religion has not been banned from the world at all

When is relationality no longer relationality but reality-itself formerly known by concepts no longer sustainable by thought? 

A question of presuppositions, I suppose? Postmodernity and the ‘Return of Religion’

Caputo is often aligned to what today is called postsecularism, the awareness that after secularization religion has not been banned from the world at all. On the contrary, postsecularists argue, whereas the traditional theory of secularization suspected the complete downfall of religion at least in industrial and urbanized societies, a return of religion is to be noted even in those civilized circles consisting of religion’s former despisers. This section will show just how this postsecular world takes shape for Caputo. Modernity, and enlightened thought in general, falls prey to its own excesses. It is far from difficult to come up with a few examples of all this: an overestimation of rationality, a craving for progress at all costs, etc. Caputo names the following, from a more philosophical perspective: “Good riddance to the idea of pure wordless and solipsistic subjects, to the ideal of pure presuppositions to science, to a pure prelinguistic world, to pure objects, to pure consciousness, and to pure reason”.1

The Enlightenment, and its call to freedom and autonomy, may in effect have turned rather soon to a new form of oppression—‘thou shalt not be irrational’—a fate which it obviously shares with many revolutions. The search for pure reason soon became as dogmatic as the religion it rejected. The quest for the ‘conditions of possibility of knowledge’, knew in the end very little: the one thing it could be certain of was the object, of which it could configure the geometrical coordinates in a clear and distinct manner; it, of course, knew of the human being—the subject who knew the object—but this being was perhaps already on the verge of losing its humanity if only because it was expected to prescribe to the world its being in a stable, permanent and unaltered way. The transcendental subject, Lacoste writes, is nothing less than a monster and the illusion of autonomy, of a being unrelated to any other being if only with itself, has fortunately been overturned. Yet we know that this critique of the Enlightenment, this “New Enlightenment, one that is enlightened about the limits of the old one”2 all too readily reverses in its counterposition. One might for instance think of the idea of relationality: if the desire for autonomy is abandoned because it too easily turns into a bloodless, lifeless and worldless monadic monster then this ‘new’ Enlightenment all too easily opts for the contrary and posits the dream of a total openness of one subject to another—I am nothing without my network and my relations—which, in the best of all possible worlds, would of course be accompanied with a complete openness of the other toward myself. If the reference to the world of managers and business is perhaps not to be interpreted as a coincidence, the philosophical point about this reversal is nevertheless more important: one can indeed legitimately wonder whether this dream of total openness not simply repeats the old, metaphysical idea of adequatio, of a correspondence of thought with the matter at hand, of a clear and no less distinct idea of this matter on another level, for this correspondence may well no longer lie in a relation-less subject (relating everything that is to itself) but now rather lies in the dream of an adequate—since total—openness, ‘between’ subjects (relating to one another and, through, this to everything else).3 Just as the causa sui, in the old days, was configured as the cause that caused everything else but remained itself uncaused, so it is easy to configure ‘God’ as the relation that instigates all the other relations but is not and cannot be related to itself—remember, for instance, that for Aquinas already, there is no ‘real relation’ between the world and God. The end of metaphysics? Are we there yet?

For Caputo, we are however well on our way to this ‘end’, if only through at times taking a step back. Caputo will in effect argue that there is an analogy between the precritical thought of the Middle Ages and postcritical postmodernity: it is not that we all of a sudden have relapsed in an age of obscurity (although some might like to see postmodernity in this way) in which faith is accorded a more primordial role than reason, it is rather that the postsecular account of deconstruction now notes that faith is not entirely bereft of reason just as reason does not seem to be entirely exempt of belief. In this way, deconstruction is held between premodern and modern thought: it does neither opt for blind faith without reason nor for a pure reason without faith but rather for a faith in and of rationality.

(—from,  Holy Ignorance? John Caputo's Religion without Religion (Draft), by joeri schrijvers)

 The course I took with John Caputo at Villanova was on Heidegger. It was the late seventies. He had just published (1978) The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought (Ohio University Press). 

Philosophy, poetry, and zen encircled me as I wandered an alternative country path.

 

Ein anderer Weg

 

see without knowing

know without seeing — now — this 

faith/reason saunter

     

      (wfh)

heiliges meer

refracting (yes)

 We are looking for

that which is looking through us

seeing   (yes)   itself

kenotic shunyata

 Buddha, Jesus, earth's

fine brothers, their christic minds

one is no other

noch einmal bitte

 from the cosmos, earth

from the earth, humanity

comes then christic whole 

die große stille

capturing stillness

each and every movement sees 

universe praying

needs (to be) thought about

 This:

 "To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy." --Martin Heidegger.

And this:

“The poet is the priest of the invisible.” —Wallace Stevens

Needs 

to be 

thought 

about. 

go ahead, go on

 hospice patient dies

disappears, goes off further

confounding those left

itadakimasu *

fifty five years gone

since drive to Nicolet for

Jo-Ann's vows ... taken 

...   ...   ...

    * Japanese, in a literal sense "I humbly receive"

a directionality in evolution

There is, they say, a band of thought encircling the planet. Not just the bits and data of internet cloud stringing every house and town from Russia to California, from Manilla to Iceland. 

Rather a realm of thought, conscious or unconscious, emanating from the evolutionary impacted emergence of human ratiocination translating consciousness into mental deliberation, theorizing, and opinionating judgment.

(cf. The Third Story of the Universe | Brian Swimme | TEDxBerkeley, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLJ-MSUQsh0.    Time 15:11)

For better or worse, a new phylum of evolutionary appearance that becomes an active player in the specific cosmic neighborhood of planet earth and its extensions.

 In the theory of Vernadsky, the noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life). Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. It is also currently being researched as part of the Global Consciousness Project.^[19]

Teilhard perceived a directionality in evolution along an axis of increasing Complexity/Consciousness. For Teilhard, the noosphere is the sphere of thought encircling the earth that has emerged through evolution as a consequence of this growth in complexity/consciousness. The noosphere is therefore as much part of nature as the barysphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. As a result, Teilhard sees the "social phenomenon [as] the culmination of and not the attenuation of the biological phenomenon."^[20] These social phenomena are part of the noosphere and include, for example, legal, educational, religious, research, industrial and technological systems. In this sense, the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. The noosphere thus grows in step with the organization of the human mass in relation to itself as it populates the earth. Teilhard argued the noosphere evolves towards ever greater personalisation, individuation and unification of its elements. He saw the Christian notion of love as being the principal driver of "noogenesis", the evolution of mind. Evolution would culminate in the Omega Point—an apex of thought/consciousness—which he identified with the eschatological return of Christ.

(--Noösphere, Wikipedia)

I'm not sure we've ever come close to understanding the story, the mythology and imaginative urge, of Christ-reality. 

Is Mary the earth?

Is Christ the cosmos?

Is Jesus humanity?

...

Elsewhere --In her Monday poem email Doris sends William Carlos Williams:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

                                                William Carlos Williams

….  ….  …

I respond: 

plum, tuckered, out

no, not forgiveness,

i cannot abide your cheek —

leave here, don’t come back

                               -wfh

I don't want to be harsh to the poet thief, after all, he seems contrite with a dubious delight in his caper. And maybe my haiku response will soften and relent and simply savor the good doctor's playful confession. 

Human thought, in all its myriad shapes and stretching extension, leaves us no longer at the mercy of elemental materiality and biologic viability. We become what we think. The earth becomes what we think of it and what we think for it.

This is not merely an anthropocentric or anthropomorphic  conceit. It is raw and serious impactful reality.

What question, what koan, is being presented to us for our practice as novices in this interstellar zendo we call "my life," "our life," "life-itself?"

The state department of transportation dumptrucks, layers, steamrollers, and men with shovels and rakes have moved past our roadside gate after asphalting the other lane of Barnestown Road.

This feast of Mary's Assumption.

This liturgy of Monday morning.

festina

 Prime bells across earth

The presenting of something

Not physically there

as these things go

For the moment no

Pain. And for the moment mere

Gratitude, for this

songs of hope and comfort

 Hospice patient breathes

Inside sound of Yo Yo Ma —

Simply passing time

august

good dog

 

companions in 12th century

 Poor Clare, she is, friend

Of Francis back when holy

Folks believed in God

nihil obstat *

 Nothing lasts

Forever

Everything else

Comes and 

Goes

….  …   …

    ( * Latin for “nothing stands in the way”)

finding out from death what life asks of us

 Somewhere, at 3,30 in the morning, someone is praying for the universe and all its inhabitants.

Why?

Excellent question.

I pray we’ll find out.

wander freely, the soaring cliff

He winced. Then smiled. As did the technician. Said, "We don't say that here." Laughed. "That's some dark humor." 

I said, "I'm from Brooklyn. Comes with the neighborhood."

He'd been telling me that 97% of the surgeries go fine. But there is a chance of not-good outcome, or even blindness. No 100% guarantee.

I asked, "In the case of blindness, do you sell eye-patches?"

Wince, smile, chuckle followed. Then, I suspect, compulsory wiping the slate clean of such (as he called it) "dark humor."

August 10th, 2022

The myriad differences

Resolved by sitting,

All doors opened.

In this still place

I follow my nature,

Be what it may.

From the one hundred flowers

I wander freely,

The soaring cliff my hall of meditation

Reizan (1411)

Meditation considers everything.

It's why meditation is not high on the list of preferred activities.

Their questionnaire ask what hobbies I had.

I neglected to list meditation.

Falling off cliffs must be considered. 

anima christi … cor hominis

 Suffer me

Not to be

Separated from you

nagasaki … kokoro … 心

with gratitude — gassho

 Where is my mother

Where is my father —looking

Everywhere — they are

mid-afternoon meditation

 sweet thunderstorm, dark

drops surround cabin porch, dog

goes inside to pray

asperges me

 Two dogs with women

Drive off to Erikson’s for

Morning communion

when one becomes the other, coincidentia

Transfigured Christ or

Hiroshima blast— aw(e)ful 

Oppositorum

….  …   …

Coincidentia oppositorum

Coincidentia oppositorum is a Latin phrase meaning coincidence of opposites. It is a neoplatonic term attributed to 15th century German polymath Nicholas of Cusa in his essay, De Docta Ignorantia (1440).  Mircea Eliade, a 20th-century historian of religion, used the term extensively in his essays about myth and ritual, describing the coincidentia oppositorum as "the mythical pattern". Psychiatrist Carl Jung, the philosopher and Islamic Studies professor Henry Corbin as well as Jewish philosophers Gershom Scholem and Abraham Joshua Heschel also used the term. In alchemy, coincidentia oppositorum is a synonym for coniunctio. For example, Michael Maier stresses that the union of opposites is the aim of the alchemical work. Or, according to Paracelsus' pupil, Gerhard Dorn, the highest grade of the alchemical coniunctio consisted in the union of the total man with the unus mundus ("one world").

The term is also used in describing a revelation of the oneness of things previously believed to be different. Such insight into the unity of things is a kind of immanence, and is found in various non-dualist and dualist traditions. The idea occurs in the traditions of Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism, in German mysticism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Zen and Sufism, among others.^{[citation needed]} 

— Wikipedia 

it can't be heard until we speak it

Death is not the cessation of biological functioning.

Death is the persistant unrealization and intentional ignorance of what and who one really is. 

Visiónem quam vidístis,  némini dixéritis,               

        Tell no one about the vision,  

 

donec a mórtuis resúrgat Fílius.                       

         until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. 

 

(—6aug22, missa  -  communio, transfiguration)

We have not yet risen from the dead, even though, you might argue, we are still biologically alive and have not ceased breathing, heartbeat, or brain functioning -- and therefore, have not died.

Death is not at end of life. Death is that from which and through which we emerge as we become alive to the manifestation and revelation of what is being asked of us in this existence.

We will not see this, cannot be taught or told this, until we undergo this and emerge through this into this present moment, this unveiled illusion, this naked truth -- all we are is all this is -- completely and wholly integrated with love.

It is the feast of transfiguration.

We are invited to figure our way through this...

the thought never occurred

 thunderstorm  quick rain

pounding, lightning before dawn —

Life is not fleeting

would you, please

Circles within circles.

We step outside our individual galaxies each time we greet another being.

Is there any extraterrestrial life, we ask?

Perhaps, better asked, is there any extra-egoic life?

“She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”   ( ― Carl Sagan, Contact)

Webb’s First Deep Field, this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723

The image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying much more distant galaxies behind it. Webb’s NIRCam has brought those distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions, as Webb seeks the earliest galaxies in the universe.

We are space-travellers each time we emerge into the vast expanse that is called "into the open."

We have been looking in the wrong place.

In prison this morning we ponder the meanings of facsimile and simulacrum.

In hospice room last evening, where end-care occurs, my new sister-friend opens her eyes and says, "Would you, please..." then drifts back into quiet. When next she opens eyes, I ask, "What is it you'd like? You began to ask." She looks at me and says, "Did I?" Then, "Oh dear!" And closed her eyes again.

Contact.

There's no evidence that names or proves anything beyond the fact of immediate experience.

Names are but noise and smoke 

Obscuring heavenly light.

                            --Goethe  

the wistful gold of our solitudes

The night sky seems bereft of political shenanigans.

As a naive civilian non-scientist, I might be projecting an opinion torn from a childhood treatise about play together, share toys, don't hit, and be sure to take naps. (I've held tightly on to that last recommendation.)

I love silence and stillness. 

Nevertheless, I read. And understand the obfuscations thrown in our way by hucksters, charlatans, and grifters high on their narcotics of greed, power, and illusion.

I understand there's an inch for everybody.

The construction of a world based on lies is a key component of authoritarians’ takeover of democratic societies. George Orwell’s 1984 explored a world in which those in power use language to replace reality, shaping the past and people’s daily experiences to cement their control. They are constantly reconstructing the past to justify their actions in the present. In Orwell’s dystopian fantasy, Winston Smith’s job is to rewrite history for the Ministry of Truth to reflect the changing interests of a mysterious cult leader, Big Brother, who wants power for its own sake and enforces loyalty through The Party’s propaganda and destruction of those who do not conform. 

Political philosopher Hannah Arendt went further, saying that the lies of an authoritarian were designed not to persuade people, but to organize them into a mass movement. Followers would “believe everything and nothing,” Arendt wrote, “think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.” “The ideal subject” for such a dictator, Arendt wrote, was not those who were committed to an ideology, but rather “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false…no longer exist.”

(--In, Letters from an American, August 3, 2022 , Heather Cox Richardson )

 I hear from friend out of the blue. He sends this:

Dwellers at the Hermitage

                     by Denise Levertov 

Grief sinks and sinks

into the old mineshaft

under their house,

how deep, who knows.

When they have need

for it, it’s there.

Their joys 

refused to share themselves,

fed from the hand

of one alone, browsed

for days in dappled

pathless woods

untamed.

Sorrow

is what one shares,

they say;

and happiness, the wistful gold

of our solitudes, is what

our dearest lovers, our wingéd friends,

leave with us, in trust.   

 

What a joy to hear from him! And Levertov!

He added:

Dear (dear) hermits:

This came across my desk this morning and I thought immediately of, guess who?

St Francis loves you.  I love you.   

Billy  

 

I respond with comment on the koan of surprise delight:

 

Cat's Tail Hits Thermos Handle Jumping After Rubbing Hand   

                                                                                        (for b.s.) 

 

 When friends

        through time and distance

                make of them a thing

 

so insubstantial

            light and breath

                    smile in wraithful dancing, 

                

Christ-

        through-

                    walls, 

wavering appearance, 

        fluttering green jewelweed pink-

                         flowered transitus for Hummingbirds

of a Thursday morning!

walking snow bowl

 We greet each other

In passing, say word or two

Praise the day, our lives

it can be safely exchanged … (origin-al*)

 If we learned to read, to really read, would we be able to discern what is true even in the midst of the most blatant partisan propaganda?

If we learned to listen, to really listen, would we become capable of hearing the submerged truth hidden below surface of every comment, description, or argument?

We believe, falsely, that we know how to read, how to listen. We search, in vain, for political views similar to ours. Or, more impossibly, we long for some mythic equivalence in news broadcasts that somehow presents (as if possible) an equitable scale of proportionate right/left ideology, good/bad news, optimistic/depressive offerings.

It is a fruitless desire.

Rather it is up to us, to each one of us, to deepen our intelligence, widen our capacity, cultivate a wisdom heart and compassionate mind, one that sees into and sees through what is presented with clear alacrity and full-feeling awareness of what truth, concealed, seeks unconcealment, what suffering, obscured, seeks reconciling manifestation.

“Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.” ― George Santayana

 Our education, like our chastity, is always beginning, where each time is the first time. Each person the first person. Each moment of encounter, of reading, of listening — is our first experience with what seems to be other, but is more intimately interior that we initially realize.

There is an emancipation from illusion connected to autogenerated autodidactic learning.

No one gives it to us.

It is constructed out of the material of the moment appearing in front of us.

In summary, it doesn’t matter if your formal education is primary school, secondary school, a GED, an associates or bachelor's degree, or some graduate or professional course of studies. 

What matters is readiness for “the ripeness of instinct and discretion” that accompanies each situation and circumstance, yielding it’s own intelligence, presenting itself to our attending inquiry and curiosity, revealing its own schematic blueprint for our direct, personal, and immediate assessment and action.

Education has little to do with schooling.

Pragmatic, utilitarian, and intelligent learning arises from direct and immediate experience of the really real revealing itself in our presence without barrier or boundary — as the really real does, and is always doing.

This, this intersection of time and history, this coincidence of seeming opposites, this crossroad of all possible directions, this radical emergence of the already and the not yet…

This cruciform compassionate consciousness, this reflexive synchrony of undifferentiated awareness and act — is our learning curriculum of each present moment.

What would you give up in exchange for origin-al learning?

…   …   … 

*al- (1)

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "beyond."

*al- (2)

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to grow, nourish." 

— Online Etymology Dictionary

logos (to make manifest) and phainesthai (to show oneself)

 I'm still in the late sixties studying with John Macquarrie at Union Theological, (translator of Sein und Seit by Martin Heidegger), and William Richardson at Fordham, (author of Heidegger -- Through Phenomenology to Thought.)

I'm still curious about (Sein) Being, and (Da-Sein) There-Being. 

How All-That-Is might find resonance and replication in Here-I-am. (With apologies to Herr MH.) 

How each being might be a distinctive dimensional development of the Being-Beyond-Being that entirely transcends the ability of conscious understanding and practical manipulation.

How the enactment of ordinary and everyday being-and-becoming in particular and distinct occasions of current expressions of beings-in-this-world are ipso facto occasions of isomorphic congruence, correspondence, conversation, and contemplation of What-Is in all its manifestations.

Thus, this/that elides into is/at.  (Or, as Apple might suggest, "be/at" {Could this be what the "beat" movement was on to?})

• be | bē | 

verb (singular present am | am | ; are | är | ; is | iz | ; plural present are; first and third singular past was | wəz, wäz | ; second singular past and plural past were | wər | ; present subjunctive be; past subjunctive were; present participle being | ˈbēiNG | ; past participle been | bin | )  

1 (usually there is/are) exist:  

• be present:  

2 [with adverbial] occur; take place: 

• occupy a position in space: 

• stay in the same place or condition: 

• attend: 

• come; go; visit: 

3 [as copular verb] having the state, quality, identity, nature, role, etc., specified: 

• cost: 

• amount to: 

• represent:  

• signify:  

• consist of; constitute:   

4 informal say: .

...   ...   ... 

• at1 | at, ət | 

preposition 1 expressing location or arrival in a particular place or position: • used in speech to indicate the sign @ in email addresses, separating the address holder's name from their location. 2 expressing the time when an event takes place:• [without adjective] denoting a particular period of time: the sea is cooler at night. • [without adjective] denoting the time spent by someone attending an educational institution, a workplace, or their home: 3 denoting a particular point or segment on a scale: • referring to someone's age: 4 expressing a particular state or condition: • expressing a relationship between an individual and a skill: 5 expressing the object of a look, gesture, thought, action, or plan: • expressing the target of a shot from a weapon: • emphasizing the directing of an action toward a specified object: 6 expressing the means by which something is done: 

..        (Apple dictionary) 

Listening to Carl Sagan's novel "Contact." The chapter eleven discussion between Ellie Arroway and the two religious representatives made me wonder whether there might be a new catagory to place alongside the many religious denominational designations in our world, namely, that of 'non-theist christian.'

The christic manifestation, with help from wiktionary, points out: 

From Middle English Crist, from Old English Crist, from Latin Christus, from Ancient Greek Χρῑστός (Khrīstós), proper noun use of χρῑστός (khrīstós, “[the] anointed [one]”), a calque of Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ‎ (māšīaḥ, “anointed”) (whence English messiah). 

We've come through the waters of our planet's womb, we've come through the waters of our mothers' uterus, we move through the waters of our physical bodies. The anointing urges us to continue to move through the ocean of Being toward the ever-present and ever-continuing origin of what is unfolding and manifesting itself.

Perhaps the thinking expressed over the course of two centuries, that "God" or what we've thought of as "God", is, indeed, dead. This thought has angered some. Perhaps it is time to enter the feeling present. It is time to allow the felt presence of what is revealing itself to be what it is, within and without, no longer making it other, or separate, or not-us. 

"Us" excludes no one or no thing. "Us" includes the increasingly obvious truth that our interconnective isomorphism is of a piece, one without two, one within one. 

I've begun to suspect such an unfolding is not what our classical theism has suggested to us in the past. Rather, going forward in a non-theistic christic pilgrimage, we might be the emergence of christ as active compassion, inclusive caring, and isomorphic revelation of what we once thought was above and beyond as now within and without. 

By beholding what is within/without, by beholding what is without/within, we reside, in and with, the here and the now as the perennial, beginningless and endless, Origin-Al, Being-Itself.

Which brings me back to Heidegger and Richardson:   

I take him to mean that if the later Heidegger has any relevance for Christians at all, it will extend beyond the field of exegesis. The relation

between revelation and faith, between faith and speculative thought,

between the ministerial function of theological speculation and the

magisterial character of the Church- all these matters would deserve

to be rethought in the light of Heidegger's thought, if, indeed, it offers

any light at all.

But whether it offers any light or not, the ecumenical importance

of Heidegger's influence, especially for us in America, is unquestion-

able. This would be the second reason for discussing it. The New

Frontiers in Theology series already includes such titles as The Later

Heidegger and Theology (1963) and The New Hermeneutic (1964).

Another volume (now in preparation) will contain the proceedings of

a consultation of Protestant theologians held at Drew University,

Madison, N.J., in April, 1964, on the theme "The Problem of Non-

objectifying Thinking and Speaking in Theology"-Heideggerian

terminology of the purest water.

Let us, then, formulate the question for ourselves: Does the later

Heidegger have any relevance for the Catholic exegete or theologian?

Are his spectacles worth trying on? Heidegger himself, when he ad-

dressed a group of Bultmann's former students at Marburg in 1960,

suggested that if his effort had any relevance at all, it might be con-

sidered in terms of an analogy: as philosophical thinking is to Being,

so theological thinking (the thinking of faith) is to the self-revealing

God." To be sure, this covers a multitude of sins. In the narrow com-

pass of these pages, let us simply try to understand the relationship

between Being and thinking for the later Heidegger, and then restrict

our attention to only one way in which its application, by analogy,

might be suggestive to the Catholic thinker.

BEING AND THINKING

Being and thinking, indeed! This is the whole of Heidegger. It is now a commonplace that the express intention of Sein und Zeit, his masterwork of 1927, was to interrogate the sense, or meaning, of Being. He has told us since then that the question first occurred to him in 1907 when, during his last year at the Gymnasium in Constance, a priest-friend gave him the doctoral dissertation of the Neo-Scholastic thinker Franz Brentano, entitled The Manifold Sense of Being in Aristotle (where "being" translates the Greek on and the German Seiendes). Writing of the experience in 1962, he says:

. . . On the title page of his work, Brentano quotes Aristotle's phrase to on legetai

pollachôs. I translate: "A being becomes manifest (seil., with regard to its Being) in

many ways." Latent in this phrase is the question that determined the way of my

thought: What is the pervasive, simple, unified determination of Being that per-

meates all of its multiple meanings? This question raised another: What, then, does 7

This, then, was his initial question. But it is important for us to understand that the Being whose sense he sought entered his experience as a process of revelation. There are several reasons, I think, for this. The first was his early experience of theology. After leaving the Gymnasium, he spent three semesters as a seminarian (with a brief interlude as a Jesuit novice). In the courses on exegesis he first heard the word "hermeneutic," and this suggested to him a relationship between language (the language of Sacred Scripture) and Being. We shall return to the problem of language later. Here let us remark simply that Being in this experience is the Being of God, to be sure, but of God insofar as He reveals Himself.

After leaving the seminary, Heidegger fell under the influence of Husserl. From the philosophical point of view this was decisive. He writes (1962): "Dialogues with Husserl provided the immediate experience of the phenomenological method In this evolution a normative role was played by the reference back to fundamental words of Greek thought which I interpreted accordingly: logos (to make manifest) and phainesthai (to show oneself)."8 The beings, there­fore, whose Being Heidegger wanted to legein (make manifest) were phainomena, i.e., were beings only insofar as they appear. For Heideg­ger, beings are only to the extent that they are revealed.

(--from, Heidegger and Theology, by William Richardson S.J., Theological Studies, February, 1965)

 The question arises: What is being revealed at this time? Or, put differently: What is Being revealing in, with, and through us as this time?

The urge to meaning, wholeness, and identity is felt through and through.

I urge you...

to

Feel well!