And Redemption in the Thought of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan

University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2015 “Fall” and Redemption in the Thought of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan Tyler Akers University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Philosophy Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Akers, Tyler, "“Fall” and Redemption in the Thought of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1006. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1006 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. “Fall” and Redemption in the Thought of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the University of Denver and the Iliff School of Theology Joint PhD Program University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Tyler Akers August 2015 Advisor: Carl Raschke Author: Tyler Akers Title: “Fall” and Redemption in the Thought of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan Advisor: Carl Raschke Degree Date: August 2015 Abstract This dissertation examines and develops Martin Heidegger’s concept of “falling” as a significant historical-philosophical principle. Falling, however, is primarily understood as a concept of the early Heidegger, whereas I argue that Heidegger continues to rely upon it, both explicitly and implicitly, throughout his career. Falling is a description of philosophical and Western history, known as metaphysics, and the description of man’s relationship to Being. Thus, falling relates to the most significant streams in Heidegger’s later thought, too, including the truth of Being, the death of God, the gods, the overcoming of metaphysics, and meditative thinking. I then reinterpret the traditional theology of the Fall narrative from Genesis in light of falling as philosophical concept, extending Heidegger’s own “destruction” of Western metaphysics in relation to one of its grounding myths. I move on to demonstrate the significance of a falling understanding in a rereading of the death of God and the end of metaphysics by examining Heidegger’s engagement with Nietzsche. I conclude by incorporating Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis as a further extension of Heidegger’s discourse on falling, showing that the subject’s discourse and relationship to the truth of Being is at the core of his constitution and neurosis. ii Table of Contents Introduction 1 My Project in Context 11 Chapter 1: The History of Metaphysics and the History of Being 33 1.1 Introduction: Being and Metaphysics 33 1.2 Falling Persists Through Heidegger’s Thinking 36 1.3 Destruction and Recollection of the question of the meaning of being 41 1.4 The Meaning of Overcoming Metaphysics 44 1.5 The Preface to Falling in Being and Time 50 1.6 Heidegger’s Concept of Falling 68 1.7 Falling and Death 71 1.8 Additions to a Phenomenology of Falling 73 1.9 Conclusion 83 Chapter 2: Augustine’s Theology of the Fall 87 2.1 Introduction 87 2.2 Heidegger on the Theology of the Fall 91 2.3 The Classic Augustinian Model of the Fall 93 2.4 Augustine’s Fall as Entry of Death Into Life 94 2.5 Death of the Soul, Death of the Body 100 2.6 The Fall and the Itinerary of the Soul in Two Cities 102 2.7 Conclusion 108 Chapter 3: Heidegger and the Genesis of Truth 113 3.1 Introduction 113 3.2 The Truth of Plato, and Beyond 117 3.3 Truth from Proposition to the Freedom to Let Beings Be 124 3.4 The Essence of Truth as Untruth 130 3.5. The Truth of Being as Thing and World 135 3.6 Conclusion 155 Chapter 4: Heidegger and the Truth of Genesis 164 4.1 Introduction 164 4.2 The Truth of Genesis 179 4.3 Conclusion 196 Chapter 5: Falling at the End of Metaphysics: the Death of God and the Will to Power 207 5.1 Introduction 207 5.2 Nietzsche’s Metaphysics: Death of God and the Will to Power 209 5.3 Nietzsche’s Entrenchment of Metaphysics 219 5.4 Nietzsche’s Metaphysics in Relation to Falling 226 5.5 Heidegger’s First Corrective: Affirmation of Being-History 229 iii Chapter 6: The Humiliation of Metaphysics and The Waiting for a God 236 6.1 Introduction 237 6.2 Nietzsche’s Fall 240 6.3 Heidegger and the Question of God 248 6.4 Falling—“Only a God Can Save Us.” 251 6.5 Conclusion 259 Chapter 7: The Lacanian Fall: Psychoanalysis as Metaphysical Diagnosis 267 7.1 Introduction 267 7.2 Freud and the Original Fall in Psychoanalysis 269 7.3 The Broader Heideggerian Context of Lacan’s Theory 272 7.4 Lacan’s Phenomenological Analysis 276 7.5 Lacanian Subjectivity 277 7.6 The Truth of the Subject is the Truth of Metaphysics 283 7.7 The Habitus of the Subject 288 7.8 The Aletheia of the Subject 292 7.9 Conclusion 308 Chapter 8: Antiphony of Death: The Freedom and the Work of the Metaphysical Subject 314 8.1 Introduction 315 8.2 Death—Man’s Absolute Master 327 8.3 Death: the Word of Man’s Freedom 333 Conclusion 345 Bibliography 351 iv Introduction Phenomenology returns thinking to the investigation of phenomena as they appear in their “givenness.”1 The first, Husserlian phenomenological reduction attempts to take reflection, via a step back, prior to any ideas or presuppositions related to the phenomena that present themselves. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty puts it, phenomenology tries to give a direct description of our experience as it is, without taking account of its psychological origin and the causal explanations which the scientist, the historian or the sociologist may be able to provide.2 Following Husserl’s initial formulations, Martin Heidegger states in Being and Time—his own expansion of the phenomenological project—phenomenology aims to “let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.”3 Thus phenomenology seeks to lay bare the nature or essence of a phenomenon in its appearing without recourse to prior philosophical or scientific ideation. 1 Cf. Moran, Dermot. Introduction to Phenomenology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 11: the phenomenological epoché, or suspension of the natural attitude . This bracketing meant that all scientific, philosophical, cultural, and everyday assumptions had to be put aside – not so much negated as to be put out of court . Indeed, in genuine phenomenological viewing, we are not permitted any scientific or philosophical hypotheses. We should attend only to the phenomena in the manner of their being given to us, in their modes of givenness.” 2 Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A. Landes (New York: Routledge, 2013), vii. 3 Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), H34, p. 58. 1 In his landmark phenomenological work, Being and Time, Heidegger argues that it is Being itself which conditions and provides for every phenomenon. Yet Being has never even been raised as a philosophical question except to the extent that it is either subsumed under or confused with some characteristic of beings, or as the ground (reason) for all beings, which leads naturally enough to the metaphysical conceiving of Being as the Highest Being. Phenomenology immediately challenges these conclusions as insufficiently primordial, i.e., already presumptuous, imposing a number of preconceived rational or ideational structures upon the phenomenon of Being itself. Being remains unique and difficult as a matter of thought, for while every phenomenon is given by virtue of Being, Being is not simply present to experience and reflection in the same manner beings are, and it cannot be conflated with beings or their qualities. The question is, how does Being show itself or appear, if it cannot be reduced to the qualities of beings or as their ground reason (the latter of which necessitates an imposition of human logic upon “something’ that first makes logos possible)? Obviously, Being, in one way or another, appears to us, so it must in some as yet non-thematized way present itself to us. Thus, Heidegger argues, a phenomenology of our own human factical experience might lead philosophy to the place of posing the question of Being again, just as it was raised at the outset of Western philosophy—but was long since forgotten and abandoned as a question.4 To do this, Heidegger investigates human existence in terms of its own unique Being, such that, as Da-sein (being-there/here), we as humans take our Being up into our concern and investigation. 4 As we will see, Being is dismissed as the most general, universal, abstract, self-evident, etc. of concepts. 2 Husserl was compelled to leave every phenomenon “bracketed” in order to achieve something akin to an original “seeing” of the thing itself as it presents itself. Phenomenology, the art that evolved under the aegis of Edmund Husserl, with the explicit purpose of returning our philosophical investigations back to phenomena themselves as they appear and show themselves, includes those phenomena which had been precluded from rational discourse since the onset of modernity. As Heidegger’s own phenomenological investigations expanded, however, he began to discover that a more original sense of the self-manifestation of phenomena could be found as a principle of Greek thinking and experience—in Aristotle in particular—in the form of aletheia as the unconcealment of what-is present, its being revealed, its showing itself.

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