On Thu, 18 Nov 1999, Sam Pawlett wrote:
> I would also add that many PoMos have been influenced by the
> hermeneutic tradition in German philosophy which started out with
> Schleimacher and Bultmann as a method for biblical interpretation.
Schleiermacher certainly preceded Heidegger, and Heidegger draws on him extensively, but I believe Bultman actually followed Heidegger more than influenced him.
Heidegger's religious roots go all the way down to the ground. The question of Being is a revival of the central question of medieval philosophy: if God is Being -- which they knew by revelation, because God told them in Exodus 3.14 -- what does that mean and what are the consequences, and how can the finite mind possibly grasp such thing? See Etienne Gilsons's _The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy_, pp. 51-59, for an excellent summary of the medieval project. The parallels to Heidi will hit you like a damp washcloth.
The holism of continental philosophy can easily be seen as the renaissance of a medieval holism that can be seen continually bobbing its head up from beneath the current of Enlightenment philosophy. It's there the Cartesian proofs of God; in Spinoza's substance, which, as substantia, is really closer to Being; in Kant's rejection of the ontological truth, which assumes as valid a remarkable amount of the medieval way of thinking that is completely foreign to us today; in Hegel, in neo-Kantianism, and of course in Heidi, in existentialism, and in many forms of social thought that posit the unattainable totality as the only whole could give meaning to the parts. There are a lots of good things in this intellectual tradition for people that have replaced God with Society as the ultimate totality.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com