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Finitude, Phenomenology, and Theology in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2017

Tarek R. Dika
Tarek R. Dika*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Extract

Any purely phenomenological description of the human being as in some sense “finite” must avail itself of a concept of finitude that does not rely, implicitly or explicitly, on the concept of God. Theologically motivated descriptions, however, face no such dilemma; they can and, indeed, must avail themselves of some concept of the human creature as a finite being created in God's image (Gen 1:27 KJV). For there to be a meaningful difference between these two descriptions, the concept of finitude common to both must have a different sense in each. These are some of the methodological requirements Heidegger lays down in Sein und Zeit §10: “The Delimitation [Abgrenzung] of Phenomenology from Anthropology, Psychology, and Biology.” Heidegger's strategy for distinguishing the analytic of Dasein, in which the concept of finitude (Endlichkeit) plays a foundational role, from what he refers to as “the anthropology of Christianity” consists in distinguishing between two concepts of finitude: (1) finitude as lack or imperfection, defined as ens finitum relative to God as ens infinitum, and (2) an original concept of finitude, which, not being defined relative to God, is purely phenomenological and constitutes the horizon of any and all understanding of Being.

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Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 110 , Issue 4 , October 2017 , pp. 475 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2017 

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Footnotes

*

This article was written with the generous support of the Michigan Society of Fellows, and is based on a paper delivered at an international conference on phenomenology and theology, “Décrire et réduire: en quête des phénomènes,” at the Institut Catholique de Paris on June 8–10, 2015. I would like to thank Emmanuel Falque, Kevin Hart, and the conference participants for their comments. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for the Harvard Theological Review for their comments.

References

1 Heidegger, Martin, Gesamtausgabe (ed. von Wilhem-Hermann, Friedrich; 102 vols.; Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975–) 2:§10, 61 Google Scholar; henceforth abbreviated as GA. Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time (trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson; New York: Harper and Row, 1962): 71 (translation modified); henceforth abbreviated as BT Google Scholar.

2 Heidegger, GA 2:§10, 65; BT, 74.

3 See, e.g., Braver, Lee, Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dastur, Françoise, La mort. Essai sur la finitude (Épiméthée; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2007 Google Scholar).

4 The accusation of a “theological turn” in French phenomenology was first made by Dominique Janicaud, who famously leveled the accusation against Emmanuel Lévinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Michel Henry in a constat or report on contemporary phenomenology, written for the Institut international de philosophie in 1990. The key question around which the controversy has since revolved is whether or not phenomenology becomes theology by describing phenomena such as revelation, even when its descriptions suspend questions regarding, e.g., whether or not the revelations recorded in the Bible (or the Qur'an) actually, historically took place. See Janicaud, Dominique, Phenomenology Wide Open: After the French Debate (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy 42; New York: Fordham University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Janicaud, Dominique et. al., Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy 15; New York: Fordham University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Janicaud, Dominique, Le Tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française (Tiré à Part; Combas: l’Éclat, 1991)Google Scholar. The implications of my argument for the debate about the “theological turn” are discussed in Sections IV–V, below. See also Dika, Tarek R. and Hackett, William C., Quiet Powers of the Possible: Interviews in Contemporary French Phenomenology (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy; New York: Fordham University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

5 See Nyssenus, S. Gregorius, Patrologiae Grecae (ed. Migne, Jean-Paul; 121 vols.; Rome: 1863), 45/2Google Scholar; Nicene and Post–Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: Second Series (trans. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace; 14 vols.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965) vol. 5. On the origin of the concept of finitude in Gregory of Nyssa, see Gravil, André, Philosophie et finitude (La Nuit surveillée; Paris: Les éditions du Cerf: 2007)Google Scholar.

6 See Heidegger, , GA 3; Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (trans. Richard Taft; 5th ed.; Studies in Continental Thought; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

7 On Heidegger's unacknowledged debt to the Hebraic heritage, see Zarader, Marlène, La dette impensée: Heidegger et l'héritage hébraïque (Ordre philosophique; Paris: Seuil, 1990)Google Scholar; The Unthought Debt: Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage (trans. Bettina Bergo; Cultural Memory in the Present; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006).

8 Heidegger, GA 2:§10, 65; BT, 74 (italics in original).

9 I discuss Heidegger's dissatisfaction with Christian anthropology in more detail in Section II, below.

10 Caputo, John, “Atheism, A/theology, and the Postmodern Condition,” Cambridge Companion to Atheism (ed. Martin, Michael; Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 267–82, at 272Google Scholar.

11 Husserl, Edmund, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (trans. Fred Kersten; Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983) 131 (italics in original)Google Scholar; idem, Husserliana: Gesammelte Werke (ed. Ullrich Melle; 40 vols.; Louvain: Springer, 1956–) 3:122.

12 Heidegger, GA 24:§5, 29; The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (trans. Albert Hofstadter; Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988) 21Google Scholar.

13 Heidegger, GA 24:§5, 25–26; The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 19.

14 Heidegger, , GA 9:45–78; The Piety of Thinking (ed. Hart, James G. and Maraldo, John C.; Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976) 39–62 Google Scholar.

15 For Husserl, the transcendental consciousness to which the reduction leads is neither human nor, therefore, finite. It is not human because human persons, as intraworldly psycho-physical entities, are, according to Husserl, constituted by a transcendental consciousness that transcends the world it constitutes. Such a consciousness is not finite because, unlike Kant, for Husserl, its mode of intuition is not defined relative to an intellectus orginarius. On Husserl's critique of Kantian finitism, see Kern, Iso, Husserl und Kant: Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neukantianismus (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Pradelle, Dominique, Par-delà la révolution copernicienne: sujet transcendantal et facultés chez Kant et Husserl (Épiméthée; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Descartes, René, Oeuvres de Descartes (ed. Adam, Charles and Tannery, Paul; 11 vols.; Paris: Vrin, 1996) 8A:24Google Scholar; The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (ed. John Cottingham, et al.; 3 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–1991) 1:210 (italics in original).

17 Heidegger, GA 2:§20, 123; BT, 125.

18 Heidegger, GA 24:211; The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 148.

19 On the hierarchy of ontic, ontico-ontological, and ontological difference in Heidegger, see Marion, Jean-Luc, Réduction et donation: recherches sur Husserl, Heidegger, et la phénoménologie (Épiméthée; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989 Google Scholar); Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (trans. Thomas A. Carlson; Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy; Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1989). An example of ontic difference is the difference between any two beings, e.g., a chair and a person. An example of ontico-ontological difference is the difference between, e.g., a tool and its mode of being, which is not itself the tool, but its ontological sense for Dasein as equipment. The ontological difference is the fully general difference between Being and beings.

20 Heidegger, GA 24: 210; The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 148.

21 See Aristotle, , The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (ed. Barnes, Jonathan; Bollingen Series 71; 2 vols.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) 1:68Google Scholar.

22 See Heidegger, GA 2:§5, 24; BT, 39.

23 Heidegger, GA 2:§6, 35; BT, 48.

24 Heidegger's phenomenological interpretation of Christian anthropology (and of the Christian relation to time in 1–2 Thessalonians) is clearly and explicitly on display in his early lectures on religion at the University of Freiburg in 1920–1921. Heidegger presents these lectures as exercises in the phenomenology of religion, not ontology, and so they are not subject to the methodological requirements he lays down seven years later in Sein und Zeit §10. But these lectures do offer some historical support for the thesis that Heidegger's later ontology of Dasein was informed by his early preoccupations with the phenomenology of religion and Christian anthropology. For this historical fact to bear ontological fruit, however, it needs to be shown that Christian anthropology affects the phenomenological content of Dasein’s relation to itself as Heidegger describes it in Sein und Zeit. For a superb, nuanced treatment of the broader implications of Heidegger's early phenomenology of religion, see de Vries, Hent, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 158–244 Google Scholar.

25 Heidegger, GA 2:§5, 24; BT, 39 (italics in original).

26 For systematic interpretations of Heidegger's phenomenology of time in Sein und Zeit, see Greisch, Jean, Ontologie et temporalité: esquisse d'une interprétation intégrale de Sein und Zeit. (Épiméthée; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994)Google Scholar and Blattner, William D., Heidegger's Temporal Idealism (Modern European Philosophy; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Heidegger, GA 2:§68, 466; BT, 403.

28 Heidegger, GA 2:§15, 90; BT, 95.

29 Heidegger, GA 2:§18, 112; BT, 116 (italics in original).

30 Heidegger, GA 2:§18, 113; BT, 116–117.

31 Heidegger, GA 24:§19, 369; The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 262 (italics in original).

32 Heidegger, GA 24:§19, 374–375; The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, 265 (italics in original).

33 Heidegger, GA 2:§65, 431; BT, 373.

34 Heidegger, GA 2:§45, 312; BT, 277.

35 On the relation between finitude and natality in Heidegger, see Dastur, La mort, and O'Byrne, Anne, Natality and Finitude (Studies in Continental Thought; Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

36 Heidegger, GA 2:§58, 376; BT, 329.

37 Heidegger, GA 2:§58, 376; BT, 329.

38 Heidegger, GA 2:§56, 378; BT, 330 (italics added).

39 Heidegger, GA 2,§58, 377–378; BT, 330–31 (italics in original).

40 On the Davos Debate, see Gordon, Peter, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar. See also Dastur, La mort, 179–202. I would like to thank the Italian phenomenologist Stefano Bancalari for pressing me on this question.

41 Heidegger, GA 3:280; Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, 197.

42 Lévinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity (trans. Alphonso Lingis; Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969) 276 Google Scholar.

43 Heidegger, GA 2:332–333; BT, 294 (italics in original).

44 Is “God” the only figure of the absolute in relation to whom alone Dasein’s finitude may be phenomenologically disclosed? This figure must be absolute or infinite in power, for otherwise it will not contrast strongly enough with Dasein to place the latter's finitude into phenomenological relief. The only name the history of theology and the history of metaphysics have furnished for such a power is “God.” This also helps to explain why the mathematical concept of the infinite has no footing here, since it does not rely on the concept of power.

45 Lévinas, Totality and Infinity, 210.

46 Descartes, Oeuvres completes, 7:45–46; The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2:31.

47 Heidegger, GA 2,§58, 378; BT, 330.

48 Dastur, , La phénoménologie en questions (Problèmes et controverses; Paris: Vrin, 2004) 244 Google Scholar: “La philosophie doit donc se faire athée, c'est-à-dire au sens propre de ce mot, endurer l'absence du divin, et prendre pour unique point de départ la finitude de l'homme.”

49 See Janicaud, Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn,” 103.

50 See Marion, , Réduction et donation and Etant donné: Essai d'une phénoménologie de la donation (Épiméthée; Paris: Presses Unversitaires de France, 1997)Google Scholar.