On Fri, 19 Nov 1999 14:55:45 -0500 (EST) Michael Pollak
<mpollak at panix.com> writes:
>
>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
by at least a century since he was roughly a contemporary of Kant's.
>, and Heidegger draws on
>him
>extensively, but I believe Bultman actually followed Heidegger more
>than
>influenced him.
As I recall Bultman considered himself to be a disciple of Heidegger.
The Catholic theologian Karl Rahner was a student of Heidegger.
>
>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.
In theology, Paul Tillich was noteworthy for his conception of God as the Ground of Being. Much of his thinking on this subject was similar to Heidegger's (and no doubt influenced by him too) but without the overlay of reactionary politics since he was a social democrat.
>
>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;
Schleimacher it should be pointed out was very much an admirer of Spinoza.
> 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
>
>
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