Heidegger's Phenomenology of Religion

Realism and Cultural Criticism

Benjamin D. Crowe

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780253027801
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Fenomenología en filosofía

Throughout his long and controversial career, Martin Heidegger developed a substantial contribution to the phenomenology of religion. In Heidegger's Phenomenology of Religion, Benjamin D. Crowe examines the key concepts and developmental phases that characterized Heidegger's work. Crowe shows that Heidegger's account of the meaning and structure of religious life belongs to his larger project of exposing and criticizing the fundamental assumptions of late modern culture. He reveals Heidegger as a realist through careful readings of his views on religious attitudes and activities. Crowe challenges interpretations of Heidegger's early efforts in the phenomenology of religion and later writings on religion, including discussions of Greek religion and Hölderlin's poetry. This book is sure to spark discussion and debate as Heidegger's work in religion and the philosophy of religion becomes increasingly important to scholars and beyond.

ONE

Religion and Cultural Criticism

Heidegger’s ongoing investigations into the phenomenology of religion are framed by a much broader concern, one that in fact permeates his entire oeuvre: the criticism of modern culture. Indeed, this broad concern has proven to be one of the more consistently compelling aspects of his thought. Right at the very beginning of his career, students flocked to his lectures, seminars, and to more informal gatherings, where by all accounts they found his relentless unmasking of the platitudes of bourgeois culture electrifying. Some of these listeners, like Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and Herbert Marcuse, carried the general program of cultural criticism further in their own work. After World War II, a new generation of intellectuals encountered Heidegger’s critiques of mass culture and technology, which were appropriated by everyone from the existentialists to the early theorists of the environmental movement.¹

The distinctiveness of Heidegger’s criticism of modern culture lies less in the symptoms of cultural crisis that he enumerates than in the conceptual apparatus he uses in accounting for these symptoms. The general religious situation of late modernity, of which Heidegger is an unsparing critic, is for him a complex of such symptoms. Their source lies in the deep, pre-reflective framework of meaning that shapes the way things show up to the members of modern culture. On Heidegger’s account, every age has such a deep framework operating in the background, a framework that he often calls the “metaphysics” of the age. The changes that this deep framework undergoes in the course of Western history is what Heidegger calls the “history of being [Seinsgeschichte].” The modern age, viewed “being-historically,” i.e., with an eye to its own deep framework, is characterized by Heidegger as an age of “subjectivism.” As the deep framework of modern culture as a whole, “subjectivism” remains largely in the background of macro-level events and cultural trends. Yet, precisely because it is mostly tacit, it exercises a powerful influence on the way people think and act in the modern" age. On Heidegger’s account, for moderns meaning [Sinn] or significance [Bedeutsamkeit], the kind of intelligibility things have or the way in which they “matter” to us, is tacitly understood to be a product of human subjectivity. As Heidegger puts it in a 1937 essay, modern human beings tacitly take themselves to be the “referential center [Bezugsmitte]” of reality as a whole. The resulting pattern, which unifies the various symptoms of modern culture, is an absence of intrinsic meaning and value.² To use Max Weber’s timeworn terminology, the reality that shows up for modern human beings is fundamentally “disenchanted.”

The religious situation of the age, which Heidegger characterizes variously as the “flight of the gods,” the “loss of the gods [Entgötterung],” the “absence [Fehl] of God,” and the “death of God” is a clear instantiation of this general pattern of “disenchantment.” In the modern world, religion seems to have lost what Heidegger calls the power to “ordain history,” i.e., the power to anchor an entire culture. Instead, as with other systems of values (e.g., moral and aesthetic), religion is transformed into a matter of subjective conviction, into a “world-view.” Running parallel with this subjectivization of religion are various, resolutely anti-realist theories about the nature of religion. Anti-realist theories of religion, in the sense in which I use this designation in the present study, maintain that religious meaning, broadly construed, is derived from interests. An obvious proponent of such a theory, with whom Heidegger was deeply engaged for decades, is Nietzsche. On most readings of Nietzsche, he holds that God and the entirety of the “supersensible world” are mere fictions—products of sub-conscious drives that are momentarily useful in the struggle for power. A less dramatic theory, though one with which Heidegger was equally concerned, can be found in the work of the so-called Baden School of Neo-Kantianism. Philosophers like Windelband, Rickert, and Jonas Cohn hold that religious concepts have no empirical, and therefore no real metaphysical, content to them, but are instead “postulates” or “regulative ideas” necessitated by the structure of human reason. For Heidegger, such theories reflect not the actual “immanent sense” of religious discourse and religious practices, but instead the deep framework of modern culture.

The aim of this chapter is to examine this complex of ideas as the general framework within which Heidegger’s efforts in the phenomenology of religion find their real home. I begin by explicating Heidegger’s evolving conception of the way in which a deep framework of meaning undergirds the superstructure of any culture. I then turn to his account of the deep framework characteristic of modernity, which I call “subjectivism.” Along the way, I briefly discuss various symptoms or expressions of this deep framework that form recurring themes in Heidegger’s writings, with an eye particularly on religious symptoms. Next, I explore Heidegger’s account of the way in which dominant trends in intellectual discourse at a given time are expressions of this same deep framework. In particular, I examine what Heidegger takes to be the two dominant voices in contemporary philosophy: those of the Neo-Kantians, and of Nietzsche. I show how Heidegger views both as offering anti-realist theories of religion that are consonant with the paradigmatic subjectivism of the age. The ultimate goal of Heidegger’s work as a whole is to effect a deep conceptual revolution, a “new beginning” that can lead beyond the aporiae of late modernity. His phenomenology of religion forms an integral element in this overall project.

The Conceptual Framework for Heidegger’s
Cultural Criticism

Heidegger is certainly not unique among twentieth-century philosophers in his concern with the criticism of culture. Indeed, his work helped directly and indirectly to inspire some of the leading critical theorists of the century. Heidegger’s critical reflections on modern art, mass culture, politics, education, and technology often run parallel to the work of philosophers like Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse. Looking at the opposite end of the political spectrum, one can locate Oswald Spengler and Ernst Jünger, both of whom Heidegger read closely, giving a sympathetic hearing to the ideas of their “Conservative Revolution.”³ All of these thinkers, Heidegger included, were occupied with the broad cultural situation of late modernity, particularly with characteristic phenomena like technology, industrialized warfare, and social dislocation. Each of them deploys a distinctive conceptual scheme in order to diagnose and analyze the major cultural trends of the day. For example, the members of the “Frankfurt School” tended to deploy Marxist and neo-Hegelian concepts in their analyses. Indeed, in a piece that appeared in a Swiss newspaper around his eightieth birthday, Heidegger makes explicit reference to this Hegelian conceptual framework that guides the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School and tries to distinguish his approach from theirs (G16 212). Spengler, on the other hand, uses an idiosyncratic neo-Nietzschean scheme in his epochal Decline of the West, which Heidegger frequently discusses in the 1920s and 1930s.⁴

In Heidegger’s case, this abiding interest in cultural criticism is one of several features of his work that differentiates his philosophy of religion from that of more recent Anglo-American philosophers. The latter by and large focus on circumscribed problems such as the problem of evil or the problems connected with the rational justification of traditional theism, while broader cultural tendencies are either left undiscussed or remain in the background of their discussions. For Heidegger, however, the opposite situation prevails. He leaves many of the favorite puzzles of recent philosophers untouched, while the religious situation of late modernity is one of the more persistent subjects of his reflections.⁵

Heidegger’s criticism of culture is also distinct from that of the Frankfurt School and the Conservative Revolution because of the uniquely Heideggerian conceptual scheme that shapes his analyses.⁶ This scheme undergoes a process of evolution during Heidegger’s long career. It would be a mistake, for reasons to be described in more detail below, to regard this developmental process as one in which later views completely supplant earlier, incompatible, views. Instead, the scheme employed in the period prior to Being and Time (1927) undergoes refinement and development, such that the one familiar to readers of Heidegger’s later works is a kind of natural outgrowth of his earlier thought. In any event, the evolving conceptual scheme that Heidegger employs in his cultural criticism is distinctive of his thought. While he shares many concerns with critical theorists on the left and the right, as well as with religious thinkers, Heidegger ultimately differs from everyone else in the concepts he uses to diagnose and explain the macro-level phenomena of modern culture.

Heidegger’s work prior to Being and Time, while not lacking in discussions of such phenomena, does appear to lack an account of what makes these phenomena distinctively modern. At the same time, he provides an analysis of culture, and of the relation between intellectual discourse and culture, that lays the groundwork for later developments. The centerpiece of this analysis is the claim that people inherit conceptual schemes through tradition, and that this inheritance invisibly shapes the way people think and act. Tradition, for Heidegger, is the repository of a “having been interpreted [Ausgelegtheit]” that lays out in advance the “paths” on which human beings carry out their daily activities (NB 6/116). That is, before one is even explicitly aware of the fact, one has been acculturated to a certain general way of looking at things, to certain ways of dealing with the facts of life. This tacit understanding of a network of possible significance is “expressed” or “lived out” at the most basic level in making use of things for certain purposes. Beyond that, however, this tacit understanding is “expressed” more literally in linguistic communication or discourse. In Being and Time, Heidegger puts the matter thusly:

For the most part, discourse [Rede] is expressed by being spoken out, and has always been so expressed; it is language [Sprache]. But, in that case understanding and interpretation already lie in what has thus been expressed. In language, as a way things have been expressed or spoken out [Ausgesprochenheit], there is hidden a way in which the understanding of Dasein has been interpreted. […] The understanding which has thus already been “deposited” in the way things have been expressed, pertains just as much to any traditional discoveredness of entities which may have been reached, as it does to one’s current understanding of being and to whatever possibilities and horizons for fresh interpretation and conceptual articulation may be available. (SZ 167–168/211)

In his lecture course for SS 1923, Heidegger calls the “having been interpreted” that dominates a particular culture at a particular time the “today [das Heute].” This is “the present of those initial givens which are closest to us, every-one, being-with-each-other—‘our time’” (G63 30/24).⁷ The “today” is an “open space of publicness,” a kind of shared “comprehension” that human beings have in advance of both themselves and the world as a whole (G63 31/25). A human being lives “from out of” this tacit, public understanding. Analyzing the “today,” for Heidegger, is not to be taken as an attempt to “provide entertaining portraits of the so-called ‘most interesting tendencies’ of the present” (G63 30/25). Instead, the goal is to explicate the “today,” to articulate the largely invisible features of the tacit conceptual paradigm that dominates a particular culture. The surface phenomena of the “today” are less important to Heidegger than are the deep structures that these phenomena express. Furthermore, the “educated consciousness” of a particular age is, for Heidegger, the most significant expression of this tacit conceptual paradigm (G63 33/27).

With this framework in place, Heidegger can then embark upon the analysis and diagnosis of significant phenomena in contemporary culture. Even the most superficial glance at his lectures, essays, and correspondence from the 1920s shows Heidegger to be constantly engaged in this enterprise. He mines intellectual trends as diverse as Baden Neo-Kantianism, Husserl’s phenomenology, and Spengler’s metaphysics of history in an attempt to uncover the guiding presuppositions of the age. A constant theme during this period is the pervasive anxiety about culture itself. For Heidegger, what unites the diverse philosophical movements of the day is a concern with a crisis of culture.⁸ A typical remark to this effect can be found in his lecture notes for WS 1919–1920:

A pervasive helplessness lies over all contemporary life, because it has separated itself from its genuine primal sources and merely skirts the issue. Typical: scribbling about the meaning of culture and the problems of culture—on the basis of what one imagines to be a fresh perspective—as one must if one gets crazy ideas about the problem of culture, instead of actively and productively creating a new culture. (G58 20)

In a similar vein, in WS 1920–1921, Heidegger tries to expose the roots of contemporary concern with “historical consciousness.” Again, these roots lie in an anxiety about the allegedly corrosive effects of historical consciousness on everything from the certainty of science to the absolute validity of values (G60 37). The program of the journal Logos, which brought together Husserl and the Neo-Kantians in a struggle against relativism and historicism, also expresses this pervasive preoccupation (G63 42/33). The demand for a “world-view” that integrates theory and practice, science and morality, is also typical of the times (G61 43–44/33–34). In regard to religion, late nineteenth-century debates about the “absoluteness of Christianity,” sparked by the early work of the “History of Religion” school, typify the same underlying worries (G59 21). Following the rise of historical consciousness, the unconditional claim to truth on the part of traditional Christianity began to seem less and less tenable. If Christianity were a product of history, like all other aspects of culture, how could it claim to possess a timeless truth?

While Heidegger’s early critical analyses of what he calls the “today” constitute an integral element of his overall philosophical project, he never quite succeeds in uncovering the basic “having been interpreted” that lies beneath the surface phenomena of late modern culture. The situation is entirely different in his work after about 1930. With the conceptual apparatus of Being and Time firmly in place, Heidegger is able to develop a more precisely articulated framework for his philosophical investigations of history and culture. This framework is familiar to students of Heidegger’s later writings as the “history of being.” It would, however, be a mistake to regard this development as a rejection of the ideas advocated in the 1920s, such as the “today.” In Besinnung, an unpublished manuscript composed between 1938 and 1939, Heidegger explicitly links his earlier ideas with the newer concept of the “history of being.” Commenting on the task of reflecting on the nature of contemporary philosophical discourse, Heidegger writes: “It must know the today, not as the state of a ‘historical situation’ for the purpose of practical advancement or change, but rather as the essential hint [Wesenswinke] of the being-historical essence of the age of modernity” (G66 46–47).

As in SS 1923, when the notion of the “today” is first introduced, Heidegger is careful to distinguish the nature of his own critical reflections on culture from other possibilities. The lens through which he views culture is still hermeneutical; that is, Heidegger thinks that culture needs to be “read” like a complicated text in order to uncover or explicate the fundamental concepts and intuitions that are expressed in macro-level cultural phenomena, such as philosophical discourse. Heidegger is not interested in merely cataloguing dominant trends in culture, but in peering behind or beneath them in order to articulate the deep framework th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations of Works by Heidegger
• Introduction
• 1. Religion and Cultural Criticism
• 2. Heidegger’s Early Phenomenology of Religion
• 3. Heidegger’s Later Phenomenology of Religion
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index