Heideggerian inflected spirituality

Not only is one of the key terms in the title almost impossibly vague, but I’m going to deal here in possibly hopeless generalisations. I do so because, despite the massive caveat, I think there is a certain character to some contemporary Anglican theologians, reflecting the influence of Heidegger (more or less explicitly), that is preferable for the Christian theist to many other current options. I use the term spirituality because this is not just a matter of intellectual acrobatics but deeply bound up with the way people live, with personalities and sensitivities, with the ‘visceral register’ (William Connolly).

 

In Being and Time Heidegger suggests that from the very beginning of the western philosophical tradition seeing has been considered the main mode of understanding. Platonic philosophy aimed at contemplating the Forms, and this fed into Christian conceptions of contemplation and prayer. Aristotle considered contemplation the highest human activity, but, in contrast to Plato, seemed to have pictured it as a mental review of and rumination on ideas within the mind. Heidegger also remarks on the two contrasting postures or moods of ancient and modern philosophy as wonder (thaumazein) and doubt respectively. Heidegger makes various moves to get beyond the Cartesian doubt and detached gaze. His notion of truth as unconcealment and disclosure in some ways re-activates the ancient posture of wonder and receptivity before phenomena, but he cannot ignore modernity’s doubt. It seems to me that in Heidegger a receptivity to Being through disclosure, combined with a hermeneutical spiral and awareness of the thrownness of Dasein, combine both wonder and doubt, producing a tertium quid.

 

I’m not sure what to call this philosophical posture (I’ll drop the term ‘mood’ because it could be confused with Heidegger’s own use of it). I take it as attempting to be receptive and open to the disclosure of Being through the immanent world (in contrast to an invisible realm), whilst refusing certainty in the expectation of constant revision. In theological terms one could describe this through a mixture of negative theology, repentance as a regulating principle of theology, and a certain balance between transcendence and immanence. This posture seems common to Andrew Shanks, Rowan Williams and George Pattison. They share a certain reticence and reserve in the manner in which they handle metaphysical speculation. This does not mean they do not believe in, say, the resurrection or the communion of saints (answers will differ depending on who you ask), but that they do not overestimate the importance of such beliefs nor assume they can be held with certainty. Shanks takes directly from Heidegger the notion of truth as openness rather than truth as correctness, which downplays formulations of belief in favour of openness to shaking experience. Pattison, who has written extensively on Heidegger, authored Thinking about God in an age of technology, foregrounding the nature of the need to pose the question of God in as fruitful a way as possible. Hardly a rallying cry for the troops.

 

And there’s the rub. These theologians handle Christianity and theology with great sensitivity and sophistication, but precisely those virtues seem to make their version of Christianity difficult for many to follow. Even academics have remarked on their difficulty following some of Williams’ arguments. Perhaps, however, this is where vague terms such as spirituality or posture may help. Perhaps others may be able to share a posture even if they cannot follow the intellectual erudition. But this too seems unlikely. Perhaps this form of spirituality is only accessible to the highly educated, and perhaps it helps to be in a pluralist society (and politically liberal? and middle class?). There are other reasons for disagreement. Few have the stomach for such a reticent theism. Fundamentalists prefer certainty. Evangelicals seem to be more optimistic, more willing to stake a claim that God has done this or that, more likely to feel ‘assurance’. Radical Orthodox, avowedly Platonic-Christian, retains an edge of certainty too, and triumphalism in some forms. Others go the way of Christian atheism or a Cupitt style post-Christian-Buddhism. But for those not yet willing to abandon theism and averse to triumphalism and certainty, and with a different experience of faith (or lack of experiences!), these Anglican writers offer a viable alternative.

Heidegger against blogging

When curiosity has become free, however, it concerns itself with seeing, not in order to understand what is seen (that is, to come into a Being towards it) but just in order to see. It seeks novelty only in order to leap from it anew to another novelty. In this kind of seeing, that which is an issue for care does not lie in grasping something and being knowingly in the truth; it lies rather in  its possibilities of abandoning itself to the world. Therefore curiosity is characterized by a specific way of not tarrying alongside what is closest. Consequently it does not seek the leisure of tarrying observantly, but rather seeks restlessness and the excitement of continual novelty and changing encounters. In not tarrying, curiosity is concerned with the constant possibility of distraction. Curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and marvelling at them…To be amazed to the point of not understanding is something in which it has no interest. Rather it concerns itself with a kind of knowing, but just in order to have known….It says what one “must” have read and seen.

Heidegger’s (disingenuous?) vocabulary

In §§35-38 of chapter 5 of division 1 of Being and Time, Heidegger introduces several terms that he wants to use in a technical sense. He insists that these terms carry no pejorative sense or moral valuation but I think the terms he chooses have such strong moral and/or pejorative connotations that it is extremely difficult not to read them in this way. For instance, the connotations of ‘falling’ (verfallen) of deterioration, collapse, decay, are so strong that it is probably more accurate to call them denotations. The verb fallen does not have these connotations/denotations, but Heidegger prefers verfallen. Likewise with ‘idle talk’ and ‘temptation’. The terms authentic and inauthentic ordinarily carry very strong evaluative meanings: again, I don’t think you can cordon them off from the basic meaning of the terms. Of course, this argument falls down if it can be shown this is not the case with early twentieth century German, but I suspect it was the case for two reasons. The first is the general moralizing subtext, which I have noted and to which I’ll return. The second is that some of Heidegger’s followers have taken his language in this direction. Consider Sartre: he takes much further the importance of relying on the self instead of the social world. Or: Arendt’s idea of moral and political judgement as coming from the individual in distinction from and contrast to the social world. Each suggests the need for the individual to strongly modify their involvement in the social world as a moral issue. There is also the fact that earlier in the volume Heidegger recommends thaumazein as a philosophical virtue, and here posits ‘curiosity’ as its opposite. And there is his claim that inauthentic Dasein tends to obscure the disclosure of Being, which Heidegger thinks is a problem to be overcome and it has been a failure on the part of the philosophical tradition to do so (not to mention Heidegger’s insistence on the importance of his project on those grounds). We know also that he did criticize the general mentalité of his time for its functional, practical, manipulative posture.

If we add all this up I think it is fair to say either Heidegger just chose the wrong terms if he wanted to avoid the kind of moral interpretation taken by some of his major followers, or that he was being disingenuous in denying any pejorative and moral implications to his ontology. Does his ontology not favour the philosopher after all? The one who thinks hard about the entity itself, who has freed herself from the Cartesian gaze, is the one who is able to get beyond idle talk, is not restless as the curious and is probably slightly less trapped by ambiguity. I wonder if the reference to not speaking about what one is on the scent of alludes to his own preference for disappearing into the forest to think. If only we could be a bit more like the philosopher, politics and society would be better off. That’s probably true, but why deny it affects his ontology, when he’s just discussed the inescapability of the hermeneutical circle?

Heidegger and Kearney

Steiner interprets Heidegger as regarding poets as being closest to the meaning of being. But only some poets. ‘The poet names what is holy.’ An analogy with religion suggests itself: only a few individuals have the heightened feel of and for the divine and the ability to express it. The rest of us follow along as best we can, but can’t be expected to be such first order witnesses, just as we cannot all be poets. Heidegger’s question of ontotheology raises many questions but one of them is, since God is what I like to call a ‘weird entity’ in that s/he does not behave predictably, how is it that we can know reliably what God is like? Must God inevitably appear as capricious? The record of divine acts in history is meant to guard against this by showing God as loving and helping, but there are multiple times when God does not. Can this be explained by Richard Kearney’s idea of the God of the possible who needs us just as we need God. Kearney cites Ettie Hillesum who told God we would help him, take responsibility for God where he couldn’t take responsibility for himself. Perhaps God is only able to act when we make what the Celtic tradition called ‘thin places’, where humans are so attuned to the divine as to allow it to unconceal itself in us (to put it in Heideggerese). This is not to say God is limited to what humanity can do but that God, on the whole, does not act without our consent and help. This in turn may help explain why it is more difficult to establish divine justice as the scale on which we act increases: too many constraints come into play, against which we cannot assert our will. Only over a very long time may we climb out of such a situation.