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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Speaking and Thinking about God in Rosenzweig and Heidegger A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Philosophy Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By Paul Murphy Higgins Washington, D.C. 2013 Speaking and Thinking about God in Rosenzweig and Heidegger Paul Murphy Higgins, Ph.D. Director: Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil. In the early twentieth century, many philosophers began to reject Kantian and Hegelian approaches to the question of God and the philosophy of religion. The challenge was then to formulate a new way of talking about God within philosophy without necessarily having to revert to pre-modern accounts. These thinkers saw the importance of retaining the insights of modernity while also taking into account the Romantic and post-Romantic critiques of modernism as a one- sided or overly rationalistic enterprise. This dissertation seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of the approaches of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger to rethinking the question of how philosophy is to proceed, especially in light of religious phenomena. Placing Rosenzweig and Heidegger in dialogue helps to further our understanding of both figures, particularly insofar as Rosenzweig’s thought might be used as a corrective to possible shortcomings in the later Heidegger. Many scholars have argued that there is something problematic about Heidegger’s religious thought, but Rosenzweig has been almost completely overlooked as an important corrective resource. Both Rosenzweig’s comprehensive account of the basic phenomena of human existence and his grammatical method for formulating this account share many of Heidegger’s insights, yet surpass them insofar as Rosenzweig is able to address the topic in a more philosophically cogent manner. Rosenzweig’s approach helps to illustrate that the mature Heidegger’s de-emphasizing of divine revelation in favor of the self-revealing of Being and the “flight of the gods” is ultimately too selective an approach to the phenomena in question, and too narrow in its historical focus on German and pagan Greek thought. Rosenzweig’s articulation of what he takes to be the historically concrete event of divine revelation, and the form of life that ensues therefrom, is thus a position that Heidegger should take seriously. Rosenzweig’s philosophical speech-thinking serves to articulate concretely lived Biblical revelation in a way that provides a particularly helpful example of what Heidegger was grasping towards in his mature attempts to go beyond traditional metaphysical language. This dissertation by Paul Murphy Higgins fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in philosophy approved by Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil., as Director, and by Michael Rohlf, Ph.D., and John McCarthy, Ph.D., as Readers. _______________________________________ Holger Zaborowski, D.Phil., Director _______________________________________ Michael Rohlf, Ph.D., Reader _______________________________________ John McCarthy, Ph.D., Reader ii To Professor Bruce Foltz iii The more we are assailed by the nothing that yawns around us like an abyss or that shapelessly, soullessly, and lovelessly haunts us and disperses us from a thousandfold belonging to society and the activity of men, the more passionate, intense, and violent must be the opposition from our side. Or must it not? Friedrich Hölderlin No alternative is more fundamental than the alternative: human guidance or divine guidance. Leo Strauss iv Table of Contents Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................................. v List of Abbreviations ....................................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................... xv Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: Origins .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Heidegger ................................................................................................................................................... 12 Rosenzweig ................................................................................................................................................ 24 Chapter 2, Part 1: The Beiträge ........................................................................................................................ 39 On the Importance of the Beiträge .......................................................................................................... 39 Defending My Approach to the Beiträge ................................................................................................ 45 Introduction to the Beiträge ...................................................................................................................... 50 Heidegger’s Project ................................................................................................................................... 53 Sheltering and Strife .................................................................................................................................. 59 Poetry and the Sigetic as Sheltering ........................................................................................................ 64 Chapter 2, Part 2: God and the Gods ........................................................................................................... 73 Ontotheology ............................................................................................................................................. 77 The Theological Difference ..................................................................................................................... 88 Holy, Godhead, and Last God ................................................................................................................ 91 The Last God ............................................................................................................................................. 96 Poetic Dialogue with Gods .................................................................................................................... 101 Last God as Pascalian Critique? ............................................................................................................ 103 Last God as Pagan Theos? ..................................................................................................................... 108 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 113 Chapter 3: Speech-Thinking and Everyday Life ........................................................................................ 117 Rosenzweig’s Project .............................................................................................................................. 119 Introduction to Star ................................................................................................................................ 122 Outline of Star ......................................................................................................................................... 126 The Star ..................................................................................................................................................... 131 Everyday Life in Judaism ....................................................................................................................... 145 Common Sense and the Johannine Age .............................................................................................. 150 Conclusion: Towards Orthodoxy ......................................................................................................... 156 Chapter 4: Heidegger and Rosenzweig in Dialogue ................................................................................. 160 Rosenzweig and Heidegger .................................................................................................................... 163 v God and Philosophy ............................................................................................................................... 165 The Fourfold and the Everyday ............................................................................................................ 179 Athens and Jerusalem ............................................................................................................................. 188 Personhood and Ereignis ......................................................................................................................... 192 Concluding Remarks ............................................................................................................................... 200 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................... 206 vi List of Abbreviations Martin Heidegger The following list of abbreviations refer
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