 as a book under the title “Gnosticism and the Spirit of Late Antiquity” (1st part). I read it. There is and there was no doubt for me that this work was outstandingly qualified to be a habilitation thesis. If I had still had something to do with this work as a habilitation thesis, I would have warmly recommended it without reservation.

[Ich, Martin Heidegger, war von 1923 bis 1929 Ordinarius für Philosophie an der Philipps-Universität in Marburg. / Hans Jonas, der bei mir 1928 summa cum laude promovierte, war einer der begabtesten Studenten der Universität und prädestiniert zum Dozenten. Die Grundkonzeption seiner als Habilitationsschrift gedachten Arbeit über die Stellung der Gnosis im Gesamtdenken der Spätantike hatte Dr. Jonas mit mir noch vor meinem Weggang von Marburg besprochen. Die fertige Arbeit ist 1934 als Buch unter dem Titel “Gnosis und spätantiker Geist” (1. Teil) erschienen. Ich habe es gelsen. Es besteht und bestand für mich kein Zweifel, dass diese Arbeit als Habilitationsschrift in hervorragendem Masse qualifiziert war. Hätte ich noch mit dieser Arbeit als Habilitationsschrift zu tun gehabt, so hätte ich sie ohne Einschränkung aufs wärmste empfohlen.] (122)

Other noteworthy moments in the correspondence with Bultmann include Jonas’s description of his research in 1952, which, he says, is directed entirely at “an ontology in which ‘life’ and thus also the human being obtain their place in nature” (“Alle meine theoretischen Bemühungen gehen um eine Ontologie, in der das ‘Leben’ und damit auch der Mensch seinen Platz in der Natur erhält”) (18); Jonas’s critique of Eric Voegelin’s sweepingly pejorative use of the term “Gnosticism,” and his conclusion that Voegelin himself “is the modern gnostic” (32–34); Bultmann’s claim, made in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to convince Jonas to assume a professorship at Marburg University, that “you are the only one who has the strength today to take up and continue the great tradition that has developed in the history of philosophizing in Marburg” (“Sie sind der Einzige, der heute die Kraft hat, die große Tradition aufzunehmen und fortzuführen, die in der Geschichte des Philosophierens in Marburg erwachsen ist”) (44); and a debate on authenticity (Eigentlichkeit), in which Jonas relates it to his pursuit of an ethics grounded in ontology, whereas Bultmann sees it, with Heidegger, in opposition to the life of das Man (“the they”) and as outside the sphere of the ethical (72–76).

Fortunately, some of the most important correspondence is already available in English. Jonas’s own translation of the aforementioned “epistolary monster” is available, with additions and emendations, under the title “The Abyss of the Will: Philosophical Meditation on the Seventh Chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.”[11] The two main letters about “Immortality and the Modern Temper” are in Bultmann and Jonas, “Exchange on Hans Jonas’ Essay on Immortality.”[12] Furthermore, the seventh document in the appendix, a memorial tribute to Bultmann, exists in a translation by Jonas himself as “Is Faith Still Possible?: Memories of Rudolf Bultmann and Reflections on the Philosophical Aspects of His Work.”[13] The final part of the appendix is a republication, in English, of Jonas’s 1984 tribute to Bultmann on the centenary of the latter’s birth.[14]


[1] Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1930. For the second edition (1965), Jonas changed the subtitle to Eine philosophische Studie zum pelagianischen Streit (A Philosophical Study on the Pelagian Controversy) and appended a revised version of the “epistolary monster.” Jonas speaks of “a demythologized consciousness” (“ein entmythologisiertes Bewußtsein”) in the first appendix “Über die hermeneutische Struktur des Dogmas” (“On the Hermeneutic Structure of Dogma), which appeared in both editions. See p. 82 of the second for the reference. For discussion, see pp. 14–17 of James M. Robinson’s introduction to the second edition, as well as Hans Jonas-Handbuch: Leben–Werk–Wirkung, ed. Michael Bongardt et al. (Berlin: Metzler, 2021), 78 (contribution by Udo Lenzig).

[2] It is noteworthy that, in his controversial 1941 lecture “Neues Testament und Mythologie: Das Problem der Entmythologisierung der neutestamentlichen Verkündigung,” Bultmann twice refers to Jonas’s works. See Rudolf Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology: The Mythological Element in the Message of the New Testament and the Problem of Its Re-Interpretation,” in Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 12n1, 16. See Bultmann’s discussion of the lecture on pp. 21–22 of the correspondence.

[3] Translation in Hans Jonas, Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, ed. Lawrence Vogel (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 146–47. See also Hans Jonas, Memoirs, trans. Krishna Winston (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2008), 74, 144–45.

[4] In, for example, Jonas, Mortality and Morality, chapter 5.

[5] Jonas quotes from Bultmann’s recently published “Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung,” in Il problema della demitizzazione, ed. Enrico Castelli (Padua: CEDAM, 1961): 19–26. In English as “On the Problem of Demythologizing,” trans. Schubert M. Ogden, The Journal of Religion 42, no. 2 (1962): 96–102.

[6] In Mortality and Morality, chapters 6 and 8.

[7] Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963, 63–72.

[8] Translation in Rudolf Bultmann and Hans Jonas, “Exchange on Hans Jonas’ Essay on Immortality,” trans. Ian Alexander Moore, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 40, no. 2 (2020): 491–506 (quote on p. 503).

[9] See Hans Jonas, “Heidegger and Theology,” in The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), Tenth Essay. For more on this point, and Jonas’s relation to Heidegger more broadly, see Ralf Elm’s contribution in Hans Jonas-Handbuch, 28–34.

[10] For the latter, see especially Hans Jonas’s 1963 lecture “Husserl und Heidegger,” in Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke von Hans Jonas, vol. III/2, ed. Dietrich Böhler et al. (Darmstadt: WBG, 2013), 205–224. For discussion, see Ian Alexander Moore’s contribution in Hans Jonas-Handbuch, 172–75.

[11] In Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays (New York: Atropos, 2010), chapter 18. Also, with the subtitle as sole title, in James M. Robinson, ed., The Future of Our Religious Past: Essays in Honour of Rudolf Bultmann (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), chapter 15.

[12] Op. cit.

[13] In Jonas, Mortality and Morality, chapter 7.

[14] Also in Edward C. Hobbes, ed., Bultmann, Retrospect and Prospect: The Centenary Symposium at Wellesley (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985): 1–4.

Lorenzo C. Simpson: Hermeneutics as Critique, Columbia University Press, 2021

Hermeneutics as Critique: Science, Politics, Race, and Culture Book Cover Hermeneutics as Critique: Science, Politics, Race, and Culture
New Directions in Critical Theory
Lorenzo C. Simpson
Columbia University Press
2021
Paperback $35.00 £30.00
256

Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Francesco Alfieri: Martin Heidegger. Adevărul despre „Caietele negre”, Ratio et Revelatio, 2021

Martin Heidegger. Adevărul despre „Caietele negre” Book Cover Martin Heidegger. Adevărul despre „Caietele negre”
Epoché
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Francesco Alfieri. Romanian translation by Paul Gabriel Sandu, Alexandru Bejinariu, Dragoș Grusea
Ratio et Revelatio
2021
Paperback
458

Theodore George, Gert-Jan van der Heiden (Eds.): The Gadamerian Mind, Routledge, 2021

The Gadamerian Mind Book Cover The Gadamerian Mind
Routledge Philosophical Minds
Theodore George, Gert-Jan van der Heiden (Eds.)
Routledge
2021
Hardback £190.00
616

Martin Heidegger, Otto Pöggeler: Briefwechsel 1957-1976, Karl Alber, 2021

Briefwechsel 1957-1976 Book Cover Briefwechsel 1957-1976
Martin Heidegger Briefausgabe Band II/3
Martin Heidegger, Otto Pöggeler.
Karl Alber
2021
Hardback 60,00 €
248

Jean Grondin: Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être

Comprendre Heidegger. L'espoir d'une autre conception de l'être Book Cover Comprendre Heidegger. L'espoir d'une autre conception de l'être
Bel Aujourd'hui
Jean Grondin
Hermann
2019
Paperback 28,00 €
292

Reviewed by: Karl Racette (Université de Montréal)

Publié une trentaine d’années après le très important livre Le tournant dans la pensée de Martin Heidegger (Épiméthée, 1987), Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être (Hermann Éditions, 2019) est la deuxième monographie de Jean Grondin portant exclusivement sur la pensée de Martin Heidegger. La publication de cet ouvrage aura précédé de peu La beauté de la métaphysique (Éditions du Cerf, 2019) publié le même été. La réception francophone de Heidegger aura été ainsi très comblée lors de la dernière année par ces deux ouvrages de J. Grondin qui, à plusieurs égards, pourront être lus de manière complémentaire.

Dès les premières lignes de l’ouvrage, l’A. affirme qu’il faut comprendre Heidegger d’abord et avant tout à partir de sa question essentielle, celle de l’être[1]. Cette exigence de compréhension apparaît prioritaire aux yeux de l’A. compte tenu de sa réception récente, qui s’est surtout concentrée sur l’engagement politique de Heidegger, prompte à discréditer d’emblée sa pensée. Comprendre Heidegger, nous dit J. Grondin, c’est à la fois comprendre son effort indéfectible de penser l’être, mais c’est aussi « comprendre sa personne et son engagement politique »[2]. L’approche de l’A. est au départ originale en ce qu’elle ne sépare pas l’homme de l’œuvre en vue de sauvegarder l’œuvre, mais tente plutôt de comprendre l’engagement politique de l’individu Heidegger à partir de la question qui anime l’œuvre, celle de penser à nouveau l’être.

C’est à cet effet que J. Grondin déploiera un double effort de compréhension – celui de la fusion des horizons, héritée de Gadamer et de transposition reprise de Schleiermacher – qui aura chacun l’œuvre et l’homme comme objet[3]. Nous pouvons dire que les chapitres 1 à 7 consistent en un effort de compréhension, se rapprochant de la fusion des horizons gadamérienne dans la mesure où les différentes interprétations proposées comportent toujours un moment de confrontation critique envers Heidegger. De leur côté, les chapitre 8 à 10 sont plutôt un effort de transposition dans l’horizon d’attentes de Heidegger où il s’agit de comprendre l’homme Heidegger selon ses projets, ses attentes, ses espoirs, etc. La visée de cette transposition étant surtout de comprendre les raisons personnelles qui ont poussé Heidegger à se reconnaître dans le national-socialisme. Ce double effort de compréhension possède néanmoins une visée commune : montrer que l’auteur et l’individu sont orientés par la même « étoile » qui guide toujours leur engagement spirituel et personnel, la question de l’être.

L’effort de compréhension de l’ouvrage est orienté par quatre présupposés de lecture que l’A. expose dès l’introduction. D’abord (1), il faut, comme nous l’avons dit, comprendre Heidegger (l’œuvre et l’homme) à partir de la question l’être : « Heidegger soutient à bon droit qu’elle est sa question essentielle, voire la seule question (au sens où tout dépend d’elle), mais aussi la question fondamentale de la pensée occidentale, voire de la pensée tout court, et qu’elle est tombée dans l’oubli dont il est opportun de la tirer »[4]. Si ce présupposer va de soi pour l’œuvre de Heidegger, cela semble être le pari de l’interprétation proposée par J. Grondin de la compréhension de l’homme Heidegger. Une bonne partie de l’ouvrage (en particulier les chapitres 8 à 10) cherche à montrer qu’il faut comprendre les raisons de l’engagement politique de Heidegger à partir des exigences théoriques et « pratiques » de sa propre philosophie. La motivation commune entre la pensée de l’auteur et son engagement politique réside dans le fait que (2) « notre conception de l’être reste dominée par une certaine intelligence de l’être qui est préparée de longue date, en vérité depuis les Grecs, mais qui est problématique et qui n’est peut-être pas la seule »[5]. Dans la perspective de Heidegger, nous explique l’A., il est nécessaire de penser et de préparer un autre rapport possible à l’être – le nôtre étant sous l’emprise de la compréhension de l’être envisagé comme « étant subsistant qui est immédiatement présent, observable, mesurable et utilisable »[6]. Ce que l’A. rend visible sans équivoque c’est que cette compréhension techniciste et calculante de l’être est « largement responsable du nihilisme et de l’athéisme contemporain »[7]. C’est dans ce combat « héroïque et parfois pathétique »[8] qu’il faut comprendre à la fois l’œuvre philosophique de Heidegger et l’engagement politique de l’homme (3). C’est dans cette recherche d’un nouveau commencement de la pensée, qui consiste en une préparation lente et difficile d’une autre entente de l’être, que Heidegger a pensé avoir trouvé dans le nazisme, de manière pour le moins illusoire et fatale, l’une des possibilités historiques de cet autre compréhension de l’être, dont il voulait être le prophète. Ces trois hypothèses de lecture permettent la quatrième (4) : « le débat de fond avec Heidegger se situe donc moins au plan politique, qui continuera assurément d’obséder les médias et l’opinion, qu’an plan métaphysique »[9]. En ramenant le débat en terres métaphysiques, l’A. espère ainsi préserver la pertinence philosophique de la pensée heideggérienne de l’être. Cela ne veut toutefois pas dire que l’ouvrage est une simple apologie de Heidegger, au contraire : si J. Grondin ramène Heidegger sur le plan de la métaphysique, c’est dans la perspective de rendre possible une interprétation critique de sa pensée. Nous y reviendrons.

En plus de l’introduction, l’ouvrage est divisé en trois parties qui forment ensemble dix chapitres. Neuf des dix chapitres sont des reprises de certains textes que l’A. a publié dans le passé, de 1999 à 2017. À ceux-ci s’ajoute un texte inédit (chapitre 10) sur l’engagement politique de Heidegger. Bien que la majorité des textes ont été écrits dans un temps, une thématique et un contexte différent, ces derniers ont été retravaillés selon l’orientation principale du livre, c’est-à-dire celle de comprendre Heidegger selon sa question essentielle. L’ouvrage peut donc être lu de façon linéaire pour avoir de multiples perspectives sur le projet de Heidegger. Les différents chapitres gardent néanmoins une certaine autonomie et pourront aussi être lus individuellement.

La première partie de l’ouvrage intitulée « l’urgence de dépasser la conception dominante de l’être » (chapitres 1, 2, 3 et 4) propose une certaine introduction générale à la pensée de Heidegger, ainsi qu’aux thèses principales de Sein und Zeit. Un lecteur familier de l’A. y trouvera les principes et les thèses habituellement exposés dans ses autres ouvrages portant soit sur l’herméneutique ou la métaphysique. Ces chapitres constituent une bonne introduction à la pensée de Heidegger, écrits dans un style qui évite tout jargon, en ayant le soin de traduire Heidegger en une langue lipide et claire, ce qui est en soi un défi immense.

Le premier chapitre « Pourquoi réveiller la question de l’être ? » propose une lecture des premiers paragraphes d’Être et temps. En replaçant l’ouvrage de 1927 dans le contexte historique et philosophique de son époque, l’A. relit le premier chapitre du texte en soulignant les raisons qui poussent Heidegger à reposer (répéter pourrions-nous dire) la question de l’être. Cette relecture de l’intention d’abord et avant tout ontologique du texte sert sans doute à justifier les hypothèses de lecture proposées par l’A. en venant rappeler aux lecteurs les formulations fondamentales du projet heideggérien en 1927, celui d’un « réveil » de la question de l’être. Ce chapitre est certainement utile à quiconque cherchera à s’introduire à la pensée heideggérienne ou à Être et temps, en démontrant que l’être est sans contredit l’objet principal de la pensée de Heidegger – ce qui ne va pas toujours de soi, comme c’est le cas dans la lecture « pragmatique » d’Être et temps que l’on retrouve souvent dans la réception anglo-saxonne de Heidegger.

Le second chapitre « Comprendre le défi du nominalisme » est pour sa part beaucoup plus proche d’une interprétation critique de Heidegger. L’A. esquisse les raisons de la remise en question heideggérienne de la conception de « l’étant subsistant » qui représente la condition de possibilité ontologique de « l’essor de la technique »[10]. De manière très claire et convaincante, l’A. expose la continuité entre les questions métaphysiques et techniques de Heidegger. La particularité de la lecture de J. Grondin tient à l’exposition de certaines de ses réserves par rapport à la conception heideggérienne de la métaphysique. C’est que, nous explique l’A, le concept heideggérien de métaphysique ne serait-il pas lui-même « un peu technique, passe-partout, […], qu’il [Heidegger], applique péremptoirement à l’ensemble de son histoire, mais qui finit par rendre inaudibles les voix et les voies de la métaphysique elle-même ? »[11]. Plutôt que de s’attaquer à la métaphysique, l’A. préfère plutôt parler de conception « nominaliste »[12] de l’être qui serait responsable des conséquences que Heidegger déplore. Dans la continuité de son livre Introduction à la métaphysique – dont J. Grondin avoue lui-même être « un modeste contrepoids à l’ouvrage du même nom de Heidegger »[13]  – il affirme plutôt qu’il est possible de trouver au sein même de la richesse de la tradition métaphysique le remède contre l’expérience moderne du nihilisme.

Le troisième chapitre « Comprendre pourquoi Heidegger met en question l’ontologie du sujet afin de lui substituer une ontologie du Dasein » cette fois-ci retourne à Être et temps en vue de rappeler à quelles fins Heidegger tente de penser l’homme non pas comme sujet, mais comme « espace » où se pose la question de l’être, Da-sein. La particularité de la lecture que propose l’A. réside certainement dans sa mise en rapport des concepts de Heidegger avec la richesse de la conceptualité grecque, son histoire et ses transformations. Dans cette perspective, il devient clair que le projet de l’analytique transcendantal de 1927 est une réponse à la conception de la métaphysique moderne de l’homme, ce que l’auteur souligne justement.

Le quatrième chapitre « Comprendre la théorie de la compréhension et du cercle herméneutique chez Heidegger » expose de manière détaillée l’apport de l’herméneutique (en 1927 et au-delà) au projet ontologique de Heidegger. Il expose certains des concepts les plus canoniques de Heidegger comme la compréhension, le pouvoir-être, l’explicitation (ou l’interprétation, Auslegung) ainsi que le cercle de la compréhension. En montrant que l’herméneutique heideggérienne est toujours orientée vers la question de l’être. L’A. en profite pour souligner certaines des apories de sa pensée.

La seconde partie de l’ouvrage s’intitule « Dépasser la métaphysique pour mieux poser sa question » et comporte les chapitres 5, 6 et 7. Dans ces chapitres, l’A. interprète certaines thèses de Heidegger de manière très soutenue. En interprétant ligne par ligne certains des textes de Heidegger, l’A. y propose une lecture critique, souvent en réactualisant la tradition métaphysique (principalement platonicienne et sa descendance) contre l’interprétation heideggérienne de la métaphysique jugée réductrice. C’est précisément à cet endroit que l’ouvrage La beauté de la métaphysique publié la même année pourra être éclairé tout en éclairant la lecture proposée par l’A. de la pensée heideggérienne. La défense de la métaphysique de  l’A. dans cet autre ouvrage nous permet de mieux comprendre à partir de quel horizon l’interprétation heideggérienne de la métaphysique est critiqué : « La métaphysique, dans son ontologie, sa théologie et son anthropologie, nous permet ainsi d’espérer que l’existence est elle-même sensée. C’est ‘en ce sens’ que la métaphysique, avec toute sa riche histoire, représente le bienfait le plus précieux de l’histoire de l’humanité »[14]. Les chapitres dont il est question sont donc à la fois importants en ce qu’ils restituent de manière convaincante et rigoureuse la visée du projet de Heidegger, ses espoirs, tout en proposant une lecture critique qui saura nous renseigner sur les possibilités de la métaphysique et de l’herméneutique contemporaine.

Le cinquième chapitre « Heidegger et le problème de la métaphysique », qui est de loin le plus long du livre (environ 70 pages), s’intéresse à la question de la « destruction » heideggérienne de la métaphysique, d’Être et temps jusqu’à sa toute dernière philosophie. Il s’agit là d’un chapitre très chargé et ambitieux à plusieurs égards, car l’auteur aborde une multiplicité de textes de Heidegger en y soulignant la transformation (ou le « tournant ») dans sa conception de la métaphysique. Bien que le thème de ce chapitre est en soi ardu, l’auteur explique la progression des réflexions de Heidegger au sujet de la métaphysique toujours de manière claire et argumentée en référent de façon tout autant pédagogique que minutieuse aux différents livres, essais, conférences et cours de Heidegger. En esquissant la conception heideggérienne de la métaphysique, l’A. termine sur les possibilités de la métaphysique rendues ouvertes par le projet « destructeur » de Heidegger. L’apport de Heidegger, aux yeux de J. Grondin réside « moins dans l’élaboration d’une nouvelle pensée de l’être, que dans la destruction des évidences de la raison calculante et nominaliste. La métaphysique peut nous apprendre qu’il ne s’agit pas de la seule conception de la raison et de l’être qui soit possible »[15]. Dans la continuité du deuxième chapitre, l’A. voit moins en la métaphysique le responsable du nihilisme contemporain que dans la conception nominaliste de l’être. L’apport de Heidegger réside dans cet espoir de rendre une autre conception de l’être possible, autre conception que l’A. retrouve dans les richesses de la pensée métaphysique.

Le sixième chapitre « Le drame de la Phusis, loi secrète de notre destin » est assurément le chapitre le plus critique de l’ouvrage et en ce sens, l’un des plus fécond. L’A. interprète ligne par ligne la compréhension heideggérienne de la Phusis exposée dans son cours Introduction à la métaphysique (GA 40), par-delà sa traduction latine et sa reprise moderne dans le terme de nature. À l’aide de la richesse des paroles de la pensée métaphysique (exprimée dans une pluralité de langues), l’A. s’attaque directement aux présupposés qui guident la dévalorisation des concepts métaphysiques dérivés (latin et modernes) ainsi qu’à la valorisation de l’expérience présocratique (et donc pré-métaphysique) de l’être, la seule qui serait véritablement « pure » ou « originaire ». La qualité de la critique de l’A. tient au fait qu’elle se réalise au sein même de la pensée heideggérienne et non à partir d’un horizon étranger – témoignant ainsi d’un véritable dialogue entreprit avec l’auteur allemand. Il s’agit d’une véritable confrontation avec la pensée heideggérienne où l’A. souligne certains présupposés néfastes propres à la compréhension heideggérienne de la métaphysique[16].

Le septième chapitre « Gerhard Krüger et Heidegger. Pour une autre histoire de la métaphysique » bien que dans la continuité des précédents chapitres, possède une certaine autonomie. Il s’agit d’une introduction générale à la pensée de Gerhard Krüger, « l’un des élèves les plus doués de Heidegger »[17]. À partir de la pensée de Krüger et sa correspondance avec son maître Heidegger, l’A. aborde le projet de Krüger comme reprise critique de la pensée de Heidegger à propos de la thématique religieuse, qui est omniprésente dans l’ouvrage de J. Grondin. La pensée de Krüger peut certainement être comprise comme étant dans la continuité de la brèche ouverte par le questionnement religieux de son maître. Ce chapitre est dans la continuité des autres chapitres de la partie deux, en ce qu’il offre une lecture critique de Heidegger dans la mesure où l’A. voit en Krüger un allié de son projet, puisqu’il « rappelle ainsi la métaphysique à certaines de ses possibilités immortelles »[18].

Les chapitres 8, 9 et 10 sont probablement ceux qui intéresseront le plus l’« opinion publique », pouvons-nous dire, puisqu’ils abordent de front la question de l’engagement politique de Heidegger. Ils forment ensemble la troisième partie de l’ouvrage intitulée « La tragédie politique ». En abordant la question de l’engagement politique de Heidegger à partir du contexte historique de son époque, l’auteur esquisse les causes philosophiques, historiques et biographiques qui expliquent l’affiliation de Heidegger au partie nazi dans les années 30 et au-delà.

Le huitième chapitre « L’ontologie est-elle politique ? La question de la vérité dans la lecture de Heidegger par Bourdieu » expose les critiques sociologiques de Bourdieu envers toute ontologie ignorant ses présupposés politiques. Dans L’ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger, Bourdieu vise à dégager « le caractère secrètement ‘politique’ de la pensée de Heidegger, mais aussi de la philosophie en général »[19]. Contre la lecture proposée par Bourdieu de l’ontologie, l’A. défend plutôt l’idée d’un « arrachement ontologique » face aux « considérations partisanes » politiques[20]. Le chapitre peut être compris selon deux autres visées : celle de remettre en contexte le questionnement ontologique de Heidegger (dans la continuité du reste de l’ouvrage), ainsi que de produire une critique de la lecture de Bourdieu de l’ontologie heideggérienne[21]. Si l’ontologie a souvent besoin de se justifier face aux questionnements sociologiques, l’un des mérites de ce chapitre est de questionner la sociologie à partir de ses présupposés ontologiques. En ce sens, reprocher à Heidegger que sa limitation aux questions ontologiques l’empêche de questionner « l’essentiel, c’est-à-dire l’impensé social »[22] c’est affirmer que « l’impensé social » est une pensée plus essentielle que la question de l’être. Cela revient à dire qu’il y a « une dimension essentielle de la réalité » qui est négligée et qui doit ainsi être pensée. Or, nous dit l’A., cette prétention de Bourdieu « n’est plus sociologique, mais purement ontologique »[23]. S’il est nécessaire de débattre avec Heidegger, ce doit être à propos de la vérité ou non de ses thèses ontologiques, ce que l’A. entend entreprendre dans le reste de l’ouvrage.

Le neuvième chapitre : « Peut-on défendre Heidegger de l’accusation d’antisémitisme ? » s’engage dans un débat pour le moins controversé et dont toute défense de Heidegger apparaît d’emblée suspecte. L’A. se contente de mettre en contexte la pensée de Heidegger, et plus particulièrement celle que l’on retrouve dans ses cahiers noirs, dont la publication récente a ouvert encore une fois la question de son engagement politique. L’A. vient nuancer l’accusation d’antisémitisme de Heidegger en rappelant que ce sujet ne constitue que tout au plus trois pages sur les 1800 des cahiers noirs[24]. Sans amoindrir la gravité des affirmations malheureuses (c’est le moins qu’on puisse dire) de Heidegger, J. Grondin s’efforce de comprendre pour quelles raisons Heidegger a pu se reconnaître dans la propagande nazie de l’époque.

Le dixième et dernier chapitre « Comprendre l’engagement politique de Heidegger à partir de son horizon d’attente » est dans la continuité du précédent chapitre. Ce chapitre se démarque du neuvième en ce qu’il replace davantage l’engagement politique de Heidegger dans le contexte tumultueux de l’Allemagne du 20e siècle. L’A. esquisse les différents états d’âme de l’individu Martin Heidegger : ses rapprochements avec le nazisme et son soutien, sa distanciation, son antisémitisme, ses désillusions, ainsi que sa proximité indéfectible avec le « mouvement » national-socialiste par-delà ses réalisations effectives. C’est ici que les hypothèses de lecture que l’A. avait énoncés dans l’introduction trouvent leur aboutissement. Il faut comprendre l’engagement politique de l’homme Heidegger à partir de sa question essentielle et son espoir, pour le moins illusoire sinon aveugle, d’une autre pensée de l’être rendue possible à travers ce « réveil » du peuple allemand : « De ce point de vue, je pense qu’il est permis de dire que son soutien au mouvement national-socialiste fut toujours philosophique et il serait difficile de s’attendre à moins de la part d’un philosophe »[25]. Ce qui est certain pour l’A., c’est que Heidegger a identifié à tort son espoir d’une autre conception de l’être avec le national-socialisme, malgré les indices flagrants de leur incompatibilité effective. Cette transposition dans l’horizon d’attente du penseur n’est produite ni pour condamner ni pour démentir les accusations faites à son égard, mais est plutôt faite dans l’optique d’un « exercice de compréhension » qui doit comporter un élément de « charité et de pardon »[26]. Voilà peut-être la véritable finalité de l’ouvrage, qui a le mérite d’offrir un effort de compréhension sans jamais tomber dans l’apologie complaisante.

Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être s’adresse ainsi à un public diversifié. En raison de son style clair, de son exposé pédagogique et de son explication patiente, l’ouvrage, surtout dans ses premiers chapitres, est assurément une bonne introduction à la pensée de Martin Heidegger. Pour sa part, la seconde partie offre une lecture très soutenue et critique de Heidegger qui nous renseignera assurément sur la pensée heideggérienne de l’être, mais aussi et peut-être surtout, sur les limites de cette pensée. Cette partie est aussi un grand apport aux possibilités contemporaines de l’herméneutique, de la métaphysique et de leur co-articulation possible. Finalement, la troisième partie, étant plutôt une transposition (Schleiermacher) dans l’horizon d’attente de Heidegger éclaire certainement le contexte difficile de la rédaction des cahiers noirs et des déclarations condamnables que l’on retrouve en eux. Il s’agit d’un apport important pour le débat contemporain avec la pensée heideggérienne. Dans son entier, l’ouvrage n’a d’autre visée que celle de montrer que la pensée de Heidegger et l’engagement politique de l’homme ne répond toujours qu’à sa propre interrogation métaphysique. En ramenant le débat en terrain métaphysique, l’auteur propose une véritable confrontation avec Heidegger, s’ouvrant ainsi sur plusieurs possibilités à la fois passées et futures.


[1] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, Paris, Hermann Éditions « Le Bel Aujourd’hui, 2019, p. 5.

[2] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 5.

[3] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 246.

[4] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 8.

[5] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 9.

[6] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 9.

[7] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 5.

[8] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 13.

[9] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 15.

[10] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 45.

[11] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 58-59.

[12] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 48.

[13] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 59.

[14] Grondin, J., La beauté de la métaphysique, Paris, Éditions du Cerfs, 2019, p. 44.

[15] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 164.

[16] Notamment : (I) le préjugé de Heidegger négatif contre toute traduction du grec, (2) le jugement de Heidegger basé sur des sources textuels limitées, (3) la tension entre l’original et la création, (4) la négligence de Heidegger envers sa propre appartenance à certains principes du platonisme, du néoplatonisme et de l’augustinisme.

[17] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 207.

[18] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 210.

[19] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 216.

[20] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 217.

[21] L’A. développe trois critiques de la lecture de Bourdieu. Premièrement, Bourdieu, selon l’A., se rapporte souvent à Heidegger à partir de textes « de seconde main » et non aux œuvres de Heidegger. À cela s’ajoute des « erreurs flagrantes d’interprétation » que l’A. retrouve la lecture du sociologue. Deuxièmement, Bourdieu se réfère beaucoup plus à des témoignages et des anecdotes plus ou moins pertinentes qu’aux textes eux-mêmes, ne se référent jamais à la Gesamtausgabe disponible à l’époque d’écriture de son ouvrage. Finalement, Bourdieu interprète la pensée entière de Heidegger à l’aune de Kant et des néokantiens, ignorant ainsi la diversité des interlocuteurs de Heidegger.

[22] Bourdieu, P., L’ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger, Paris, Minuit, 1988, p. 199, cité par l’A.

[23] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 228.

[24] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 240.

[25] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 261.

[26] Grondin, J., Comprendre Heidegger. L’espoir d’une autre conception de l’être, p. 267.

Jean-Luc Marion, Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer (Eds.): The Enigma of Divine Revelation

The Enigma of Divine Revelation: Between Phenomenology and Comparative Theology Book Cover The Enigma of Divine Revelation: Between Phenomenology and Comparative Theology
Contributions to Hermeneutics, Volume 7
Jean-Luc Marion, Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer (Eds.)
Springer
2020
Hardback 88,39 €
IX, 301

Reviewed by: Matías Ignacio Pizzi (University of Buenos Aires)

Currently one of the most important problems from phenomenology of giveness consists of the question of Revelation. However, this concept is not something new in  Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology. One can find several formulations throughout his work. On the one hand, his first systematic step in Étant donné (1997). In this book, Marion shows that Revelation should be interpreted as the last expression of phenomenality. This can only happen if phenomenology dares to free itself from the predominance of the principle of sufficient reason, giving way to “excessive phenomena” that are linked to religious phenomena. In other words, religious phenomena can appear as a valid field of phenomenological analysis. On the other hand, the Gifford Lectures, whose results can be found in Giveness and Revelation (2016). In these conferences, Marion goes one step further, and this because he does not distinguish sharply between philosophy and theology when speaking of Revelation. Thus, phenomenology must be the source that allows us to clarify the concept of Revelation, both in philosophy and in theology.

This volume, co-edited by Jean-Luc Marion and Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer, aims to investigate and explore various phenomenological aspects of the concept of Revelation, in order to offer new contributions to the phenomenology of giveness. In this respect, this book tries to show, honoring Marion’s intuition, how the concept of Revelation permeates the most current debates in phenomenology and theology.

In Chapter 1, “Introduction: intersections of Revelation and Hermeneutics”, Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer introduces the problem of this volume: the interaction and mutual contribution between revelation and hermeneutics (3). Can hermeneutics say something about the possibility or impossibility for divine self-disclosure? In this case, Jacobs-Vandegeer reminds us of Marion´s conception of hermeneutics as a “delay of interpretation”. And this is so because Revelation as such is an essentially excessive phenomenon. As Jacobs-Vandegeer indicates with great acuity, a possible way of understanding this excess can be found in “the idea that the language of revelation does something more excessive and complex than simply impart information about God and the world” (5). In this case, hermeneutics must deal, though without giving up, with an original excess. However, a possible positive consequence of this is that hermeneutics can expand its own limits of interpretation.

In Chapter 2, “The Hermeneutics of Givenness”, Jean-Luc Marion deepens the relationship “hermeneutics” and his phenomenology of givenness. Various scholars have noted some kind of incompatibility between hermeneutics and saturated phenomenon. The question could be asked: how could an interpretation of an excessive phenomenon be “given”? Is that possible? In this text, Marion tries to offer a positive answer. For this, Marion takes up the problem of reduction. As Marion says, the radicalization of the reduction “makes evident, be it only by contraposition, the possibility, even the necessity, of an exception, of an irreducible” (17-18). Paradoxically, the possibility of a hermeneutics of the given lies in the fact that the given cannot be translated into any objectifiable phenomenon. And this is so because “givenness does not produce like an efficient cause, nor is it confined to sensible intuition, because it is not conflated even with intuition in general” (21). Through a critical reading of Husserl and Heidegger, Marion aims to show the radical nature of givenness against sensible intuition. In this sense, the givenness offers a self-referentiality based on its impossibility of being reduced to an object or entity. From this preliminary conclusion, Marion asks the following: “Could it not be that hermeneutics, far from disappearing with givenness (or making it disappear in order to begin speaking),  only in answering the word that fulfills it?” (24). Through a discussion with John Sellars about the famous «myth of the given», Marion reaffirms that the given can only be thought in opposition to the paradigm of objectivity. As the object appears, the given disappears. Marion finds the origin of this myth in John Locke´s philosophy. Both Sellars and Locke present the same problem: the impossibility of thinking about what is given. And this for the simple reason that they claim that what is given immediately must be the product of an epistemological constitution. However, as Marion points out, the given cannot be thought of as something constituted because it is not an object. The “myth of the given” falls when we establish this distinction (28). In other words, the phenomenology of givenness could be presented as a remedy against this myth. Thus, the given cannot be manifested immediately. For this reason, Marion defines the givenness as an aenigma because the “indetermination of the given perhaps offers its only correct determination” (31).

In this phenomenological horizon, hermeneutics is defined as a discipline that does not operate on objects (33). Phenomenology of givenness and hermeneutics coincide in this rejection of objectivity. Thus, hermeneutics can interpret excessive phenomena because, strictly speaking, it has always done so. Hermeneutics in its original sense cannot start from an ego that interprets the world, because “the ego must remain passive in order to receive the sense that suits exactly that which requests interpretation” (33). Two final conclusions follow from this. First, hermeneutics depends on the phenomenological structure of “call and response” (36). Second, “hermeneutics manages the gap between what shows itself and what gives itself” (40). In other words, hermeneutics must manage the passage from objectivity to saturated phenomena and the reverse. Following this, we suggest that hermeneutics, as a passage from objectivity to saturation, can interpret the second degree of saturated phenomena: Christ as Revelation. How that can happen, stays as an open question or aenigma.

In Chapter 3, “Whose Word Is It Anyway? Interpreting Revelation”, Shane Mackinlay focuses on a series of criticisms concerning the concept of counter-experience in Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, as it appears in “The Possible and Revelation” (2008). In the same way as Marion, John focuses on a Christological paradox: how can Jesus reveals the Father’s will? This problem involves one of the most important consequences of Christianity: the divine and human nature of Christ. Revelation could be interpreted as the place where this paradox occurs. Following Kearney’s objection, Mackinley points out that the concept of counter-experience is not a sufficient criterion to distinguish between divine revelation against the possibilities of deceit and harm (57). In other words, the counter-experience of the icon in Marion’s phenomenology does not offer a clear difference between God’s voice and some kind of monstrosity. In the same way as Marion, Mackenly finds in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophy a source for rethinking the scopes of hermeneutics in relation to the possibility or impossibility of interpreting revelation (60). From Gadamer’s proposal he extracts two ideas. On the one hand, the infinity of any interpretive process. This means that no interpretation of the revelation can exhaust it. On the other hand, if all interpretation is infinite, then the community must always be open to dialogue, since the interpretation of the phenomenon imposes itself as something always reviewable. Each judgement concerning revelation is provisional.

In Chapter 4, “Revelation as a Problem for Our Age”, Robin Horner offers some elements for thinking the language of revelation in the context of Western secularity. Expressed differently: Is it possible to find a language of revelation in a world where all language is merely a language of objects? This current impossibility of thinking the language of revelation has, according to Horner, multiple reasons. First, the problem of anachronism. The language of revelation becomes an irrelevant and even bizarre question. The modern secularisation offers the exaltation of individual autonomy, rationalist thinking. As Horney argues, this movement implies a detraditionalization of memory and any collective activity (75). In this process, religion and believing become something that has no place. Second, the reflections of various philosophical schools that, according to Horner, present disqualifying criticisms of religious belief. Consequently, “the philosopher, too, brings particular commitments to the search for wisdom, which might include a presumption of atheism” (77). Third, theology itself. And this because the theological language of revelation focuses too narrowly on the propositional, letting away the lived experience. Based on these objections, Horner indicates that the concept of experience must be reformulated so that religious belief is not set aside from contemporary problems. Horner uses the term experience “to refer to what happens at that point of opening in the world which is a given instance of life” (69). Given this, we ask ourselves, following Horner, whether the language of revelation may have any reference to the Husserlian Lebenswelt. Finally, Horner suggests, following Lacoste and Marion, that “that philosophy and theology are interested in common problems” (94). Lacoste’s “paradoxical phenomenon” tries to show the mutual cooperation between affection and intellect, theology and philosophy, faith and reason, when it comes to understanding revelation (96). Marion’s epistemological approach to revelation aims to point out that the logic of objects can be clarified out of faith and a radical commitment to an epistemology of revelation. In this sense, Horner concludes that Marion and Lacoste offer tools to find a language of revelation in the lived world of experience. In Horner’s words, “if it is the case that revelation no longer makes sense in contemporary life, perhaps it is because it has been locked for too long in the language of beliefs and made unavailable to experience” (100).

In Chapter 5, “Revelation and Kingdom”, Kevin Hart suggests that the language and experience of revelation depend on the possibility of a place for its manifestation. For this reason, he will concentrate his analysis on the concept of kingdom. Hart argues that “theological epistemology has become phenomenology” (107). Thus, the idea of kingdom must be elucidated from the phenomenological field. The kingdom can appear if we focus on Christ’s modes of phenomenality. Juan clearly states that Jesus “appears, if he does, only within a horizon” (113). Jesus’ parables offer a conversion of intentionality and give “eidetic insight into how to live in obedience to  God” (118). For this, Hart appeals to Marion’s concept of saturated phenomenon and the need to broaden the manifestation horizon of phenomena. In the same horizon as Marion, as well as in that of Christian philosophy in general, Christ plays a mediating role. Jesus can only appear in the horizon of the “Kingdom of God”. We think Hart’s proposal is interesting because, following Marion, he focuses on the place of manifestation of Christ as a saturated phenomenon. His question is spatial, and he finds a possible answer in the Christian concept of the kingdom.

In Chapter 6, “ʻA Whole Habit of Mindʼ: Revelation and Understanding in the Christology of St. Cyril of Alexandria”, William Hackett focuses on the problem of the experiential and participatory dynamics concerning the speech about God. In a very suggestive way, Hackett finds in Cyril of Alexandria’s “sacrifice Christology” a testimony to the dynamic nature of the Verbum. Through a language of patristics, Hackett shows that kenosis and henosis could provide the dynamics of revelation and the centrality of Eucharistic truth of Incarnation. “Mystic communion” provides a model of community (Cyril’s refutation of Nestorius). As Hackett remember, Cyril shows the distance between “reason” and “image” (128). In other words, “reason may explicate the image, but it can never surpass its power to carry the mind to the truth of revelation” (126). Cyril’s distinction between abstract and concrete intellective visions offers a way of understanding the nature of revelation, always previous and source of all theoretical language. The power of images consists in directing our gaze towards that instance prior to reason. We suggest that Hackett’s contribution, clear and erudite, can have an interesting deepening if it is connected with Falque’s interpretation of Nicholas de Cusa’s De visione dei, as it appears in his paper “L´omnivoyant. Fraternité et vision de Dieu chez Nicolas de Cues” (2014). And this because, according to Falque, in the same way as Hackett´s lecture of Cyril´s theology, Nichola´s conception of visio dei offers a reformulation of vision and the possibility of a community vision and a common experience.

In Chapter 7, “Revelation and the Hermeneutics of Love”, Werner G. Jeanrond offers a critical analysis of the different theological hermeneutics of revelation. On the one hand, Yale and its “hermeneutics of revelation”. This school studies revelation “with regard to inner-Christian dynamics and inner-Christian pluralism” (143). On the other hand, Chicago and its “hermeneutics of signification”. This school formulates “an open-ended hermeneutics of signification capable of encouraging a public, global and critical discourse on God” (143). In this horizon, Jeanrod analyzes Paul Ricoeur’s conception of language and hermeneutics, since the French philosopher points out a polysemy originating from the concept of revelation. This, in turn, implies the impossibility of establishing a corpus of truths available to an institution (141). Ricoeur’s concept of revelation “provides a way out of the reduction of an uncritical Enlightenment belief in the final victory of reason over revelation” (141). In accordance with the proposal of the Chicago school and going one step further, Jeanrond argues for a hermeneutics of love. This implies a “praxis of love” that can embrace divine Otherness. Given this, we suggest that Jeanrond’s proposal presents an intimate connection with the concept of love in Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology, since “love” saves revelation from the predominance of objectivity, and therefore, opens a dimension of excess that cannot be monopolized by any theological school. Thus, and as Jeanrond sharply points out, love reveals the constitutive plurality of revelation, and in turn, the need for a hermeneutics of love.

In Chapter 8, “Embodied Transactions”, Mara Brecht provides an analysis of revelation in the framework of a feminist hermeneutics (Michelle Voss Roberts). In the horizon of comparative theology, Brecht suggests that hermeneutics must open the access to the embodiment and his relation with revelation. Body plays a fundamental role because “revelation is received not by disembodied minds, but by actual people—who are fully embodied, situated in time and place, and shaped by economic, social, and racialized identities” (152). In this sense, all hermeneutics must account for embodiment in various dimensions: economic, social, political, gender. This allows us to reflect upon a situated subjectivity, leaving aside any abstract and a-historical approach. The embodiment is, following a notion of Jean-Luc Marion and Claude Romano, an “event”, not an abstract concept. According to Brecht, Shannon Sullivan’s feminist-pragmatist framework could help comparative theologians to understand the transformations of subjective identity and his relation between the embodiment. This path makes visible the logic of power that acts in the configuration of subjectivity. Brecht argues that we must analyze how this logic of power acts in the embodied habits of Christians, thus configuring his interpretations of the notions of race and gender. This proposal implies breaking with the monological hermeneutics of the scriptures, always “focused on only one religion” (159). On the contrary, Brecht proposes, following feminist theologians as Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Michelle Voss Roberts and Albertina Nugteren, “a dialogical hermeneutical space” to indicate a discipline focused on multiple religious traditions. In accordance with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Brecht claims that “that subjectivity needs to be constructed as a profoundly communal phenomenon” (162). For all this, Brecht concludes that religious identity must be understood “as a habit of bodying, and one which exists at the confluence of other habits of bodying, including race and gender” (165).

In Chapter 9, “Into the Blue: Swimming as a Metaphor for Revelation”, Michele Saracino offers an extremely interesting phenomenological reading of swimming. This interpretation is based on an “analogy between water/creator and swimmer/creature” (177). In connection with Mara Brecht, Saracino analyzes bodily habits in relation to the embodiment. However, Saracino assumes that swimming can be seen as a “metaphor for revelation” or as an experience of the divine that includes our relationship with other. In this sense, she claims that “like the swimmer who works on getting a feel for the water in order to swim more efficiently, the believer must learn how to get a feel for God in order to flourish” (179). Swimming can open us to different experiences analyzed in literature and theology: vulnerability (Vaniers), resignation (Hans-Urs von Balthasar). These emotions, far from being negative, open us to otherness and a receptive capacity, in the same way that when swimming we stay “in the middle of things”. This is, in Saracino’s opinion, due to the unique character of water as a means of transformation and rebirth, as we can see in the sacrament of baptism.

In Chapter 10, “Revelation as Sharing in God’s Self-Understanding as Absolute Love”, Frederick Lawrence aims to show the philosophical and theological tension between God’s self-disclosure and God’s unknowability. In this argumentative movement we can find the tension between affirmative and negative theology and the discussion concerning the mystical theology. In this context, Lawrence proposes to analyze the analogy of light to think about the relationship between “Love” and “Revelation” based on the figure of Christ. For this, Lawrence examines the different approaches on this subject in Vatican I´s Dei filius and Vatican II´s Dei verbum. While the first emphasizes the concept of «natural reason» (199), the second focuses on the problem of  “God’s revelation of himself as true love in the communication of the Crucified One as Risen’s saving truth and his call to discipleship and witness” (199). In this sense, Lawrence returns to St. Thomas’s concept of caritas and its corresponding “analogy of light”, recognizing his debt to the mystical theology of Dionysius Areopagite (201). Lawrence recalls – and here we can trace a certain relationship with the experience of swimming in Saracino – that for St. Thomas the intelligible lumen is not a thing, but a means that allows the realization of all judgment or knowledge (209). In a most interesting way, Lawrence points out that St. Thomas’s conception of light is heir to the proposal of St. Augustine and the theory of human being as imago Dei. Going fairly into the subject, Lawrence analyzes Lonergan’s conception of intentionality. And this because “Lonergan’s mature phenomenology of feelings as apprehending a hierarchy of values (…) transcended the three questions about what we are doing when we think we are knowing (cognitional theory), why doing that is knowing (epistemology), and what do we know when we do it (critically grounded metaphysics)” (218). According to Lawrence, this proposal opens the possibility of thinking the “gift of love” as the central element of all revelation. Before any cognitive and individual instance, Lawrence shows the primacy of the interpersonal reality of love in the dynamics of faith and belief. Following this question, Lawrence argues that phenomenology focuses on the  “pre-propositional, preverbal, pre-judgmental, pre-conceptual” (223). Love as faith must be defined in this pre-conceptual horizon. Given this, we believe that Lawrence’s proposal can find many points in common with Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenological conception of love, as it appears in Le phénomène érotique. In turn, Lawrence’s proposal may find an interesting confrontation with Jorge Roggero’s book Hermeneutics of Love (2019).

In Chapter 11 “Ta’wīl in the Qur’an and the Islamic Exegetical Tradition: the Past and the Future of the Qur’an”, Maria Massi Dakak analyzes the problem of revelation through a reading of the exegetical tradition of the Qurʼan, emphasizing the proposal of Ta’wīl. Against all authoritarian interpretation, Dakak examines “what the Qur’an itself has to say about its own interpretation” (241). The Qurʼan speaks according to its own metaphors and symbols. In this sense, Dakake proposes to think about the Qur’an from Ta’wīl, in order to highlight its multivalent character. Literal and historical meanings can reach a deeper relationship from the perspective proposed by Dakake. This hermeneutical proposal aims to delve into the meaning that emanates from the same Text. In this sense, Dakake offers a phenomenological approach, as “the search for meaning through ta’wil is, from a human perspective, indefinite, in that it does not have a terminal point that can be reached through human contemplative or intellectual effort” (252). However, according to Dakake the term Ta’wīl should not be read only from an esoteric or mystical perspective, but it should also see the possibility of a new and spiritually generative reading that contains the historical context and its excess, as well as an attentive reading of what the text is intended to express itself (259).

In Chapter 12 “The logic of Revelation”, Peter Ochs analyzes reception of Tanakh in the rabbinic Judaism, in order to offer a new logic of Scriptural reasoning. In this respect, Ochs introduces a “semiotic method (the “Logic of Revelation”, LR) for diagramming patterns of non-disjunctive reasoning in practices of tradition-based, scriptural theology” (261). The term “logic” refers to Charles Peirce’s lógica utens, namely “the not-immediately-evident patterns of reasoning that authorize and discipline any practice of inquiry (262). From this, Ochs distinguishes between two modes of revelation that correspond to a distinction made by Charles Peirce. On the one hand, “indexical revelation”. This means that God speaks independently of anything humans can elaborate or control through his reasoning. On the other hand, “iconic revelation”. This implies that the iconic can be formulated in terms of the logic structure “to make a likeness” (267). In relation to the latter, we find a very interesting similarity between this conception of Ochs and Marion’s interpretation of “praise” in Dionysius the Areopagite as en tant que, as it can be found in his work L’idole et la distance (1977). Continuing with this comparison, Ochs addresses a criticism of idolatry, in the same way that Marion formulates a series of invective to the idolatrous conception of the divine in the aforementioned work and in Dieu sans l´être (1982). Both authors caution against reducing the meaning of revelation and God to a humanly construction. In the case of Marion, the iconic conception of the divine offers a counter-intentionality, showing  that humans can only “receive” the “give” which preceeds them. As for Ochs, deepening the communal question of revelation, he indicates that for the “Rabbinic Logic of Revelation” (RLR) “the spoken-word is offered for and to the language community to whom God speaks” (268). If we accept that the predications of revelations are “offered to someone somewhere”, then revelation must appear in a community. Revelations appears as a relation between “God who speaks and the community that hears”. However, the predications of RLR are neither “subjectively” nor “objectively given”. Like Marion, Ochs would seem to conceive the given as a liberated instance of the paradigm of objectivity, adding to the need for a community for revelation. The “danger of idolatry” is overcome by a community committed to exegesis, debate, conservation and dialogue. In turn, this community discussion preserves the apophatic dimension of revelation. According to Ochs, one of the fundamental stimuli for discussion about revelation in Rabbinic Judaism must be found in the catastrophe of the “Burnt Temple” and Jerusalem razed and salted. Those dramatic moments stimulate the community discussion and the ability to meditate on revelation. Thus, the community receive “these spoken words then there is a narrative about how we may have seen God’s face even if the narrative is retained now as a memory” (281).

In Chapter 13, “Revelatory Hermeneutics: How to Read a Gospel, in Light of Mīmāṃsā, India’s Greatest Interpretive Tradition”, Francis Clooney offers a truly comparative theological approach through a study of ancient Indian hermeneutics known as “Mimamsa”. In Clooney´s words, “Mimamsa” appears as “a system one can imagine more refreshingly different, demanding but quite accessible to reason” and contribute to “not limit our understanding of hermeneutics and revelation to the hermeneutical traditions of the Christian West” (287). In this proposal, revelation is understood as something perceptible, heard and seen “in the text”. Vedic hermeneutics and Vedic revelation “does not require a special language that speaks of things beyond ordinary experience” (291). This conception leads Clooney to analyze Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Logical Investigations (as an aggregate, the recurrence to Wittgenstein’s philosophy also appears in Marion’s L’idole et la distance to think of Dionysius’s notion of praise as a non-predicative mode of language). Clooney rescues the practicality of Wittgenstein’s logic, as it can be seen in the notion of “language games”. Among Clooney’s most interesting conclusions, we can speak, on the one hand, that “revelation occurs in the interaction of reader and text” (297). Historical context is secondary because, on the other hand, “one does not need to give undue importance to authorial intentions” (297). Extra-textual realities are a derived instance. In other words, revelation occurs in the text. Revelation is “accesible only in submission to the grammar of the text before us” (300).

To conclude, we can ask the following question: what do phenomenology and theology gain by deepening the concept of Revelation? In this regard, Jean-Luc Marion’s proposal is very clear: the concept of Revelation cannot be reduced to a theological concept. The problem of revelation offers a common place to philosophy and theology that can be explored from phenomenological approach. Furthermore, as we have seen, revelation is a problem that concerns not only Christian theology, but also Muslim, Jewish theology as well as Eastern religions. Appealing to a concept of Alain de Libera, perhaps we should begin to think about the problem of revelation from a translatio studiorum.[1] It should be said that this volume offers not just contributions concerning the question of Revelation, but also a new way of understanding the relation between Phenomenology and Theology.


[1] De Libera, Alain. 2004. La philosophie médiévale. Paris: PUF, p. 57.